I think James' behaviour would no doubt have hurt, upset and exasperated a number of people in his life along the way. However, I can't help feeling a great deal of sympathy for him. I think he comes across as a very emotionally damaged person. From being a tiny child, he had so many awful experiences. His Mother and baby brother falling sick and dying, having to adjust to another 'Mother' and family moving in, losing his Father and second family and then having to adapt to workhouse life/separation from siblings, regimented life on Wellesley, the Great War and loss of brothers, etc. I think he might have been separated from his sisters in the workhouse too for a good part of the time ( he might have had a sense of them being substitute Mother figures as young as they were so this would likely have been quite frightening to him). I think because James ended up spending so many years in the workhouse he probably had a sense of this as his home. Albeit a home that only offered the basics and one which kept trying to get him out based on what those that were running things thought was best for him. I doubt he would have had much say, about whether he actually wanted to go to the Wellesley or the other places he was sent to. I don't think it would have done his self esteem much good either to have been told he had been 'deserted'. However, we don't know whether this was true. Something may have happened to Giovanni. I know from reading the minutes volumes that deserters were sometimes tracked down and made to contribute. I think it might have been assumed that Giovanni had wilfully deserted because they could not find him or a record of his death.
I am sure that people at the workhouse and other places probably did their best but I can't help feeling that he would have been an extremely traumatised child through death, separation, and everything else that might have left him feeling adrift and disconnected. I am not surprised he had difficulties with commitments and attachments due to his own early insecurity.
Also, I am not surprised that he appears to have stayed with Lily the longest. Perhaps as she was a much younger partner she might have seemed more vulnerable to him and at some level perhaps he might have identified with this and therefore was able to empathise more with her than with previous partners.
I do hope James eventually became more settled in himself and went on to have a happier ending. I daresay, if I had been one of his earlier partners or children I would have felt quite mad at him for being unsupportive. However, at a distance, watching his life unfold through records I have found his story to have been a most heartbreaking one.
I think the next youngest , William Armstrong, must have also suffered much too. However, thankfully for him it seems that when he got into trouble later on in life someone was astute enough to recognise that he needed proper help and not just punishment.
So much intrigue on this highly fascinating thread! We started off looking for Giovanni but so many other mysteries have also arisen regarding James, Vincent, Elizabeth Moralee and son John and Frank Spence. What with all these alias names and disappearances/going undercover, I think there is so much more behind 'scenes' in this story. I do hope eventually we can get to the bottom of it all!
Dare I say it, who needs Agatha Christie, when you have the Battistas!
