Please note that this article contains details that some readers may find distressing
Actor Vicky McClure is known for her dramatic roles in TV programmes such as This Is England and Line of Duty. But as she says at the start of her episode of Who Do You Think You Are?, her real life is quite domestic: “I am a homebody. I like to feel secure and I like to feel in a safe environment and that, to me, is home.” Vicky and her husband Jonny Owen still live in Nottingham, where she grew up, with her extended family nearby.
Vicky has fond memories of her paternal grandmother Jean, who died just last year. She knows that Jean was abandoned as a child and taken in by “some awful people”. Now, she wants to find out more.
To start, Vicky visits her Auntie Pat. They both remember Jean fondly.
“I don’t know anyone else on the planet quite as jolly as her,” Vicky says. “So into family, so all about love, so happy.”
This was all the more remarkable because Jean’s childhood was so traumatic.
“She made a vow,” Pat says. “She said, ‘I suffered, my children never will’. And she said, ‘I didn’t know what love was as a child so I just wanted to give my babies all the love I never had’.”
Jean was given to a foster family as a baby. Her foster mother was an alcoholic and sex worker who hit Jean, made her sleep in the coal cellar and tried to pressure her into having sex with her clients, which she refused to do.
Jean’s birth certificate shows she was born in Grimsby in December 1925 and lists her birth parents as Thomas Compton and Ruby Winifred Compton. Thomas’ profession is given as “steward on a steam ship”. But why did Ruby and Thomas give Jean up?
To find out, Vicky goes to Grimsby. The 1921 census show Ruby Compton living in the town with her parents and brother, along with her young children Esme, Stanley and Pearl. But where was Thomas?
Vicky meets local historian Emma Lingard, who explains that being a steward on ships was a lowly job. Thomas was away at sea for long periods of time and with three young children, the family still didn’t have much money, leaving Ruby to live with her parents.
Significantly, records show that Thomas was on a voyage to Canada from January 1925 until July, five months before Jean’s birth. He couldn’t be Jean’s biological father.
Vicky goes to meet Pearl’s son Nick, her half-first cousin once removed. He shows her a letter from Thomas to Ruby in April 1925 which says: “I should be so happy, darling, if you could be sure that you lived just for me. I should be very careful not to make another mistake, for I think three will be as many as we can manage, don’t you?”
Vicky guesses that Ruby had an affair, conceiving Jean. Ruby and Thomas gave Jean up because they couldn’t afford another child. Adoption at the time was not properly regulated and they may not have realised that Jean’s foster parents would mistreat her.
Nick says that Thomas and Ruby, known as Winnie, were loving grandparents whose marriage lasted until the end.
“I feel like there’s been a really beautiful connection to my Nana Jean, who was so loved,” Vicky says. “I’m sure she’d be really pleased that we did this, and that’s gonna leave me and my family with a bit of peace, I think.”
Next, Vicky wants to find out more about her mother Carol’s family and a rumour that Carol’s grandfather was a POW who died in Japan in the Second World War.
Carol tells Vicky more about Carol’s mother, Iris, and her father, Harry Millership. She has photographs of Harry in uniform with his fellow soldiers and of his grave, a simple military cross which she thinks was in Japan. She also has a letter he wrote to his wife Hetty while on duty in Malayasia, expressing his fear that his beloved children won’t know their “Pop”.
Iris’ birth certificate shows she was born in Featherstone, Yorkshire, 1936 and her father’s profession is given as “colliery hewer”.
To find out more, Vicky visits Caphouse Colliery at the National Coal Mining Museum, where she meets former miner Pete Wordsworth. In the 1921 census Harry, aged 14, is already working as a “collier’s labourer” to support his family, a job that involved working long hours in brutal conditions. Harry’s father Charles was also a miner. He was still working in mining in 1939, when the 1939 Register shows that his job was “mine’s timber drawer”, responsible for replacing the wooden props that held up the mine roof. Vicky notes that the Millership family would have to be strong to survive such harsh conditions.
Next, Vicky goes to Larkhill army base to meet historian Dr Yasmin Khan, who shows her Harry’s military records. He was conscripted into the Territorial Army. He was penalised for going AWOL over Christmas 1940. He joined the 80th Anti-Tank Regiment, which was sent overseas to Singapore in November 1941. But Singapore fell to the Japanese forces in a catastrophic defeat in February 1942. Harry was among the 130,000 British prisoners taken by the Japanese. He was sent to a POW camp on Taiwan.
Vicky follows in her great grandfather’s footsteps, crossing the world to Taiwan. In Keelung, she meets Professor Aaron Moore. He tells her that Harry was taken to Taiwan on one of the notorious “hell ships”, where prisoners were packed together in the airless hold, suffering from dysentery.
On Taiwan, Harry and his fellow prisoners were forced to work at Kinkaseki copper mine. Vicky and Aaron visit the mine. An account by Arthur Titherington, another soldier from the 80th Regiment who survived the mine, shows how brutal conditions were: “Our job as unskilled slave labour was to collect the ore and throw it into the chute… Such labour would have tried the strength of a fit, well-fed, man. For prisoners in bad health, dying from starvation and disease, it was not surprising that they should fail to reach their quotas and then be beaten with the hammer at the end of the day.”
Harry was the first prisoner to die in the mine, falling in an accident and fracturing his skull. Conditions at the mine were so bad that Vicky is grateful that he was spared a longer period of imprisonment. Nearly 25% of prisoners in Japanese POW camps died, compared to around 4% in European camps.
Vicky pays tribute to Harry at the memorial wall near the mine. “I’m really, really proud of Harry,” she says. “I’m extremely proud to be his great granddaughter. The whole thing’s just been the most incredible, disturbing and life-changing experience. There’s been a lot of it I’ve not found easy. I hoped I’d have that strength, that Millership strength, and I do, somewhere. Maybe that’s ‘cause I’ve got Harry with me, and his mates.” She holds up the photographs of Harry and his fellow soldiers at the memorial where they’re commemorated.