Charles and Elizabeth Hitchings and their famous granddaughter

Radnor Street Cemetery followers will surely recognize the name Cleo Laine. Jazz singer and actress, her long and illustrious 50+ year career took off when she joined the Johnny Dankworth Band in 1951. The couple later married and went on to co-found the charity The Wavendon Allmusic Plan and created the Stables theatre in the grounds of their home near Milton Keynes. Cleo Laine received an OBE in 1977 and was made a DBE in 1997.

But did you know that her grandparents, Charles and Elizabeth Hitchings, are buried in Radnor Street Cemetery?

Dame Cleo Laine

Clementine Dinah Hitchings was born in Southall on October 28, 1927, the daughter of a Jamaican father Alexander Sylvin Campbell and Minnie Blanche Hitchings who was born in Wiltshire. Alexander and Minnie were an unconventional couple. For a start they were unwed and it seems likely Minnie already had a husband when they first met.

Minnie Blanche Hitchings was born in 1889 in Cleverton,Wiltshire the daughter of Charles Hitchings and his wife Elizabeth. The 1891 census finds the family living at Cleverton where 27 year old Charles describes himself as a ‘farmer and dealer.’ The young couple have three children, Arthur 6, Ethel 4 and one year old Minnie.

By 1901 Charles had brought his family to Swindon where he ran a Grocer’s shop at 24 Little London. The 1901 census records him as Charles Hitchings 37, Grocer Shopkeeper born in Lea. His wife Elizabeth, also 37, was born in Fulham, London and they now had five children – Arthur 16, who worked as a clothier’s assistant, Ethel 14, Minnie 11, Emily 7 and four year old Frank.

Charles Hitchings

In 1903 the family lived at 38 Belle Vue Road where Charles died suddenly on Sunday July 5, 1903. Mr W.E. Nicolson Browne (county coroner) held an inquest where it was heard that the deceased complained of pains near his heart after which he shortly fell dead. A verdict of “Death from syncope” was recorded and on July 8, 1903 39-year-old Charles Hitchings was buried in Radnor Street Cemetery in plot A404.

Did Elizabeth move back to family in London? It was there just five years later that she died in the Metropolitan Hospital. Her body was returned to Swindon where she was buried in Radnor Street Cemetery in plot A784, a public grave, on December 4, 1908.

By 1911, then aged 22, Minnie was working as a waitress in an hotel at No. 1 Bridge Street run by Henry Moore. Perhaps this was where she met Frederick W.H. Bullock whom she married in 1913. The couple left Swindon and moved to Hounslow but the marriage soon ran into trouble and by 1921 Minnie had left Frederick. By 1925 Minnie had met Jamaican born Alexander and the couple had their first child.

Clementine Dinah (Cleo Laine) was born in 1927 before her parents married in 1933. Dame Cleo is recorded as saying it was only when she applied for a passport as an adult that she learned her parents were not married at the time of her birth.

Sir John Dankworth was created a knight in 2006. He died in 2010 aged 83. The couple have two children, their daughter Jacqui is a singer/actress and their son Alec is a bassist and composer. Their granddaughter Emily Dankworth is also a jazz singer/songwriter.