Edmund George Wills Legg 1877–1965 and Beatrice Beck 1881–1942
Edmund was the only child of a single mother called Emily Woodland Legg. He was born at Muston Farm near Piddlehinton in Dorset on the 3rd of October 1877.
Emily was the daughter of Thomas Legg and Ann Woodland, Thomas was a dairy farmer and they farmed in the agricultural hamlet of Burleston. Emily was eighteen years old when Edmund was born and at the time she was working on another dairy farm five miles away in Piddlehinton.
Emily gave Edmund the middle name of Wills, this was the name of a family who worked on Muston farm at this time and the assumption is that Edmund’s father was a member of the Wills family.
Beatrice was born in Buckland Newton, Dorset on the 13th of May 1881 and baptised on the 3rd of July. Her parents were Eli Beck and Frances Foot and she was the fourth of their five children. The year of her birth was also the year that her twelve year old brother died. Her father Eli was an agricultural labourer who at the time of Beatrice’s birth was the gardener for the vicar at Holy Rood Church in Buckland Newton. Beatrice was brought up in a house where education was seen as important, her father had won a financial reward from the Labourers Improvement Society in 1878 for sending his children to school.
1881 census
In 1881 Edmund was three years old and living with his mother and grandparents in Rodgers Hill Cottages, Aff-Puddle near Wareham. His grandparents worked in the dairy and Edmund’s mother Emily and her sister Harriet worked as dairymaids.
There are electoral registers showing the Legg family in Affpuddle from at least 1885 until 1890 when they moved fourteen miles away to Buckland Newton.
Beatrice was born a few weeks after the 1881 census but her family were registered in Buckland Newton.
1891 census
The 1891 census recorded Edmund with his family living in Buckland Newton. His grandfather Thomas was still working as a dairyman but Edmund’s aunt Harriet had married and moved to Melcombe Regis leaving just Thomas, Ann, Emily and Edmund in the home. Their house was recorded as being next to the vicarage where Beatrice’s father worked and was also close to the Beck’s home so presumably this was when Edmund and Beatrice met when he was fourteen and she was ten.
In 1891 Beatrice was living in Buckland Newton where her father worked as a gardener and her brother Edgar was the only other child in the family home. Beatrice’s sister Olive was working as a nurse to young children in the house of a veterinary surgeon in Blandford Forum and her brother Arthur was working as a gardener for the local JP in Winterbourne Herrington. Arthur was lodging in the house of a cowman called Alfred John Wills, Alfred was from Puddletown and was one of the Wills family at Muston cottages when Edmund was born.
In 1895 Beatrice’s brother Arthur joined the police force and the following year he got married and he and his wife Rebecca moved to Lyme Regis.
Two years later when Edmund was twenty years old he also joined the police force. He left his job as a drayman at his grandfather’s dairy and joined the Railway Police but this job only lasted for two months.
A year later Beatrice’s sister Olive got married, her husband was a railway worker called Arthur Westcott, Olive and Arthur moved from Dorset to live in Bedfordshire.
On the 14th of March 1900 Edmund joined the Hampshire police force at Westbourne. On his application he declared that his previous employer had been his ‘father’ Thomas Legg. It is impossible to know if Edmund believed that Thomas was his father rather than his grandfather or was lying on the form. Edmund was described as a grandson on the previous census return that had been filled in by Thomas but no one else in the family would have seen this information.
On the 4th of April 1900 Beatrice gave birth to a baby girl called Olive. Both Beatrice and Edmund’s families were still living in Dorset but Beatrice gave birth in Bedford at her sister Olive Westcott’s house a hundred and forty miles away.
When Olive was born Beatrice was a single woman but on the birth certficate Beatrice said that she was already married to Edmund and gave both herself and Olive the surname of Legg.
A month after Olive was born Beatrice and Edmund got married in Buckland Newton, Beatrice’s father was a witness as was her parent’s lodger, a teacher called Laura Hyde.
On the 30th of May 1900 Edmund’s job moved the family to Winton police station near Bournmouth.
