Almanac Life: In Memory of Daphne Jean Crumpen

 

 

Frank Taylor was asked to speak at Daphne Crumpen’s funeral which took place on October 6, 2022.

 

 

 

 

My name is Frank Taylor and I feel privileged to be asked to speak at Daphne’s funeral.

 

I have known Daphne and Bob Crumpen literally all of my life. Their family home was just down the road in Sherbourne Road, while we, the Taylor’s, lived just up around the corner in Rattray Road, probably ten houses away, although we nearly always used the back road,  Adams Crescent, to visit one another. I have seen a photo somewhere of my mum, Elvie, and Daphne sitting together in a backyard with Richard, probably eight months old and myself at six months old, both in nappies. I’d love to find that photo again.

 

Not long ago this year, Dick, Rose and I were chatting over a cuppa and discussing who had the biggest – positive – external influences in our lives. Dick and I had a couple of common ones, however, along with another family that I knew, I nominated the Crumpens.

 

When I think of Mrs Crumpen, I have to include Bob. Bob and Daphne – I find that they are hard to separate – they were fabulous role models to me.

 

Rock solid.

 

Dependable.

 

Deeply respectful to one another and a great, positive influence and role models to me in my journey in life. Growing up, I spent a lot of time at the Crumpens.

 

I feel very fortunate to have been able to personally tell Daphne that, and to thank her the last time that I saw her.

 

 

Daphne Jean Crumpen

 

 

 

 

Daphne was born to Alfred Young and Charlotte (nee Lodge) Young in Writtle, just outside of Chelmsford in Essex, England on the 10^th of April in 1928.

 

One of six children, five girls, all named after flowers – Daisy, Violet, Lilly, Heather and Daphne – and a boy, William.

 

The times she was born into were very, very different from today and, to reflect on her life and put into some perspective, we have to have some appreciation of the changing society that she lived in and through.

 

Daphne was born in 1928. Ten years after the First World War – the war to end all wars – and in the lead up to The Great Depression. England was a great world power and, although it was Depression times and really hard on ordinary people, England, as a nation, was rich and had a great Empire all around the globe with a great navy and armed services and colonies serving the Empire’s commercial needs. This was to change radically over the course of the first 30 years of Daphne’s life.

 

Then, when she was 11 years old, the Second World War began in September, 1939.

 

Germany had become fascist and deeply, ideologically racist – White Aryan – and was intent on dominating the world.

 

In 1940 the Battle of Britain and the bombing of England began.

 

The children of London and important towns and cities like Portsmouth, Southampton and Manchester etc. were evacuated and sent to strangers’ homes in the countryside. The Youngs were part of this war effort and took in a boy who stayed for quite a while (Daphne remembered him well) until a childless couple down the road took him in at their request.

 

Growing up in this time, spending your teenage years in a country at war, is hard to imagine. We think that we had it tough with a couple of years of lock-down, but it was nothing like this. There were a lot of shortages. Maritime trade was much reduced as many ships were sunk by German U-boats before they reached England.

 

Strict rationing was introduced as everything, even the basics, was very, very hard to get.

 

Most young men and a lot of young women were in uniform, and the country was on a Total War footing and literally under siege. There would have been many, many families greatly affected with dead, missing and wounded relatives.

 

Early on, invasion was expected and imminent and there was the constant fear of being bombed, even in the country.

 

In Essex, during the Battle of Britain and after, until the end of the war, the skies would often be filled with aeroplanes day and night, often with great battles overhead that people could watch from the ground, or, later in the war, masses and masses of aeroplanes taking off from airfields close by, gaining height and grouping together before setting out on one of the many thousands of bomber raids into Europe and Germany.

 

Like I say, growing up in a country at war is very, very hard to imagine. It was never far from people’s thoughts as there were constant reminders everywhere.

 

Daphne was 17  when the European war finished and peace was declared – virtually all of her adolescence was spent in blackouts, rations and privations.

 

She met Bob sometime after the war, probably around 1949 or 1950.

 

 

He also came from Essex, growing up in and around Tolleshunt Darcy and Maldon and returning there after six years service in the British 8^th Army as a sapper (or engineer). He wrote his life story in his retirement and, reading it, I learnt that he was lucky and extremely fortunate to survive. (I have his story in a Word document – I reckon that you could make a couple of HBO series out of his wartime experiences. If any of you would like it, please see me after the service. It’s a fantastic read.)

