In 1927 Gladys Hinton, a woman totally and utterly devoted to the man she loves, is called to his bedside as he lay dying. Tom Clayton was the love of her life, she was the love of his. But before he would go on to meet his maker he had to make one final confession – one that would rip their family apart and leave Gladys devasted. Her extraodinary story was told in The People on Sunday 26th January 1930 by their special investigator – and here is the full story.
“Till Death Do Us Part”
I have listened this week to what I think is the most poignant story it has ever been my lot to hear.
It is the story of a woman’s cruel disillusionment. The deathbed confession of a mock wedding, a story rivalling in dramatic intensity, anything that could possibly be imagined. Picture a woman nine years happily married the mother of two children fighting night and day for weeks to save the life of a man, she thought to be her husband.
Picture her anguish as she saw him in spite of all her efforts, rapidly sinking and slipping away from her, and picture the shock of his last words to her.
“I have done you a great wrong.” The dying man whispered in a weak, wavering voice. “When we were married I paid a friend to read the marriage service. So we are not really man and wife.”
He died less than two hours afterwards. If that were all, this story would still be one of the most remarkable real life dramas staged in any town in England. But since the night of that terrible disclosure, the man’s real wife has appeared to make her claims as the widow of the man from whom she became separated in 1916.
The full details of this amazing domestic tangle were related to me this week by the central figure, the mother who was no wife, the woman who was so cruelly duped.
She is Mrs. Gladys Eva Rosetta Hinton of 20 Limes Road, Tettenhall, Wolverhampton. I found her at the wash tub.
Already, she has done a week’s washing for two families, and she was busy on a third and the droop of her shoulders, and the tired lines of her face told their own tale, but seldom have I met anyone so patiently baring a Cross and so pluckily striving to make the best of things.
In all she told me there was not one word of complaint at her lot, and not a single reproach against the man who deceived her. Rather she did all she could to defend him and make excuses for him. And every word showed that she cherishes the memory of the man who was the best husband any woman ever had.
Born at Whitchurch, Shropshire, Mrs. Hinton was brought up by strangers and never saw her father.
At the age of 13 she had to go out to work, and for 13 years, she kept herself and contributed something to the support of the people who had reared her.
“I was twenty-six before I knew any real happiness.” Mrs. Hinton told me in the neat little kitchen of her home at Tettenhall. “That was when the first man came into my life.”
“He was all that I had imagined I would like my husband to be – tall, handsome, and as it seemed, as passionately in love with me, as I was with him.
“Frederick Hinton was his name. He was a Burnley man, and when I met him, he was visiting at the house, where I was working as a housekeeper at Whitchurch. He was a year older than I was. And apparently, he had plenty of money, left him by his parents who had just died.
“I fell in love with him almost as soon as I met him, and within six months we were married at Whitchurch. That was in 1909 and no woman was as happy as I.
“He had prepared a nice home for me at Melverley, and for about a year, we were ideally happy.
“But my happiness was short lived. Within a year, he had changed. He stopped giving me money for housekeeping, and I had to dip into my own little savings. Then he began to stay away from home, and ugly rumours reached me. But I still kept my faith in him. I didn’t want to believe that there was anyone else.
“However, things grew from bad to worse. And from being the happiest woman in all Shropshire. I became one of them. was miserable.
“In 1914, my husband joined the army. Even then he allowed me no money. And when I got definite proof that there were other women, I decided to apply for divorce. I instituted proceedings in 1915, and in 1918, the decree was made absolute.
“The home had to go, and I had to go back to work in order to meet the expenses. But I didn’t mind, for it was a relief to be free after what I had gone through. I never again saw or heard of Frederick Hinton, and to this day, I do not know whether he came back from the war.
“It seemed to me, then, that I would never marry again. I had suffered enough, and I was fully determined that I would never again put it in the power of a man to make me unhappy. But somehow you can’t control these things.
“Shortly after I got my divorce. I was working at the New Ship Inn at Shrewsbury, when a woman, my chum, introduced me to her brother, Thomas Henry Clayton – home on leave from France.
“I don’t know what it was that drew us together, but somehow within a few days, we were telling each other all about ourselves. I told him of my marriage and divorce, and he told me of his own domestic troubles. He and his wife, he said, had become separated in 1916. He was left with four children, the youngest of whom was not three months old. They were being cared for by his mother.
“Tom Clayton had had a hard time of it too. He had had to go to work at an early age. And while he was serving his apprenticeship, as a stonemason, his father died. His mother married again.
“Somehow our troubles drew Tom Clayton and I even closer. And when he went back to France, we wrote constantly to each other.