1901 census
In 1901 Edmund and Beatrice were living at 32 Nelson Road in Winton and the 1902 Electoral Register confirmed this.
Beatrice’s younger brother Ernest had left Dorset and moved into the house in Bedford with their aunt Olive Westcott. Ernest was fourteen and working as a furniture shop assistant. Her older brother Arthur and his family were still in Lyme Regis
On the 28th of October 1901 Edmund was promoted to a 2nd Class officer in the police force.
On the 6th of November 1902 Edmund was moved to Woolston police station and in the 1905 electoral register they were still shown living at the police station in Woodley Road, Woolston.
The following year Edmund and Beatrice had their second child, this time it was a boy called Bernard, he was born on the 5th of October.
By 1903 Edmund’s mother Emily and her parents had moved to High House farm, Haselbury Bryan. Beatrice’s grandfather Michael Foot was born in Hazelbury Bryan.
In 1905 on the 20th of November Edmund was transferred to the Eastleigh police station.
In 1905 Beatrice’s sister Olive died. Olive had continued to live in Bedfordshire with her husband but they hadn’t had any children and Olive died in the ‘Three Counties Lunatic Asylum’ in Bedford aged thirty one. Her husband remarried the following year and he and his second wife had a son in 1911.
In 1907 on the 27th of June Edmund was disciplined for ‘…neglected his duty by smoking a cigarette and lounging on a cart when on duty at Romsey Pageant on 26th June 1907’ and demoted to a 3rd class officer.
Exactly six months after being disciplined in 1907 Edmund was transferred to the West End Police station in Southampton and the following month on the 13th of January he was promoted back up to a 2nd class officer.
In 1908 Edmund and Beatrice had their third and final child, he was a son called Harold. In this year and the next their address was 140 Southampton Road in Eastleigh.
Only nine months after being reinstated as a 2nd class officer Edmund was once again disciplined, this time for ‘…having omitted his 12 pm conference point on the 10th inst and made a false entry in his diary and weekly return’. He was again demoted to the 3rd class and two years later on the 24th of April 1910 he left the police force and began work as a relieving officer for the South Stoneham Union, this post was to assess and disperse help to the poor of the parish.
In 1910 Edmund’s grandfather Thomas Legg died at the farm at Haselbury Bryan and two years later his grandmother died at the same address leaving his mother Emily alone on the farm.
1911 census
In 1911 Edmund and Beatrice were living in a six room house at 20 High Street, (Pear Tree Green) Itchen with their three children.
In 1911 Beatrice’s brother Arthur was working as a detective sergeant in the police force and living at 6 Overton Villas in Dorchester. Her brother Edgar got married to Florence Hooton in 1911, Edgar was a police constable in London and Florence came from Northamptonshire but they were married in Banbury, Oxfordshire. At this time Beatrice’s uncle William Foot was a retired police constable in the Metropolitan Police force.
The 1912 electoral register shows that the family were living at 20 High Street/Ludlow Road which was presumably the same house as in the 1911 census but gives a different version of the address. In 1914 the address had changed again to Ludlow Road/ Spring Road and in 1915 it was Spring Road, West End in Sholing.
Sometime between 1911 and 1917 Edmund and Beatrice’s eldest son Bernard went to live and work on his grandmother Emily’s farm at Haselbury Bryan, his granddaughter remembers how much he enjoyed his life there.
On the 19th of December 1915 Edmund signed up for the army seving in the Sherwood Forresters, he was thirty eight years old. Two years later Bernard was also old enough to be called up but Edmund took him away from his grandmother’s farm and placed him at John Thorneycrofts Woolston Yard as an apprentice boilermaker so that he was in a reserved occupation.
On the 28th of February 1918 three years after signing up Edmund relinquished his commission but then enrolled as a volunteer.
Edmund and Beatrice lost their mothers within a year of each other. In the May of 1918 Edmund’s mother Emily died aged fifty eight at the farm in Haselbury Bryan and in June the following year Beatrice’s mother died aged seventy one in Longfleet, Poole.
