Rectory Lane Cemetery, Berkhamsted

Ismay Francis Brown (622)

08/06/1885

Born in Burma, married a clergyman and spent last days living with her daughter in Berkhamsted.

Relatives

Gladys Rae Haines — daughter

• Melanie Hilton

Plot 622 Ismay Frances Brown (née Tisdall) (1856-1942)

Ismay was born 2 November 1856 in Mawlamyine, Burma (now Myanmar) the fourth largest city in modern Myanmar, and the first capital of British colonial Burma. Known as Moulmein it was a strategically important port city and is mentioned in the opening lines of Rudyard Kipling’s Road To Mandalay:

“By the old Moulmein pagoda, lookin’ lazy at the sea

There’s a Burma girl a-settin’, and I know she thinks o’ me”.

Her father was Captain Archibald Tisdall, an Irish officer of the 35^th Regiment and her mother Anna Claire Bellew, daughter of the late Major Henry Walter Bellew of the Bengal Army. They had married on January 1 1856 in St Paul’s Cathedral, Calcutta (Kolkata).

Like Archibald, Anna was of an Irish gentry family. She had been born in India and her father was killed during the 2^nd Afghan War.

According to the Art UK website where his portrait can be seen, “During the First Afghan War (1838–1842) Bellew was Assistant Quartermaster General to the Kabul garrison. He was amongst those staff officers who advised withdrawal to India. During the retreat, he and a handful of soldiers managed to survive the carnage at the Khoord Kabul (or Khurd Kabul) and Jagdalak passes. They got as far as Futtehbad (Fatehabad), about 24km from Jalalabad, where they were attacked by villagers and Bellew was killed.” https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/major-henry-walter-bellew-18031842-bengal-army-staff-182989

By the time Ismay was born her father had served in Mauritius and the East Indies and had not only survived the Indian Mutiny but had been mentioned in despatches published in the London Gazette for his meritorious conduct.

The family remained in India for some years – her brothers Archibald Walter and Arthur Lance were born in Calcutta – but by 1863 they were in Kent where Anna Claire was born in 1863. Sarah Sophia, the last of Ismay’s siblings was born in Boulogne in 1864, but baptised in England.

The 1871 census finds Ismay living with an aunt in Arundel Gardens Chelsea. Maria Adelaide Judge was her mother’s sister and had been born in Adelaide, Australia but married, and widowed early, in India. Also in the household was her mother, her brother and his wife and three servants. At the same time Ismay’s parents and two of her sisters were living in Bradford.

Ten years later Ismay, aged 28, was still living with her aunt and maternal grandmother in Marlborough Road, Ealing. Her parents, meanwhile, were living in Aberdeenshire.

She must have returned to India, perhaps as a missionary, because on 16 April 1885 she married the Revd. John Anderson Brown, a missionary of the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland, in Lahore.

Ismay and John had two daughters. Gladys Rae was born in December 1886 and Ismay Edith in 1888, both in Beawar, Rajasthan.

John died 4 September 1906 in Jhalrapatan, a town about 325 km SE of Beawar.

By 1907, when probate was finalised, Ismay had returned to the UK and was living in Edinburgh.

Tracing Ismay between then and the 1921 census has not been possible, but in that year she was a boarder at Bull Farm Cottage, Amersham Road, Beaconsfield along with four other boarders, all male, in the home of Mr and Mrs Huggett.

In the 1939 Register Ismay was living at 42, Ashlyns Road with Gladys, who had married Jonathan Hames in Kenya but who was widowed in 1936. The record shows Ismay as “incapacitated.” She died on 13 May 1942.

Gladys Rae Haines

d.24/11/1964

Daughter of Ismay Frances Brown

Relatives

Ismay Francis Brown (622) — father

• Melanie Hilton

Plot 622 Gladys Rae Haines (née Brown) (1886-1964) 

Gladys was born in Beawar, Rajasthan, December 1886, the daughter of the Revd. John Anderson Brown, a missionary of the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland and Ismay Frances (née Tisdale).

It has not been possible so far to trace Gladys’s early life. Her father died in India in 1906 and her mother was living in Edinburgh the following year when the probate was granted.

Gladys married Jonothan [spelled Jonothan & Jonathan on various documents] Haines, probably in Kenya. As a young man Jonothan had been a harness maker. He served in the Seaforth Highlanders during the First World War and became an electrical engineer

 Both their children were born in Nairobi – Ismay Mary (1926-85) and Jonathan Joseph (1928-63).

It seems that after their son’s birth Gladys moved to England, perhaps for the health of the children while her husband remained in Kenya. In the 1930-1 electoral registers she and her unmarried sister Ismay Edith were living in Lawn Cottage, Woodbury, Devon and this is the address given by Jonothan on the passenger manifest on a return voyage to Mombasa from London in 1931.

He came to England again August to December 1935, this time giving his address c/o a London bank. He arrived back in Mombasa in January 1936 but died in March that year in a Nairobi nursing home Kenya aged forty

In the 1939 Register Gladys is shown in the middle of a very large number of redacted entries with the unexplained annotation “U.D.D” in the Occupation column. It would appear that she had some role in connection with Berkhamsted School. She is also listed at 42, Ashlyns Road with her mother – the entry has been crossed through and cross-referenced to the school entry.

Gladys moved to Edinburgh and is listed in the 1955 electoral register at 2, Fraser Homes, Spylaw Bank Road. The Fraser Homes are a charming set of almshouses for the elderly, set around a courtyard garden. [https://canmore.org.uk/collection/548597]

Gladys died 24 November 1964 at the Highfield Nursing Home Edinburgh and was cremated.

Although Gladys is named on the headstone  it is not clear whether her ashes were buried in this plot together with her mother Ismay, or whether she is named on the headstone “in memoriam.”