Harold Clitherow MARGRETT
Ancestral line as currently established:
Harold 1899, Frederick 1853, Thomas 1812, George 1780, ?....................
Born: 25MAY1899 at Braithwaite Road, Birmingham, West Midlands, England
Sole child of -
Father: Frederick Clitherow Margrett
Mother: Minnie Rosa Annie Moorman
Harold Married: 19JUN1925 in Birmingham, West Midlands, England
Spouse: Ethel Winifred Thompson
Died: 12MAR1996 @ Guildford, Surrey, England
It is an exceptional pleasure in family history when an ancestor or family member can become more than a few isolated facts from public records after their company has been enjoyed in person. .
“Would you care for a cup of tea?” asked 92-year-old Harold in 1992 holding out the silver teapot with ebony handle. “This pot was our wedding present from Winnie's mother and has been to the other side of the world and back.” Perhaps you would feel underwhelmed by a teapot flying round the world, but there's a lot more to that fact than you might be expecting.
Harold Clitherow (middle name of his father) Margrett at his earliest age signed up to serve under King and country with the Royal Berkshire Regiment Royal Engineers during the First World War then discharged with the Victory and British War medals. In 1921 he applied, and was recruited by the General Electric Company, becoming the Assistant Manager of their Southampton office. One of the early missions given him by his company was to catch the train down to Hastings to view in 1923 a new gadget called television offered by a man called John Logie Baird, a Scottish inventor but Harold did not rate it in his report to the company. Perhaps a missed chance early in a career? But he met Ethel Winifred Thompson and they married, as Harold said, in 1925.
The 'spark' which Harold showed in his employment, moved him to increasing levels of promotion and by 1936, the old-fashioned 'grape-vine' tipped him off about the company's intentions for him. Because of that tip-off he and Winnie had time to talk it through before his interview. Seated in the office of one of the directors, he was able to answer without hesitation accepting his appointment to the Far East to start up a sub-company in Hong Kong. A pretty daunting challenge but they had time to mentally prepare for the job on their voyage out.
Having explored Hong Kong, Harold first had to rent a home for themselves and then a business premises all in the company's name, and recruit staff from the local Chinese as he set up business links for trade. The days and weeks flew by with furious activity and progress, but after two years of hard work, in December 1938, there was a telegram from home. It said that Frederick Margrett, Harold's father aged 85, was dangerously ill.
In the days when the main method of communication was overseas post, which could always be blamed for dilatory action after Head Office directives had been ignored. But the one form of instant communication was telegrams. Consequently, it was by telegram that Harold got permission from Head Office to return at company at their compassionate expense.
In 1938 Imperial Airways offered the one way of travel using flying-boats. These did not need an airfield but instead followed a route allowing take-off and landing on water and within the maximum range of the aircraft. Because that was 500 miles, it was rather suitable that a stop was at Bangkok where his cousin Frank Weaver Margrett still lived. (Remember him and the story of the Queen of Siam's Pearls in the March 2017 Journal?) Another flying-boat stop was at Calcutta where he had dinner with his half-brother Philip Margrett. The journey took a week arriving in London on Christmas Eve when Harold dutifully reported to Lord Hurst to thank them for their kindness. Lord Hurst was talkative, having just lost his wife, and Harold was on edge in case he missed the last train to Birmingham. But he just made it and the family reunion was both sad and happy. In the next few days, the doctor was unwilling to commit himself on how long Frederick would survive.
Harold’s return in January 1939 to Hong Kong was the same laborious way, landing at Kytak Airport and met by Winnie. As they met, Winnie had a telegram in her hand that she had received a day or so previously reporting Harold’s father’s death. But the work on the expanding business re-started as European news became more and more threatening with war declared on Sunday 3rd September between the UK and Germany.
That fact might have felt remote at the start in Hong Kong, but as well as decades of occupation by the Japanese in Korea, the Chinese had been resisting the Japanese since 1937 in an undeclared war. Late in 1940 Harold telegrammed Head Office to get permission for a holiday for them both. They had had little time off since arriving in 1936 and, with permission, some time was enjoyed in Durban. Somehow, during their stay an urgent telegram arrived from Sir Mark Young, the Hong Kong Governor, to say that European ladies would not now be allowed (re)entrance to the crown colony as the threat of Japanese invasion was growing. But Winnie having nursing training, on their return went to see the Governor’s wife and a special permit was granted for her to stay.
1941dragged on and by November the Japanese troops were against the boarders with the governor surrendering the colony on Boxing Day. A proclamation was posted by the Japanese requiring all Europeans to report to the square the next morning taking with them only what they could carry. As they washed the dishes that evening in the company house, Winnie said to Harold “None of our possessions are that important, but I resent leaving behind the silver tea service that my mother gave us for a wedding present. What shall we do?”. After dark, Harold was to be (just) seen in the garden with a spade, and safely hid the set.
The next morning, they were documented and interred (January 1942 – September 1945) the best part of four years. They were not in a cell but had just the space under some stairs for their two cots at night and to clear during the day. We cannot begin to understand those conditions for that imprisonment. Their liberation would have taken days or weeks, ending in a slow passage home by sea.
In due course, Harold attended General Electric’s Head Office in London to be granted 12 months compassionate leave at the end of which he sat in an interview as he was asked where he might feel able to go back to work. The words “Hong Kong” must have been unexpected but were taken seriously giving another sea passage back to painfully familiar ground. Their taxi stopped at the site of the company house that they had called home, a desolate shell; all possessions long gone, door and window frames ripped away for firewood, totally gutted. But, whilst the taxi waited, Harold, armed with a spade, searched the garden.
As he poured our tea in 1992, Harold could not help but say, “Of course the ants had eaten the ebony handle and the silver was totally black, so I sent it back to London and you see it’s as good as new.” Later that afternoon we took our leave of this amazingly brave couple, driving into Guildford to stop the night at the first B&B that we could see.
At breakfast the next morning, there were only two others staying; a mother and her son, and as we talked, she asked why we were there. “Just visiting someone we’ve never met before.” we said, suggesting that they could not possibly know the couple. Against some insistence we disclosed their names, and the mother burst out “I knew Harold, we worked together with the “Buy-a-brick” fund to finish building Guildford cathedral after the war when he retired.” In his modesty, Harold had said nothing of his cathedral work. Harold was awarded an O.B.E.
Sometimes you think that it’s a very small world.
Some of Harold’s life was published in the Margrett Magazines No:4 in 1989, No:7 in 1992, and No:19 in 2006 under ISSN 0269-0284 lodged with the British Library, the Gloucestershire County Archives, and the Guild of One Name Studies Library.
This account was also lodged with the Guild of One Name Studies for the Guild Journal in April 2024.