I was just summarising in an email to a family member what we can deduce from the 1939 register and some frightening thoughts occurred to me, things I would like to investigate with your help if this is at all possible.
Before I get to that, let me speculate on some living arrangements: If Charles H Port, the Petty Officer, is living alone in Avenue Rd, and he does not qualify for inclusion in the register, then his house would appear to be vacant. There are several houses like this in Avenue Rd, if you search the 1939 reg in Address mode. Charles & Elizabeth therefore might be living apart for any one of a number of reasons.
Alternatively, there is a three month gap between the creation of the register and the newspaper clip. Charles and Elizabeth might have stayed together with their son and his family in Mayforth Garden in September and then moved to Avenue Rd in December. In time of war, relocation may have been a requirement or simply a wise thing to do.
But now the scary bit. Elizabeth Port experienced a tragedy during the war. Details have never been fully clarified but the story as passed down to me from my Mum, who got this from her own Mum etc etc is that Elizabeth's house was bombed or shelled or strafed during the war. She was standing by the window and was struck by something and knocked down the stairs. All of this is vague. Whatever physical injuries she sustained, she was also traumatised and had to be warded for the rest of her days, dying in hospital care in 1946. This much we know.
The fact that the first name on the record is blacked out - and we presume this to be the son, Stanley who you say died in 2002 and may still be thought of by the administrators of the register as still living - and the names of his wife and 2 year old son are *not* blacked out tells me that these two family members are dead. Are we looking at people who died in the same incident that so badly affected Elizabeth? Is it possible to find out?
Any help in this direction appreciated.
-DC
