My aunt (my father's sister), provided some recollections of IFMS, her mother. The following is not her exact words, but an adaptation of what she said:
My mother was born March 22nd 1892 in Albion Crescent, Partick, Glasgow. This was later renamed Dowanside Road. Her parents lived here until after her father's death in 1933, after which they moved to 46 Kersland Street.
She attended Park School in Glasgow, where she later became a teacher. She studied English and Philosophy at Glasgow University around 1910-1914, and then went to teacher training college in Cambridge for a year. After then she taught at her old school in Glasgow, also Stand Grammar School in Manchester and a high school for girls in Hereford, all in all for a period of about 10 years.
She knew my father Claud Leonard Broun from St. Mary's Scottish Episcopal Cathedral in Glasgow. Her father was a lay reader there and her mother, although Presbyterian in origin was a pillar of the church there.
She knew my father while his first wife, Hedwig Thewes was still alive. She died in Februrary 1923. My mother married my father in April 1925 in Glasgow. She took over responsibility for the three teenage children (Marion, Patrick and Kenneth) from Frances Durham who had looked after them following Hedwig's death. There was also a housemaid at their residence in Brunton Place in Edinburgh where the family had moved after Hedwig's death, to help. The three children by my father's first wife knew my mother from their time in Glasgow and loved her.
In 1926 I was born and my brother Claud was born in 1930. We had 3 step-siblings.
I remember my mother as very kind, nice and sweet. She spoke perfect English as one might expect from a teacher of that subject and had no accent at all, except a slight posh Oxford tinge. She was troubled by nerves - worrying about her family - but was otherwise in good health apart from being slightly rheumatic and having chillblains. She was very thin, but broad-shouldered. She was quiet and not opinionated.
Her hobbies involved reading English and French literature, music - especially Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, although she did not initiate playing it. She enjoyed word games.
She disliked cooking, however, so maids were taken on. Nonetheless she did enjoy baking and baked a cake every Sunday. She took my brother and I out shopping and walking.
