Once again, thanks for the the amazing support. The way time zones work, it all happens at night for me, and there is a raft of things for me to think about in the morning.
I am, as has been mentioned, beginning to suspect that things were a bit out of the ordinary in the White household. Spirited women - a tradition that continues to this day :-).
To illustrate, Cissie V (the daughter) left for South Africa initially, with only one month's worth of money. This would have been around 1914, as we have references from Cleghorn & Harris in June 1914. By 1915 she was writing to various employers in Southern Rhodesia, and obtained a position as personal secretary to A.R. Thompson at the Hwange Colliery. There she met my grandfather, who was working on the mine because his farm was too remote to be viable, and they married in 1917.
Cissie was very good at French, and there are, I found out this morning, some postcards in French to her mother from nuns in France, so the French connection seems like to might have some legs. However Maude consistently puts Lambeth as her birth place on the census records, so I am following up Maude Cecilia Rowland, and her mother, Jane Augusta nee Haselgrove, to see if there is something there (not so far, Jane b. in Cuckfield as far as I know).
I haven't had any joy with the marriages of James C (only just found that piece of news from my researches) but I have discovered a number of children, a couple of whom seem to have ended up in New Zealand (where I am).
Exciting stuff - and thanks again.
