Hilda Haylett

Hilda, at left in this picture with sister Dorothy and mother Edith, was the youngest of the five children of Edith and Ernest Haylett, born in 1909.

My mother, in her biography of my father, wrote, "Cecil said when a baby was due the boys were sent off to stay with a relative who ran the Missions to Seamen somewhere down in the Thames dockland area. It was a gloomy house next to the Mission to which they had to go for services.

"Cecil used to tell of arriving home from such an exile and going into the sitting room and just being stopped in time from sitting on the new baby lying on the couch. He said it was Hilda, and he was always devoted to her.

"They were alike, in build and complexion, Frank and Kenneth being more thick-set, and Dolly the odd one out, dark with brown eyes."

In this picture, taken at Wanstead flats, Hilda is at right with Edith centre and Dolly second from left.

I know little of Hilda's early life until she started work, when she continued to live at home. As far as I know, she joined her oldest brother, Frank, in the Prudential insurance company right from the start. She was certainly working for the Prudential when her mother died in 1955. By 1956, when we spent our summer holiday in Cornwall, Hilda had a flat at Hassocks which was near where her sister Dolly and Dolly's husband Dick lived in Brighton, and Hilda travelled up to London each day with Dick.

Hilda was very elegant, with good dress sense. My mother wrote that, when Cecil returned to Zanzibar from home leave in February 1937 when they were engaged, and spent a couple of days in Zanzibar before starting work in Mombasa, "....he brought with him the engagement ring he had purchased with Dick's help, two diamonds on a twisted white gold band, known as a 'kiss ring', and a lovely evening gown which Hilda had chosen, ice blue with diamante straps and a little train...."

Hilda is seen here with her mother.

When I was christened in the cathedral in Dar-es-Salaam, my father insisted on being a godfather, the other being my mother's brother Sandy, while Mona Dunlop and Hilda were my godmothers, even though none of these could be present.

Hilda died in 1958. My mother wrote,"It was obvious that Cecil was very upset after the loss of Hilda as they had always been great friends, and it had been very sad to see Hilda dying of cancer. She had an operation in the Brighton hospital where Elsie Maynard, my old friend, was matron, and Elsie wrote to me to say that there was little hope, so Cecil was prepared."