 

Daphne was 16 years younger than Bob – or Dick as she always referred to him. Richard – who we all know and call Dick – was always Richard to Daphne, and Bob was usually Dick, go figure? Daphne was always Daph to Bob.

 

They met possibly in Reading or more likely Maldon, fell in love and decided to emigrate to Australia. Britain was now impoverished with war debt and reconstruction, and rationing went on for many years. It seemed a hard future for many young couples.

 

As Bob put it:

 

“Conditions in England during this period were bleak. Coupons for goods, short of food, no hope of a house or accommodation, so I decided to emigrate to Australia on an assisted passage as a tradesman.”

 

This was colloquially known as a two-pound Pom.

 

I’m not certain, however I suspect that they eloped as they were married in Australia after the sea voyage. Bob being 16 years older than Daphne, I’m not sure if her parents, Alfred and Charlotte approved and who paid for her ticket………….

 

It’s only speculation on my part, mind you. Moral social values were vastly different in those times and living together unmarried and in a de facto relationship was not considered polite and certainly put you on the outer of mainstream society.

 

It was a big move. The life of an immigrant can be very tough for a number of reasons, and many longed for a return to “home”. Certainly this was the case for Daphne. England and Australia are vastly different in so many ways, and I’m sure that there were many days of homesickness and loneliness. Certainly it welded Bob and Daphne together, as this experience – moving to a foreign land – did to so many other immigrant couples.

 

I don’t think that Bob felt this separation from “home” – England – as much. Daphne subscribed to regular periodicals that featured pictures and articles about Great Britain which she read from front to back then occasionally passed on to me, as I was also interested in England in general. Growing up in the ‘50s and ‘60s, Australia was much closer culturally to England that it is today.

 

They left for Australia on the 2nd of February, 1951 and were married (I think in Ivanhoe) six weeks later on the 15th March, 1951. Robert came along a year later and, just over two years after Robert, Richard was born.

 

 

She returned to England twice. The first time in the late ‘50s by ship with Bob, Robert and Richard, for around eight months in total. They spent most of the time at the Youngs in Writtle. Plainly, if there was any friction by Dapne’s earlier departure, it was all forgiven now.

 

Sue was born after they returned to Australia.

 

The last trip she made back was in 1997 or thereabouts after Bob died.

 

You could say that Bob and Daphne were a near typical 1950s working class, Australian couple. In these times, Australia had what was known as the Basic Wage whereby a man’s wage could cover the cost of shelter and food and expenses for the whole family. A woman was not expected to work. Indeed if you were a woman and you had a job when you married, you were expected to resign and become a housewife.

 

This division of labour suited Daphne just fine, she was very comfortable being just that. Certainly while the kids were at home.

 

She kept a fine house in the home that Bob built.

 

Later, after childrearing,  she took up tutoring sewing and embroidery, and was working in the State College until Bob retired when she did as well.

 

After he died in 1995, she moved into Robert and Sheryl’s.

 

It doesn’t matter how much you love your parents, it still must have been hard at times, to have your mother and mother-in-law come and live with you.

 

I would like to publicly thank Robert and Sheryl for opening your home to Daphne for so many years, thank you.

 

She loved her kids and grand-kids, great grand-kids and extended family, and worried about all of their futures.

 

She loved you all.

 

In conclusion, like I said earlier, Daphne and Bob were a powerful role model to me.

 

They were a real unit in the fullest sense.

 

You always felt secure, happy and safe there.

 

I spent a lot of time at the Crumpen household and I’m sure that that special brand of Crumpen sense of humour has rubbed off on me, something that I really cherish.

 

The last time that I visited Daphne this year, she was 94, bedridden and her quality of life was not good. However, as we spoke and she remembered and reflected on her earlier life, I watched as, out of a 94 year old, broken-bodied woman emerged a teenage girl with wonder and joy and humour and a spirit which soared as she spoke.

 

I’ll never forget this as long as I live.

 

It was a long moment of real and rare beauty.

 

I’m sure that you all have different memories of Daphne; these are just a few of mine.

 

I feel very fortunate, no, exceptionally fortunate, to have known Daphne and Bob; it was, and remains, a real privilege.

 

Thank you.

 

 

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