William Edgar Farthing and Ivy May Hepworth and Lieutenant Commander Derrick William Graham RN OBE

Britannia Royal Naval College, Dartmouth
cc-by-sa/2.0 - © Derek Voller - geograph.org.uk/p/3699730

Ivy May Hepworth (b. 3 Nov 1892), daughter of Vincent Hepworth and Mary Ann (Annie) Rogers, married William Edgar Farthing (b. 23 Dec 1892), son of Frederick William Farthing and Emily Maud Gidley, on 10 Jan 1913, at the church of Saint James the Less, Plymouth. They had one son:

1. Edgar Grahame Farthing, b. 15 Nov 1913 (1913 D Qtr in PLYMPTON Vol 05B Page 333), bap. 16 Apr 1914 at St Mary's Church Plympton. 

William Edgar Farthing, formerly a clerk at the Great Western Railway, who enlisted in July 1914 in the Royal Garrison Artillery, husband of Ivy May Farthing of 22 Atheneaum St, The Hoe, Plymouth, Devon was invalided home and died at the London Hospital, Whitechapel on 8 Feb 1917, aged 24, of a disease contracted while on active service. Second Lieutenant William Edgar Farthing is buried at Ford Park Cemetery (Plymouth Old Cemetery). 

Ivy May Farthing remarried, on 29 May 1925, to Derrick William Graham. 

Derrick William Graham, b. 8 Aug 1900, was the elder son of Charles William Graham a Silk Merchant born in Melbourne, Australia and his wife Edith Eleanor Clodd (m. 1899 in the City of London). In 1911, Derrick (10) and his younger brother, Geoffrey Edward (9) were boarders at Doon House Preparatory School for Boys, Canterbury Road, Westgate-on-Sea. He entered service with the Royal Navy in May 1913, as an officer cadet, at Britannia Royal Naval College, at Dartmouth, Devon. 

Derrick and Ivy had two sons:

1. David William Graham b. 1926 D Quarter in DEVONPORT Vol 05B Page 423. Died 1926 D Quarter in DEVONPORT Vol 05B Page 395
2. Michael William Graham b. 5 Jan 1929 in MEDWAY Vol 02A Page 1189

Derrick William Graham made Sub-Lieutenant in 1919; Lieutenant in 1921 and Lieutenant-Commander in 1929. His service record places him in Malta in 1928 and Ivy May Graham and son Michael, of 109 Broadfield Road, Catford, SE6, sailed to Malta with RMS Viceroy of India, in 1931.

In 1939, at West Lodge, Villiers Road, Portsmouth, were Ivy M Graham, listed with a birth year of 1896 - it was 1892 - admitting to be four years older than her husband, but not all eight, while Derrick W Graham RN, at that time, was attached to HMS Dolphin (shore establishment), home of the Royal Navy Submarine Service from 1904 to 1999, at Fort Blockhouse, Gosport.

On 1 Jan 1944 Acting Commander Derrick William Graham, Royal Navy (Portsmouth) was listed in The London Gazette, having been mentioned in despaches. His record states "Mentioned in Despaches for zeal, patience and cheerfulness in dangerous waters, and for setting an example of wholehearted devotion to duty, upholding the high traditions of the Royal Navy."

Graham got his OBE (which him indoors tells me stands for "Other Buggers' Efforts") in 1946 for distinguished services during the war in the Far East.

Acting Commander Derrick William Graham reverted to the retired list on 30 Jul 1948. The marriage between Derrick and Ivy was disolved on 23 Feb 1951 and Derrick William Graham immediately remarried, on 17 Mar 1951, to Margaret Hamilton Sterling in Natal, South Africa. Derrick William Graham of St. Paul Road, Vacoas, Mauritius died on 28 Apr 1960.

Ivy May Graham died on 20 Oct 1978 in Portsmouth, just days short of turning 86. She is buried in the churchyard at St Nicholas Church, Durweston, Dorset, where her sister, Ida Lily Soppit, is also buried. Dorset Monumental Inscriptions lists her as "Mother of Grahame & Michael GRAHAM".

• Having joined The Royal Regiment Of Artillery in 1933, Edgar Grahame Farthing married Kathleen Lucy Downs (b. 29 May 1914), in Windsor, Berkshire, in 1949 and on 17 May 1957, they and their two children, of Officers Married Quarters, Andover, sailed to Canada on the RMS Empress of Britain. Edgar Farthing died on 3 Jan 2000 (aged 86) and is buried at the Holy Trinity Anglican Cemetery, North Saanich, British Columbia, Canada. Kathleen Farthing died on 17 Nov 2004 and is buried with her husband.
• Michael William Graham, formerly a Director of Rookery Estates Co, property management company, in Maidstone, Kent, married Rachel M Norman in 1952. He died at 69, in 1998.

Derrick William Graham's father, Charles William Graham, had also died at a relatively early age, 52, in London on 14 Jan 1924. The Probate record quotes him as being of 42 Gutter Lane, London and Mirabelle, Carshalton, Surrey. 42 Gutter Lane was the address of Messrs Courtauld and Co.

William Edgar Farthing's father, Frederick William Farthing, died in 1936 and his obituary in the Western Morning News was interesting: Former G.W.R. Inspector Dies at Plymouth. As well as detailing his 49 year career with the railway, it mentioned a son (Frederick Arthur) who was in the Customs at Southampton and that his wife's sisters, Alice and Lilian Gidley, were formerly headmistresses at Stonehouse. As my father, who had left Plymouth in 1936, had been to school in Stonehouse, means there's a possibility my father's headmistress had been a very distant relative by marriage to my mother.