Muriel Perry

See Joe Randolph Ackerley

In October 1929 his father Roger Ackerley died of tertiary syphilis. Shortly afterward, Ackerley found a sealed note from his father addressed to him, which concluded:

"I am not going to make any excuses, old man. I have done my duty towards everybody as far as my nature would allow and I hope people generally will be kind to my memory. All my men pals know of my second family and of their mother, so you won't find it difficult to get on their track."

Ackerley thus discovered his father had had a second family for more than 20 years. Roger would visit his daughters three or four times a year when supposedly traveling for business, and sometimes when out to walk his first family's dog. His mistress, Muriel Perry, served as a nurse during the First World War and was busy with her career; she seldom saw their three daughters: Sally and Elizabeth, twins born in 1909, and Diana, born in 1912; all were cared for by a Miss Coutts. The birth of the youngest was never registered; but they were all given their mother's surname. Ackerley described the lives of his half-sisters in his 1968 memoir: "They had no parental care, no family life, no friends." For years, the girls thought his father Roger was their much-loved "Uncle Bodger", who occasionally brought them gifts and money.

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LOTFWW

Medal Index Cards

findmypast Transcription

• First name(s) Muriel
• Last name Perry
• Service number -
• Rank -
• Corps Civilian attached Italian Army
• Service record Corps: Civilian attached Italian Army
• Archive reference WO372/23
• Archive reference description Women's Services, Distinguished Conduct Medals and Military Medals
• Country Great Britain
• Image link http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/SearchUI/Details?uri=D6279308
• Record set World War One British Army medal index cards
• Category Armed forces & conflict
• Subcategory First World War

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http://blog.maryevans.com/

"The situation was soon remedied by Mrs (Florence) Kenward Matthews, who had previously manned a trolley of tea and sandwiches to feed refugees from Belgium arriving in London in September 1914.
As Commandant of the Soldiers' and Sailors' Free Buffet, she, along with her Quartermaster, Miss Muriel Perry, set up a catering phenomenon that was to not only feed and provide some comfort to millions of men throughout the war, but was to epitomise the charitable spirit of those remaining on the home front. Operating under the auspices of the War Office and as part of the Red Cross, the buffet provided a hot cup of tea, mountains of sandwiches and generous slices of cake, all of it free. The buffet was staffed by an army of women volunteers, who paid their own expenses and worked in six-hour shifts pouring hundreds of cups of tea every hour, buttering bread, slicing fruit cake or, as The Tatler's gossip columnist Eve described it, 'the worst part' - washing-up. Open round the clock, it was a subject on which the magazines we hold in the archive took much interest, especially in December 1915 when several illustrations and articles appeared celebrating this sterling effort and describing the appreciation of the many soldierly beneficiaries. "

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