Female Focus


Page 33 Notes From The Edge


In 2006, Jalon resident Lauren Staton discovered a box of documents at the back of her grandmother’s cupboard following her death. Luckily she didn’t throw them away and took them home to look through them.


She soon discovered they belonged to her great grandfather, Harry Havelock Cornell whom her family had denied all knowledge of. Her grandmother had said that he was an artist from Brighton but that was all she knew about him.


The first note was on lined paper. The writing was neat and in pencil, faded and unclear but


clear enough to state that he was recording details of a conversation he was listening to over a transmitter. It was dated 17th September 1939 and he was in London. “What shocked me” says Lauren “was he was writing about a gang who were involved in blackmail and forgery and were about to move a body of a woman from Stamford Street in SW1”.


This discovery set Lauren on a journey of research to find out more about her great grandfather and why his family had hidden him away for over sixty years. She became determined to tell his story. Ancestry.co.uk was really useful as were trips to Brighton and the Imperial War Museum. It was discovered that Harry had had shell shock, and as an artist had held an exhibition in the Royal Academy. And that tragically he ended his life in an asylum alone and forgotten.


The story needed to be told, as if Henry was tugging at Lauren’s arm to tell his tale.


The book is called Notes from the Edge, published by YouCaxton, available on Amazon and Waterstones. There are more details to be found on FB Harry Killbuck.


FF - Your Magazine Looking for a interesting read to take poolside or down to the beach.....


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