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On the 1911 Census Dorothy aged 16 was working as a Domestic Servant for Surgeon
Oskar Teichmann and his wife in The Village, Aldermaston Reading. Oskar came from a very wealthy family, he was born in Eltham Kent at Sitka Lodge, a wonderful architect designed mansion, his father was a Fur Trader and was born in Wurttemburg Germany ( just like the Rothermels!)

Father Emil Teichman was no ordinary importer, even by Victorian standards. A true pioneer, he regularly braved high seas and inhospitable conditions on the dangerous journey to Alaska to secure the commodities that brought him his fortune. Erik and Oskar, his highly educated and extensively travelled sons clearly inherited their father's lust for life. Both were born at Sitka, the name given to the family home, in honour of the Alaskan city that had helped generate the Teichman wealth.

see website ....click for article

Max Teichmann Oskar's brother lived at 33 Grosvener Road Westminster very near to Harry's shop, he was a Partner in C M Lampson Co - Commission Agents, he had four servants living in on the 1911 Census, Lampsons were a very profitable Fur Auction House which traded with Canada, perhaps Dorothy later went to work for him or visited him and did the shopping in Harry's shop? We can only speculate......

Another peculiarity - Oskar married in July 1909 just like Harry and Gertrude in St Georges Westminster......

Dorothy Harry and Gertrude were 'Wallaceites' after the Food Reform Movement . They served Reform and Vegetarian Food in their Hotel and Guest House Restaurants
Harry changed his name to William Wallace from 1914 to 1921 and Dorothy called herself Mrs Wallace. Five of their children carried Wallace as their names. This distinguished Dorothy from Gertrude who was the real Mrs Bird. No one possibly guessing that Harry Bird and 'William Wallace' were the same man.....
So many stories could have been concocted (of which there were) as to the relationship of the two women. Dead husbands on either side, which was perfectly feasible to the outdsider as so many men's lives were lost in the Great War
There were always two Mrs Birds in the family.

NOM DE GUERRE

Is a name used by an individual as an alternative to their true name.

In most legal systems, a name assumed for a nonfraudulent purpose is a legal name and usable as the person's true name, which is however preferred or required for various official purposes. The most common example is when a woman assumes her husband's surname without resorting to the formal statutory process

See the Family in WW1 click to read section for more information

Dorothy and Harry never married as he was the official husband of Gertrude Goldsmith they were together however as a couple for forty years.
Why did Harry turn to Dorothy? Perhaps because Gertrude had had bad experiences during childbirth and couldn't bear the thought of having any more children. She was three months pregnant when she married Harry at Westminster Registry Office in 1909.
Her sister Bertha married at 16 and immediately had her first child in 1911 at 69 Ponsonby Place Westminster at their mother Clara's house. Bertha and her young husband,also 16 when they married, went on to have 10 more babies. In 1949 they emigrated with some of their children to Australia.
Her sister in law Ellen, wife of brother Lawrence, had eleven children almost one every year, also either in Ponsonby Place or around the corner in Ponsonby Terrace where they rented rooms.
Her sister Mary Ann died in tragic circumstances after giving birth to her second child Ruth Mary in 1914. She had brain congestion and seizures as well as profuse bleeding - this would have been terrible to witness and a distressing ordeal for her family. Gertrude may have helped her mother deliver some of these babies and seen the suffering of the women in her family and decided she wanted something better for herself. It probably affected her deeply emotionally. She therefore banned Harry from the bedroom according to one of the sons. There was no contraception or the possibility of divorce for her in those days, the only possibility was to enter the Workhouse.
Roughly one quarter of all children died in their first year at the end of Victoria's reign as at the beginning, and maternal mortality showed no decline.
We presume Gertrude travelled with Dorothy and the younger children to various towns when she gave birth to Harry's children and dedicated the next few years to bringing up all the children together. No one quite knew who their true mother was.
This continued into the next generation when one of Harry and Dorothy's daughters tragically died in childbirth, another daughter took the babies on as her own.
Life was hard for a woman at the turn of the 20th Century in terms of freedoms and rights. They had no rights over their money or property, they could not stay in hospital or have an operation without their husband's consent and they had a legal obligation to follow their husband wherever he chose to live..
Now we are in contact with members of Gertrude's family it appears none of them quite knew what had happened to Gertrude after she moved 'South' the older generation were very 'tight lipped ' about her story. We now have some evidence that she did visit her family in the '30's.

