Monday 9 September 2019

George Charles Gotelee (1874-1957)


George Charles Gotelee (1874-1957)
During the Edwardian period George Charles Gotelee (1874-1957), developed a glass house nursery in the village of East Preston, on the south coast of England in West Sussex. When he arrived in the area he was in his twenties and very wealthy.  He was the son of a well to do draper who had made a fortune in unusual circumstances.

George's father had started his working life at the age of sixteen in a drapery shop in Shoreditch High Street in 1855. The owner of the shop, Jeremiah Rotherham, was childless, having lost his wife in a cholera epidemic in the East End of London in 1849. As the business expanded he needed help and picked out four of his trusted employees. One of these was Gotelee who by this time had become a buyer. The other three were Frederick Snowden, Robert Dummett and William Ellis. They had all started on the “shop floor” and had experience in different sides of the business. The store by this time had expanded, serving both retail and wholesale, employing an estimated 500 people.

Rotherham died in 1878 at the age of 72, and realising that he needed to ensure the continuity of his business, had made Snowden, Gotelee, Dummett and Ellis his partners. In his will he left his one fifth share to his niece and nephew with instructions for them to either join the business, or sell their share to the partners. It appears that they took the latter option. The value of Rotherham’s estate when he died was £350,000. Today that would be roughly £40million.

The four partners continued to expand the business, buying up the leases of their shops in Shoreditch High Street and the adjoining buildings. What they developed would today be referred to as a departmental store, but back then it was called a warehouse and they were “warehousemen”.

In 1898 the four partners sold the store via a stock market flotation for £500,000 (about £62million today), but remained on as directors. When Gotelee died in 1918 his probate was valued at just over £117,000, probably worth over £6million today. One of Gotelee’s sons did follow his father into the Jeremiah Rotherham & Co. business, he was the middle son, Sydney Treble Gotelee who became a director. He was 80 years old when he retired.

By 1958 the store was struggling; foreign imports, and the slow demise of the British textile industry were partly to blame, but the management also needed outside help. Funding was required and for the first time an eternal director was appointed to the board. He was Nadji Khazam, who was a money man who knew the textile industry. He formed a partnership with Isaac Reuben Yentob and various businesses they operated were merged. Jeremiah otherham was one of the casualties and eventually ceased trading. Khazam’s sister, Flora, married Isaac Yentob. Their son is Alan Yentob the TV presenter. The family businesses were streamlined and what is left has today has become Dewhurst Dent Limited, with member of both families still on the board.

Robert Dummett, who had been one of Gotelee’s partners, had been little more than a porter in the despatch department when he started at Jeremiah Rotherham. When he died in 1908 he left the equivalent of £8million. One of his sons was Sir Robert Ernest Dummett, chief magistrate, and one of his grandchildren was philosopher Sir Michael Anthony Eardley Dummett.


Friday 6 September 2019

Peter Lawford's parents - Lt Col Aylen, cuckolded by his commanding officer

On 12 October 1947, seventy year old Lt Col Ernest Vaughen Aylen DSO died in the Three Crowns, East Preston, West Sussex, England. His death was due to myocardial degeneration and carcinoma of the larynx. He had been a surgeon with the Royal Army Medical Corps since about 1906, and had served in China, Egypt and India. In the Great War he was part of the British-Indian defence force holding out against the Turkish army during siege of Kut Al Amara that started on 7 December 1915 and lasted 147 days. He was taken prisoner and later released by the Turks as part of an exchange. Due to a starvation diet he was in an emaciated condition. On his return to Britain he was awarded the DSO and promoted to Lieutenant Colonel.
In 1906 he married May Somerville Cooper (née Bunny). She was the widow of an army captain who had died in India in 1905 from a self inflicted gunshot wound. May had a daughter from this first marriage, but the child had died in infancy. The Aylens remained childless until the birth of a son in 1923 who was named Peter Sydney Ernest Aylen. However, all was not as it seemed. The Aylens had been going through a difficult period in their relationship, and for some time there had been a lack of intimacy between them. May admitted to her husband that the biological father of the child was not him, but was Lieutenant-General Sir Sydney Turing Barlow Lawford - Aylen’s commanding officer.
In 1924, following two divorce cases, May Aylen and Sir Sydney were free to marry. The scandal was such that the Lawfords moved away from Britain and took up residents in the USA. Their son, Peter Sydney Ernest Aylen, became an actor and changed his name to Peter Lawford. In addition to his film career, Lawford also became a member of the legendary Rat Pack that included Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr and Dean Martin. He married Patricia Kennedy, daughter of Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., United States Ambassador to the UK from 1938 to 1940, and became the brother-in-law of future President John F Kennedy and Senators Edward and Robert Kennedy.
Lt Col Ernest Vaughen Aylen remained single after his divorce. Records indicate that he lived in hotels in London and in East Preston, where two of his sisters also lived. In 1944, during the war, he got in trouble with the law when he went into the grounds of his hotel in East Preston with a torch to scare off cats that were keeping him awake. He was fined 20 shillings for showing an undimmed torch during a blackout.
Lt Col Aylen is buried in the local St Mary the Virgin cemetery, East Preston, with a simple headstone that says “In Memory of Lt Colonel E V Aylen DSO RAMC 1877-1947”.


Lt Col Aylen's grave stone



Peter Lawford (Wikipedia)

Rat Pack (Wikipedia)