Sylvia came from a longstanding working boat family on her mother's side - the Alldridges and Paytons. Her maternal grandparents, George Henry Alldridge and Edith Payton married at Brentford in 1917 - being a boatman he was exempt during WWI, it being a reserved occupation.Sylvia's mother, Florence Elizabeth (Liz), was born in Aston, Birmingham in 1923. As you will see, the boatmen's key family events were often at either end of the Grand Union Canal.We have so far only found one reference to Sylvia's father Henry (Harry), which appears on a WWII ID Register of 1939, as working - probably as a teenage boy - for the Pitchford family on their pair of Fellows, Morton & Clayton (FMC) boats, the Victory and Clara, in Birmingham.It was common practice among boatmen families, with a large number of growing children, to loan out teenage children of either sex to other boatmen with young families to help in the running their boats, and if girls to help with the very young children - as we shall encounter later here.Liz and Harry were married in Birmingham in 1945. In 1946 they had their first child Margaret, who was poorly and went in hospital, where she remained, sadly only living to three-months-old. For family reasons her body was then taken south by boat and buried in a canalside cemetery near Tring, where other family members had been buried. It made Liz determined to have future children in a hospital, which she did in November 1948 when her second daughter, Florence Elizabeth (Liz), was born in central Birmingham.
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