1918 was also the year that Beatrice’s young nephew Lionel (son of Arthur) died. He was seventeen years old and he had joined the army but it was long standing health problems that caused his death.
On the 19th of March 1919 Edmund was medically discharged from the army, his discharge papers gave the reason for leaving the army as rheumatism.
In 1919 The London Gazette showed that Edmund was in the volunteers as a honorary 2nd Lt — equal to the rank that he had held on leaving the regular army.
In 1919 Beatrice’s brother Arthur was promoted to superintendent in the Dorset Police Force and he and his family moved to Bridport.
On the 17th of August 1920 Edmund and Beatrice’s daughter Olive got married. She was twenty years old and her husband Sidney Godwin was twenty four, Olive gave her address as 2 Blandford Villas, Spring Road (her parents address in 1915). This was also the address given in Harriet Pendrill’s will for Edmund in 1925.
A year after Olive’s marriage, Edmund and Beatrice’s son Bernard also got married, his wife was Elsie Barratt, the daughter of a pnuematic driller. Bernard was twenty and Elsie was eighteen, they married on the 11th of December and the first of their eleven children was born on the 13th of April the following year giving Edmund and Beatrice their first grandchild.
When Edmund was demobbed he didn’t return to Beatrice and their children, he was demobbed in Nottingham and formed a relationship with a younger woman called Florence Simpson. By the time the 1922 electoral register was recorded Edmund and Florence had moved from Nottingham and were living as a married couple using the surname of Legg in Leasingham, Lincolnshire, Florence was a month younger than Edmund’s daughter Olive. Edmund’s descendants remember Beatrice as a difficult person but whether that contributed to Edmund’s actions or was a consequence of them will never be known. Edmund was a witness at the marriage of his daughter in 1920 but again, it is difficult to know if he returned from Nottingham for this or if he was still nominally living in Southampton.
It is difficult to find out what happened to Beatrice at this point, her son Bernard was married and had moved into his own home but Harold was still a teenager and presumably living with his mother. №2 Blandford Villas, Spring Road was the address that Olive gave on her marriage certificate to Sidney in 1920 and then again it was the address on the birth of Olive’s son Robert in 1925 which indicates that Olive and Sidney moved in with Beatrice. In 1931 Beatrice was in the electoral registers at 108 Garland Road living with her widowed father Eli but by 1939 she was back with Olive and Sidney again. Her descendents remember her living with her daughter.
In 1923 Beatrice’s brother Ernest emigrated to America, there is some family debate about whether he went voluntarily or was pushed for trying to set up a union in the police force. His wife Florence and daughter Nellie followed him out a few months later.
There is a record from 1923 of Beatrice’s son Bernard being in the Royal Artillary and then in the following year there is an entry in the London Gazette showing that her son Harold held a temporary position as a postman followed two years later by another showing that he had been made a sorting clerk and telephonist in Southampton.
In 1925 Edmund’s aunt Harriet died, I have to assume that the will was written before Edmund left Beatrice and moved in with Florence in Nottingham because the will described him as a private in the army living at Blandford Villa, Spring Road Southampton. Harriet left her money to her husband Charles Pendrill for his lifetime and then the residue was to be given to Edmund on Charles’s death but when Charles died he made no mention of Edmund in his will.
On the 28th of April 1925 Olive and Sidney had a baby boy called Robert Edmund Godwin. He was born at 208 Spring Road, Southampton and it appears that Olive gave her son the same name as her absent father.
On the 19th of December 1925 Edmund and Florence got married in Sleaford. Edmund dropped his surname of ‘Legg’ and got married under the name of Edmund George Wills and said that he was a widower. He also registered his grandfather Thomas Legg as his father under the name of Thomas Wills. This must have been a risk since he and Florence were registered in the electoral register as a married couple with the surname ‘Legg’ living nearby. They both gave the same address which was 6 Ingram Terrace Quarrington and the names of the witnesses were not any family members that I have seen.
In the December of the following year Edmund and Florence had a son called Roy who was born in Nottinghamshire.
