Camden New Journal - by CHARLOTTE CHAMBERS Published: 11 October 2007
June Billington with her father Arthur ‘Reg’ Fry at their home in Cheltenham
Still searching after 80 years
Pensioner, 82, hopes she can learn more about her mother – ‘before my time comes’
AT just six weeks old, June Billington was taken away from her mother. But for 82 years she has always wondered about her.
Mrs Billington said she doesn’t know why she has waited so long to try and trace her mother, Doris Helena Fry, but she said that, now a pensioner herself, she had to discover the truth before it was too late.
Mrs Billington, a retired sausage-maker, said: “I’m 82 now and I keep on having a few tears. I’d love to know a bit more about my mum before my time comes. “I’d love to see her, although I know I’ve left it late. That’s why I’d love to see someone else from her side of the family. I’d like to see a photo.”
Mrs Billington said she was taken from her mother after allegedly being thrown down the stairs by her as a baby. “They said I was treated cruelly, but the more I think about it, the more I think it was post-natal depression, and that just wasn’t known about in those days,” said Mrs Billington.
But instead of being treated for a medical condition, Mrs Fry – who is thought to have remarried since, and probably changed her name – lost her baby.
Ever since then, Mrs Billington has wondered about who her mother was.
Following his estrangement from his wife, Alfred Fry, who was known as Reg, took his baby daughter to live with his parents in Kentish Town, until they moved to Cheltenham when she was four. She has never returned to Camden.
From pieces of family history passed down to her by her father’s sister, Mrs Billington thinks her mother stayed in the borough and moved from the family home to Prince of Wales Road, also in Kentish Town.
The only other information she has about Mrs Fry is that she had a brother called Stanley and a sister called Trixie, while her father was a shopkeeper.
But Mrs Billington is also hopeful that her mother – who would be 107 were she still alive today – had more children, and has appealed for anyone who thinks they may be related to her to get in touch through the New Journal.
Describing the start of her parents’ love affair, she said they met at the St Silas Church in Kentish Town, where they were both members of the flock and were taking part in an amateur dramatics society.
But following their marriage and her birth, she thinks her mother’s illness may have driven them apart, and they later divorced after their estrangement. “My father never told me anything about her,” said Mrs Billington. “My mother’s parents didn’t agree with it and wanted to keep contact but my dad cut ties,” she added.
Mrs Billington, who has three children and is twice widowed, said her clerk father never explained why he split from her mother, but described him as doting until his death in 1963: “He always swore he’d never remarry until I’d married and he kept his word. I married in July 1949 and he married my stepmother two months later.”
• Anyone with information about June Billington’s mother or family can contact her c/o Camden New Journal, 40 Camden Road, London, NW1 9DR, or telephone on 020 7424 3261. Alternatively, email cchambers@camdennewjournal.co.uk.
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