| 15. |  Wickham, Edmund Hugh Whalley  (12.Emily11, 10.Catherine10, 9.William9, 8.Hugh8, 7.Hugh7, 6.Hugh6, 5.Alexander5, 4.James4, 3.David3, 2.William2, 1.Hugh1) was born in 1885 in East Brent, Somerset; died on 19 Sep 1926 in Hunting accident in Tanganika (formerly German East Africa). Notes:
Lived in Tanganika ( German East Africa at the time) with his wife as coffee planters. When the first world war started they were interned in a camp in Tabora. Mehala (first daughter) was born there in 1916 and her brother Peter 2 years later.
Ted wrote they were well looked after but the marriage broke down and after the war Ted looked after the two children himself.
Mehala remembered the time fondly, especially living in a house with a dirt floor in which one could make mud pies. However misfortune struck again and Ted was killed in a hunting accident in 1922. The two children were sent home by boat in the care of a nanny to be brought up by their grandparents.
Notes by Sally Copp, Evelyn Mary Brancker's granddaughter
Ted Wickham (TW) returned from Brazil on 24-1-1914, landing at Fishguard from the S.S. Hildebrand, whose passenger list showed his occupation as ?planter?
Evelyn Mary Brancker married Ted Wickham in April 1914 in Axbridge Somerset.
Both of their fathers were Vicars in Somerset. Events in their lives must be seen against this background about 100 years ago.
Our family had absolutely no knowledge of EMB?s first marriage to Ted Wickham. Joan Baldock was the only person that she confided in, hence a little knowledge after her death.
The following I gathered from some news paper cuttings of articles that she had written for the Sunday News in 1955. Probably a Kenya paper?
EMB/W and her new husband Ted went to Tanganyika, now Tanzania, in May/ June 1914, when it was German Territory.
She told Joan B. that Governor Schnee in Dar es Salaam, had warned them to go to Zanzibar or be interned, because war was coming.
Ted had a job on a coffee/sisal farm outside Dar-es-Salaam at a place called Soga. Life there was better health wise and away from the politics in Dar. They were not well received by the Germans at Soga being English. They had good neighbours, a Polish Count and Countess who managed to salvage a few of their worldly goods when they were interned. I don?t know how long they were there before they were interned at Tabora for the first time.
WW1 started on 4-8-1914.
By this time her marriage was not going too well as told to JB. No doubt internment put extra pressure on a troubled marriage.
Life in internment camps was tough. They seemed to have been put in trains moved a bit, dumped at a station and made to walk to the next place. This was all along the central railway line from Dar to Tabora. It was extremely hot and they had either bad food or little food. Water was not always healthy. At a place called Bugiri they had to sieve the water through cloth a few times to get rid of the worst of the ?wrigglers?.
Luckily they weren?t in Bugiri for long when shooting started, so they were told to ?be ready to move in half an hour?. They had had no food and were marched up a dry river bed in the dark with injuries to legs and ankles, ?like miserable sheep? to the next station called Kikombo.
They were mainly locked up in railway ?go-downs? which were warehouses frequently made of corrugated metal. One can only imagine the heat in those ?ovens?.
At Kikombo they were locked up for 36 hours in an overcrowded ?go-down? that was very hot, then loaded up on to a train ?like cattle going to slaughter?. She does not remember the journey too well as they were semi-conscious from heat exhaustion and taken back to Tabora for the 2nd time.
Whilst in prison at Tabora (I think) she gave birth to a little girl called Mehala (Mehala Mary W Wickham) on 3-6-1916. Life for new mothers and babies was hard as the Germans made little effort to clothe, feed or help.
Tabora was a huge camp with lots of other nationalities including Polish and a lot of Africans. In Tabora town there were Italian prisoners on parole. They proved very kind and good at bartering odd possessions for sugar and cigarettes and passing them through windows to the prisoners. The internees also discovered via the Italians that the Germans had been stealing all their Red Cross parcels and eating the food. She also met up with some old friends, no names but, thankfully at this point they were no longer under the care of a rather nasty German called Dorendorf
In the early hours of 14th September 1916 a rather hysterical scared person rushed into her room which was near the gate, shouted at her to take the keys and release the prisoners. During the night there had been quite a lot of shooting going on but the prisoners didn?t know what was going on. EMB took the keys and went back to bed until 6am as it was pointless opening the doors at 4am.
It turned out to be the British and Belgian (Congo) lot and they had no idea that there were any prisoners there. The Germans had disappeared into the night but were gradually rounded up and put under lock and key where the prisoners had been liberated from. Freedom at last.
EMB/W had a poisoned foot and a young baby so she was given a lift to Mwanza on Lake Victoria. The others had to walk. From there it was a fairly short time and she was in Nairobi and met up with the others.
After all that things suddenly are a lot vaguer ? no more newspaper cuttings
I think she was in Kenya for a while but have no idea for how long.
She and Ted had a second child called Peter, born in Nairobi on 26-3-1918.
Things went downhill and at some point she divorced Ted Wickham. A terrible disgrace for EMB/ W as she left him.
This is now, how we in Tanganyika came to understand a sad situation. We understood EMB brought the children back to the UK because the situation in Tanganyika was tough and she needed help with the welfare of Mehala and Peter. Her ex in-laws told her if she left them there she need not bother to go back for them. Her own father was dead by then.
We had no idea what had become of TW after internment, although JB told of a mutual acquaintance having seen him in Palestine in 1917 and the Forces War Records show him having served as a Temporary Lieutenant in the Kings African Rifles (KAR).
However we do know that TW was killed by an elephant in Nyeri on 19-9-1926. Felicity found the announcement in ?The Official Gazette of the Colony & Protectorate of Kenya?
Mehala?s family understood from her that EMB had ?abandoned? the two children and they lived with their father until he sent them back to the UK with a nanny.
However, Felicity?s research shows them to be on a ship?s passenger list, Mehala aged 9 and Peter aged 7. They were travelling with Reginald Trelawney Wickham and his wife Olive. He had been a civil servant in Uganda. There is also an Edith Wickham who was Ted?s half sister and she would appear to have been living with Ted to help with Mehala and Peter?
They arrived into the UK on 16-8-1925 with an immigration stamp on the passenger list.
They would therefore have been in the UK when their father Ted was killed.
Felicity also found that prior to 1927 children went to fathers automatically in the event of divorce.
Name:
Lived in Tanganika ( German East Africa at the time) with his wife as coffee planters. When the first world war started they were interned in a camp in Tabora. Mehala (first daughter) was born there in 1916 and her brother Peter 2 years later.
Ted wrote they were well looked after but the marriage broke down and after the war Ted looked after the two children himself.
Mehala remembered the time fondly, especially living in a house with a dirt floor in which one could make mud pies. However misfortune struck again and Ted was killed in a hunting accident in 1922. The two children were sent home by boat in the care of a nanny to be brought up by their grandparents.
Edmund married Brancker, Evelyn Mary in Apr 1914 in Axbridge Somerset, and was divorced in 1918 approximately. Evelyn was born on 16 Jan 1887 in UK; died on 28 Aug 1973 in Tanzania ; was buried in Moshi cemetery in Tanzania . [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]
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