During this time Beatrice’s son Bernard and his growing family lived in Fawley across the estuary from Southampton.
In 1928 Beatrice’s brother Arthur’s wife Rebecca died, he then caused a stir in the village the following year by marrying the family servant Annie Wayman who was the same age as his children.
On the 10th of May 1929 Edmund and Beatrice’s son Harold joined the Hampshire Police Force.
It is difficult to track Beatrice through this period of her life but the 1931 electoral register showed that she was living with her father at 108 Garland Road in Poole. Eli was eighty years old and had been widowed for twelve years. Beatrice and Eli were the only people registered at this address so Olive and Sidney were living elsewhere.
By 1932 Edmund and Florence had moved to Sleaford in Lincolnshire.
In 1932 Edmund became a father again when he and Florence had a son called Eric but two years later tradgedy hit them when their eldest child Roy died aged just eight.
Beatrice’s father died in 1934, he was eighty two years old and living at 108 Garland Road in Poole. He wrote his will in 1932 and left probate for his son Arthur to organise. He left furniture to both Beatrice and Olive and added that any remaining money should go to Beatrice ‘… who has done so much for her mother and me’. He also stipulated that nothing should go out of the Foot and Beck families which may have indicated that Edmund shouldn’t receive any advantage from it but that is only speculation.
In 1935 Beatrice’s son Harold married Margaret Hailstone and they went on to have a baby girl who was their only child.
When the 1939 pre-war register was taken Beatrice was living with Olive and Sidney at 15 Grange Close in Southampton. Sidney was working as a store keeper and their son Robert had moved away to school.
The 1939 register showed that Edmund and Florence were living at The Rookery, Leasingham.
When the 1939 register was taken all of Beatrice’s children were living in Southampton, Bernard was in Cleethorpes Road and Harold was at 50 West End Road.
At the beginning of the Second World War Beatrice’s brother Arthur rejoined the army and served throughout the war until the end of 1944. He was in charge of spies and saboteurs.
In January 1942 Beatrice and Edmund’s son Harold was promoted to a sergeant in the police force.
Beatrice died in 1942 on the 12th of April, she was sixty years old. She died of pancreatic cancer in hospital but her address was with Olive and Sidney at 15 Grange Close.
Two months after Beatrice’s death Edmund and Florence got married for a second time. This marriage was legal but there was another inconsistency on the certificate for their marriage, Edmund’s father was recorded as Thomas ‘Wills’ Legg whereas Thomas Legg was actually his grandfather and the name WIlls was only in Edmund’s name.The address given for both Edmund and Florence for their residency at time of marriage was her parent’s address and they were also the witnesses at the ceremony.
In 1947 Beatrice’s brother Arthur died in Poole. He was a retired chief superintendent in the police force. In the same year Harold transferred to the Barnsley Police Force
During his time in Sleaford, one of Edmund’s jobs was growing plants for seed collection.
In 1951 Edmund wrote his will and the contents were more like a love letter to Florence than a will. He made his son from his first marriage, Harold a joint executor with Florence and asked Harold to help Florence in the future which ‘ … I know he will willingly do’. Edmund’s two families did meet in the 1950s but it is also worth noting that while he was clearly concerned for Eric he didn’t mention his children Olive and Bernard at all and only mentioned Harold in terms of looking after Florence and Eric.
In 1955 Bernard’s wife Elsie died and seven years later in 1962 Bernard got married for a second time, his wife was Violet Jones.
On the 14th of September 1965 Edmund died, he was eighty seven years old and he died at his son Eric’s home. Despite being two decades younger than her husband Florence had died two month earlier.
In 1974 Beatrice’s only remaining sibling, her brother Edgar died in Massachusetts, USA.
Thanks to Heather Lowe, granddaughter of Bernard Legg for a lot of help especially the information on the police records. Her family research showed that Thomas Legg had been a very tall man who had once been gored by a bull and rescued by his faithful dog.
Thank you to Sylvia Collins for allowing me to use the photograph of Beatrice and for a lot of family information.
