Horace Dowding

Horace & sister Alice Minnie Dowding were brought up in orphanages and foster families after both parents died in their 30s. The remaining siblings were all dead, except for Sidney (who underwent war training and died at the Battle of Jutland) and George William (who was living with a foster family in Yorkshire and seems to have disappeared shortly afterwards).

Horace apparently met lord Hugh Dowding whilst working at a car wash in Wembley. Horace and Hugh were not biologically related despite the surname; however, they both found it coincidental that they had just bumped into another H. Dowding like that.