Rectory Lane Cemetery, Berkhamsted

Joyce Bavin (271)

1901 –01/10/1935

Wife of John Herbert Bavin.

• Melanie Hilton

Muriel Joyce Bavin (née Berryman) (1901-1935)

Muriel Joyce was born in 1901 in Harrow. Her father Alexander Cassels Berryman, was an insurance broker and her mother Elizabeth Walker (née Denniston) had been born in Glasgow.

In 1911 Muriel and her older brother Patrick were living with their parents at “Anstey”, Cross Oak Road.

She married John Herbert Bavin on 6^th September 1925 in Berkhamsted. John was an auditor for railways in India and had been travelling back and forth between India and the UK since at least the age of nineteen

Shortly after their marriage the couple sailed for Calcutta (Kolkatta) from London on the SS Manela, a passenger cargo vessel for the British India Steam Navigation Company. John’s occupation was given as “Audit officer” and the log states that they intended to return to the UK.

In 1926 their first son, Alan Cassels, was born at Chittagong in Bengal and Michael John followed, also, in Chittagong, in 1928. The city was a major port and centre of trade with Burma (It is now the second largest in Bangladesh and officially known as Chattogram.)

They arrived back in the UK on the SS Manora 18^th November 1929 with their two small sons. John’s occupation was given as “railway audit officer” on the log. England was given as their intended country of permanent residence and their address as Anstey, North Road, Berkhamsted. This was the home of Muriel’s parents who appear to have transferred the house name when they moved from Cross Oak Road.

On 3^rd September 1930 they left London again for Calcutta on the SS Manora, accompanied by their children now aged three and two. The log states that John was a railway auditor and that their “country of intended future residence” was India.

They returned 2^nd April 1932 on the SS Morvada. John was now a “Deputy Chief Auditor” and the boys were five and three and a half.

Muriel died in 1935 aged thirty four. It is unclear whether this was in India or the UK, but her death was registered in Hampstead.

She was laid to rest here in a plot next to her husband’s uncle and aunt, Charles and Ethel Bavin. (Plot 272) Her parents-in-law and brother-in-law Geoffrey Wynne Bavin lie together in Plot 369.