Click to read the Goldsmith stories

Did Gertrude wet-nurse Dorothy's children? Is this why they were all so close and many of them thought that she was their mother? Dorothy gave birth and handed the babies over to Gertrude? It would not have been impossible for her as the births were very close together and the illusion would have been given to outsiders that the babies were really Gertrude's, Harry's legal wife. Wet-nursing would have happened as a matter of course if the mother was ill or did not wish to feed her babies as formula milk was certainly not available at that time.
It may be taboo but even today British women quietly breastfeed other women's babies, especially if there is failure to thrive or the birth mother is unable to do it. Although they acknowledge the practice they would not necessarily admit to it. Hiring someone to breastfeed your child is becoming increasingly popular in Hollywood. On one website "wet nurse" is listed right next to valet, chauffeur and chef.
Wet-nursing has gone on for centuries in the far east and Asia. Once wet-nursing was so commonplace that Jane Austen mentions it in Emma, for years it was a really good job for a woman, a wife could earn more than her husband as a labourer. If you were a Royal wet-nurse you would be honoured for life.
There is a 'special relationship - a bond - between the baby and the wet-nurse.
Even more intriguing than the actual practice itself is the way it has been reported in the West, with fascination disguised as disgust. Perhaps the intimacy of shared feeding enhances the taboo, it's always been practiced, it just isn't reported.

Is this why Gertrude called herself "Other Mammy" and Other Mum ? If she were the widow of Harry's dead brother surely the children would have naturally called her Aunty?

I think I've mentioned this before but I do remember Gertrude and mother both saying Gertrude was worn out by having too many children too close together . May be even with out the Pregnancy and births the continual breast feeding was draining.. more evidence to back the wet nursing.The emotional strain of the threesome too...Thalia

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The 1908 Children's Act, also known as Children and Young Persons Act, part of the Children's Charter was a piece of government legislation passed by the Liberal government, as part of the British Liberal Party's liberal reforms package. The Act was informally known as the Children's Charter and surrounded controversy.
It established juvenile courts and introduced the registration of foster parents, thus regulating baby-farming and WET- NURSING and trying to stamp out infanticide. Local authorities were also granted powers to keep poor children out of the workhouse and protect them from abuse. The act also prevented children working in dangerous trades and prevented them from purchasing cigarettes and entering pubs. The act also prevented children from learning the "Tricks of the Trade" in adult prisons, where children were often sent to serve time if a crime had been committed. Instead the Children's Charter had allocated Borstals. It eventually led to many councils setting up social services and Orphanages.

Marie Stopes opened the UK's first family planning clinic, the Mothers' Clinic at 61, Marlborough Road, Holloway, North London on March 17, 1921. In 1925 the London clinic moved to its present site at 108 Whitfield Street, Central London. The clinic offered a free service to married women and also gathered scientific data about contraception. The opening of the clinic created one of the greatest social impacts of the 20th century and marked the start of a new era in which couples, for the first time, could reliably take control over their fertility.

Sadly too late for Gertrude and Dorothy

Mistresses and illegitimate children were worth nothing. Now there is an interest in tracing family trees it is coming to light that there were far more illegitimate children than we thought. They were unable to take the name of their father who was not mentioned on the birth certificate. Some of the mothers were prostitutes and housemaids, others were the 'true love' of the gentleman but marriage was impossible as although they may have been from a well to do family they brought no money into the relationship.

There was a web of connections and we find that payments, on examining old accounts and ledgers, were made for years to a mysterious person or persons. Some of these illegitimate children were handed over to foster mothers who were made payments for their upkeep. Children were sent away to other towns. It was one way for women to earn an income if nothing else was available

Illegitimacy brought a cloud of shame, illegitimate children were legal nobodies, non people and didn't exist in a point of law. It had a great effect on their characters, they were in limbo, not acknowledged and the whole thing was swept under the carpet.

Did Harry and Gertie love one another, or was their marriage a necessity?
"To use a homely simile - one might compare two human beings to two bodies charged with electricity of different potentials. Isolated from each other the electric forces within them are invisible, but if they come into the right juxtaposition the force is transmitted, and a spark, a glow of burning light arises between them. Such is love " Marie Stopes

After reading 'Love Child' by Sue Elliott and doing some research on the internet about adoption and unmarried mothers the Harry - Gertrude - Dorothy triangle was probably the best solution for all concerned at that time. Neither of the two women had to give up their babies for adoption or go into service or ghastly 'mother and baby homes' because they could not financially support them. They both could stay with their children and enjoy them as they were growing up, even though most of them didn't know who their real mother was. Sometimes due to circumstances they were all living under one roof. Harry worked all hours of the day to support the two women and his offspring. It was possibly the only way he could devise to keep his children together. Their solution was novel and imaginative, although may not have felt unusual for them as Dora and Bertrand Russel were their heros and the poet Shelley who had all led similar lives.
Janice and Thalia

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