Forming an inadvertent link to Andrew Martin's excellent blog at http://historyrepeating.org.uk/, I too will be talking about a family of Harrisons..... Andrew's are in Cambridgeshire and I suppose mine are too...now, although at the time, St Ives was part of Huntingdonshire.
My attention was drawn, by my friend Sue Anderson, to an article in The Times on 5th July 1927, entitled "Three People shot at St Ives". Now, I should make it clear that this particular family of Harrisons are not related to me but are the in-laws of my 2xgt aunt May Culpin; but, honestly now, would you not want to follow it up?
So a quick delve into the British Newspaper Archive (no hardship, I promise) and I was able to fill in some more details: Frederick Harrison, age 46, shot his wife Florence and his elder son Geoffrey and then himself. His younger son Robert was out on an errand and found the results of this tragedy when he returned. The subsequent inquest brought forth the information that Frederick had contracted malaria during War service and was unable to return to civilian life for for a year after the war ...."and it preyed on his mind."
What I found fascinating was the number of newspapers which reported this, and their diverse geographical spread - the Aberdeen Journal, the Nottingham Evening Post and the Exmouth & Plymouth Gazette, to name but a few. I guess that this, being linked with the Great War, was what caught the editors' eyes.
I now need to complete the story by finding the local Hunts Post reports - a trip to the Cambridgeshire Collection awaits!
As do more pressing domestic tasks, so ....
More soon.
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