“He came back in the following year, 1909, and he then told me that he had learned that his wife had been killed in a street accident. He asked me to marry him, and I consented. And a few months later, we were married at Shrewsbury, I swear that to the time of his death, I had no suspicion that we were not legally married.
“At that time, I had never been in a register office, so that when we went to an office in Shrewsbury with noticeboards hanging at the door I naturally thought it was the register office where we were to be married. In the office, there was a man sitting at a desk with some papers and a large book in front of him. And there were two witnesses, neither of neither of whom I knew.
“The name of one of them, I remember was Lilly Fisher, the other was a man. That was in December 1919. My husband kept possession of a paper. The registrar had given him a paper which I naturally took to be our marriage lines, but which I have never seen since. We went to live at Castlefields, Shrewsbury, and I can truthfully say that no woman ever had a better or more considerate husband than Tom Clayton.
“In May 1920, Clayton got a job as an under gardener at Chillington Hall near Wolverhampton and we went there to live in the lodge. Three of his children came to live with us, the fourth Billie being adopted by Tom’s mother.
“There was Thomas Henry, the eldest boy of 14 now married and loving at Oken. Monica, the next, was 12. She also is married and lives at Codsall. Then there was Florence May aged 10, who is now working at the Royal Hospital. From the first they seemed to take to me and I have always been ‘mum’ to them ever since.
“For six years, we were a very happy little family at Chillington, and during the six years I had children of my own. There were three. Two of them were twins but one died. George Edward, the twin is six now and Henry is four.
“In 1926. Tom, my husband went to Wergs Hall work, the residence of General Hickman, to be head gardener, and we all moved there. Within six months he was stricken down with an incurable disease.
“It was a losing battle. And the time came when I knew he had to go. I hadn’t had my clothes off for more than three weeks when at last, the end came… He had been delirious, but at 12 o’clock on the night of July 19th, 1927, his mind seemed to clear and he called me to his bedside.
“ ‘Glad,’ he whispered to me, he always called me Glad, ‘I’ve something to tell you.”
I tried to soothe him telling him that the morning would do, and that he should try and get a little sleep.
“Yes, Glad,’ he said, ‘I shall soon be asleep. But I must tell you. Glad, I’ve done you a great wrong.’
“His voice was very low and quavering, and I had to strain to catch the words. And what I heard nearly made my heart stop still.
“ ’We aren’t really man and wife,’ he said.
“ ‘When we were married, I paid a friend to read the marriage service. And it was illegal.’
“I thought I was going to collapse. There was a terrible silence in the room. I tried to realize what his words meant. Not his wife! I couldn’t believe it!
“At last I managed to speak, with my throat all dry and aching.
“ ’Tom,’ I said, ‘is this true?’
“He whispered, ‘Yes.’ Then, ‘Can you forgive me Glad?’.
“And though my heart was breaking, I forgave him – forgave him with all my heart and mind. I could have forgiven Tom anything. I loved him so much.
“About two hours afterwards, as I sat trying to think about what it all meant, there came a sigh from the bed – and I was alone in the world with my two children.
“I don’t think I knew what was happening in the next few weeks. Tom’s relatives were there. There was talk about getting a pension for me, and someone wrote for Toms marriage lines. Then I broke down.
“When I recovered, I was told that I was entitled to a pension of 18 shillings a week, and every Tuesday, the postmistress paid me the money.
“The children and I moved from Wergs Hall to Limes Road, and here, we have been ever since.
“It was not until June last that I learned I was not really entitled to the pension. And the truth came out in a terrible way.
“A knock came to the door one day, and when I answered it, Tom’s mother stood there with a strange woman. She said, ‘Gladys’, I’ve brought Tom’s wife to see you.
“I nearly dropped. ‘Tom’s wife,’ I gasped. She’s dead. She was killed.
“Then the strange woman spoke. ‘Oh no, I’m not dead,’ She said. ‘I’m Tom’s wife all right. Where are my children?’
“I don’t think I need to tell you the rest. She claimed her children, all set up in the world. And she took the pension to which she was legally entitled as his widow.
“And I- well, they took me to court on a charge of fraudulently obtaining the pension. The case was heard yesterday, and I was fined two pounds and ordered to pay £2, 12s. 6d. costs.
“Where the money is to come from. I don’t know. But I’ll get it- I’ll sweat for it. And my own two children shall be as well brought up as Mrs. Clayton’s were, if I have to work my fingers to the bone.
“Now, you’ll excuse me, won’t you? For I have three washings to finish and deliver?”
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