| What seems to have started as a passionate romance, ended with struggle and pain. John Elliott Thompson and Laura Leila May Boyce met in 1901, Laura Leila was married to another man, Thomas Mills, who spent long periods away in the Navy. She met a tall handsome man, John Thompson and the romance began. Their first child, John Elliott Joseph Hammond Thompson was born at the home of Laura Leila's sister, Myra Inman Boyce, only twelve - fifteen months after they met. They went on to have another seven children of which a couple did not survive childhood. Nearly forty years after they met John left Laura Leila for another women, the reasons for this are unclear but it shocked the family to the core. John, the eldest son had already left England for Australia, and was never to return to see his family, although his father and new wife Mabel Elizabeth Bister did emigrate out but the emigration did not succeed. John constantly wrote to his family but these records have not survived. |
