MONO MONDAY AND PINKTOBER 26

You would think that coping with two challenges every day would get easier the longer you do it - but I must admit that when I saw the MonoMonday challenge was “Origins”, I wondered however I would get something pink to fit in with the BCAM Pinktober challenge into that.

BUT - my legal mind was working and I realised that we had several documents relating to Mr. HCB’s parents’ first house, purchased a couple of years after they were married.  

When Mr. HCB’s mother died in 1996, the house was sold and I happened to be working for the solicitor acting for the purchaser.  The title to the house was unregistered, but by then had to be registered with the Land Registry, and normally any old documents would be scrapped and shredded, but I was asked if we would like them - and of course, we said we would.  

It was good to be able to have something from 1937 bearing Mr. HCB’s father’s signature, as the house was purchased in his sole name.  Only after Mr. HCB’s father died in 1977 was the house transferred into the sole name of his mother because when they first married, in those days, the husband and wife became one person under the law;  any property of the wife was surrendered to her husband and her legal identity ceased to exist. Thankfully things have changed!

Looking through these documents, and it was a leasehold property, I noticed that the plan of the property was “coloured and edged round with pink”!  It was purchased for the sum of £430 - and according to Mr. HCB, his parents paid an extra £20 so that they could have an “outside” toilet at the back of the property, rather than a coal shed.  

They obviously put down a deposit of about £20 as the mortgage was £410 0s. 8d. for 23 years and the weekly instalments were to be 11s.2d.  I think it’s probably fair to say that they struggled, not only to save the deposit but also to pay that amount each week, especially during the war years but they managed it and all credit to them.

So here are Mr. HCB’s origins - his parents’ wedding photograph, the first house purchased by his father, where they lived happily for forty years and where he and his brother were born and some of the documents.  

“The most beautiful people we have known 
     are those who have known defeat, 
          known suffering, 
              known struggle, 
                    known loss, 
                         and have found their way out of the depths. 
These persons have an appreciation, 
     a sensitivity, 
          and an understanding of life 
               that fills them with compassion, 
                    gentleness, 
                         and a deep loving concern. 
Beautiful people do not just happen.”
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

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