The D'Arcy Family

A Family History by Turtle Bunbury.

• Introduction
• The Origins of the D’Arcy Family
• The Newton Abbot Solicitor
• The Voyage to Australia
• The Story of the Goldsmiths
• Knox D’Arcy
• The Benson Connection
• Bibliography and links
• Acknowledgments

THE BENSON CONNECTION

Knox D'Arcy's elder sister Bertha was married on Christmas Eve 1866 to Dr. John Robinson Benson, a 35-year-old Canadian émigré with English and Irish ancestry. For more on his roots, see Bensons of The Fould. The marriage took place at St Paul's Church of England, Rockhampton, Queensland. Dr. Benson had arrived in Australia the previous year. His reasons for coming to Australia are at present unknown; his twin brother Thomas Benson died in 1867, possibly in Jersey City. Shortly after the marriage, Dr. Benson set up a medical practice in Rockhampton. By 1870 he had moved into politics as the elected representative of the small gold-mining town of Clermont. During his time in Canada, Dr. Benson had worked with his uncle, Thomas Benson, on the development of the railways. He advocated that railways, built cheaply, could open vast tracts of land for small settlers in Queensland and thus attract both immigrants and investment. He continued to practice as a doctor and was appointed government medical officer at Gympie. He was appointed to the Commission of the Peace in 1876 and elected President of the Gympie Agricultural Society in 1877. He resigned from government service in 1884 and left for Melbourne. He died at St Kilda on 25 July 1885, apparently as a result of a riding accident. He was 51 years old. His probate was sworn at £6800. He left a widow, Bertha, seven sons and two daughters.

 

BERTHA'S RETURN

In 1886, financially buoyed by the flotation of her brother Knox D'Arcy's Mount Morgan Gold Mining Company, Bertha returned to England with several of her daughters and settled at Beer in South Devon.* They settled at Primley Park at Torquy in South Devon. (6) The house burned down during this time - 'must have been a good party', suggests her grandson, Captain Ian Benson - and Bertha later went to live in Bath. Bertha was a small woman but, according to her grandson, she was more than able to handle her seven sons. 'She would belt them with whatever she had', says Ian. 'When she got really mad, one of them would pick her up and not put her down again until she quietened. Then the others would run off and he would drop her and then he would run off too'. At any rate, the seven brothers secured seven brides - in fact, two had two wives. 'It all seems a long time ago now', recalled her great-granddaughter Wendy in 2006 who has miniatures of many of them. 'They were all very familiar to us once. We knew all these people but they become history when you get to the generation after". Bertha Benson died in 1921.

* The farm where they initially lived was later home to the Whitley family. Herbert Whitley effectively converted the demesne into the Paignton Zoo Environmental Park. (www.paigntonzoo.org.uk)

DR. D'ARCY BENSON (1867 - 1926)

Dr. John and Bertha Benson's eldest son was Dr. Henry Porter D'Arcy Benson, MD, Ch.M, FRCS, FRCP Edin. He had "a lot of rather imposing letters after his name', observes his granddaughter Wendy Benson. He was born in Australia on 19th November 1867. His father died when he was 18 years old, after which he returned to Great Britain with his mother and brothers and enrolled at Edinburgh University. On 5th October 1892, he married Mary ('May') Louisa Hawkes, only daughter of Samuel Hawkes Gabriel, of Carne in Wiltshire (and Melbourne, Australia). He practiced first at Grosmont, Hereford. On Saturday, Oct 20, 1894, The Times listed a number of partnerships dissolved that year. Amongst these was Benson & Head, described as a partnership between "H.P. D'Arcy Benson and J.H. Head, medical practitioners, Grosmont, Monmoutshire, and Ewyes Harold, Herefordshire". Dr. D'Arcy Benson subsequently had a large practice at St. Peter's Port in Guernsey. He was a keen yachtsman and, as owner of the 20-ton cutter, May, he made many cruises along the French and English coasts.

In 1911 he was obliged to retire from active medical practice when seriously infected by a patient whom he was operating on. For a time he was physician to the Farnham House Mental Home in Finglas, Co. Dublin, but the state of his health made it necessary for him to move on. During World War One he served with the rank of temporary Captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps. Dr. Benson appears to have separated from his wife during this time, an unhappy break up that led to the loss of many family heirlooms. There were suggestions that they had divorced but an item in 'Personals' page of The Times on May 07, 1936 refers to his widow and indicates that she was still based at Farnham House. Dr. Benson is said to have returned to Australia after the separation although Burke's maintains that it was South Africa. He died aged 59 in Kimberley, South Africa, on 6th October 1926. The cause of his death was "broncho-pneumonia". His widow survived him until 5th December 1940.

At the time of his death in 1926, Dr. H.P. D'Arcy Benson left four sons - (Patrick) D'Arcy, John, Wilfrid and Geoffrey. D'Arcy was born in 1894, became a naval officer and to him we will return. The second brother (Eric) John Benson was born in the summer of 1895 and served as a lieutenant with the Royal Army Service Corps during the First World War. He obtained a licence from both the Royal College of Surgeons and Physicians and, like his father and grandfather, ran a medical practice. On 5th November 1925 he married Beryl Helen, youngest daughter of Col R. Fulton of the Durham Light Infantry. They have descendents living today.

UNCLE BILL

Dr D'Arcy Benson's third son, Wilfrid Benson, was apparently a doctor but seems to have been written out of the family records, possibly owing to 'Uncle Bill's" alcoholic dependency. He should not be confused with Wilfrid Benson, the international diplomat from Essex who was operating at this time also.

 

LIEUTENANT COLONEL GEOFFREY BENSON (1897 - 1970)

The youngest son, Geoffrey Benson, DSO, OBE, was born ten days before Christmas 1897. He joined the army on his 18th birthday and served in France and Belgium. After the war, he was educated at Elizabeth College in Guernsey where his father lived. He went on to Trinity College Dublin and then to the Royal Military College of Sandhurst. On 17th August 1929 he married Dorothy Herbert Douglas. She was the sister of his elder brother's wife, Margerie, and the youngest daughter of an Australian surgeon, Dr. Alfred W Douglas, MD, of Cootamundra, and his Dublin-born wife. Geoffrey duly joined the Royal Ulster Rifles, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. He was awarded the OBE in 1939. During the Second World War, he again saw action in France and Belgium, commanding the 2nd Ethiopian Battalion. He was present at Dunkirk, where he was badly shot up, and was later mentioned in despatches. He subsequently served in Sudan and Eritrea with the Sudan Defence Force. He and his wife lived near the small village of Pembridge in Herefordshire. He died on July 14th 1970 at Kington in Herefordshire.

CAPTAIN D'ARCY BENSON (1894 - 1963)

Wendy Benson's father, (Henry Percy) D'Arcy Benson, was the oldest son of Dr. Henry Porter D'Arcy Benson and his wife, Mary Louisa Hawkes. Born on 18th March 1894, he grew up in Guernsey. When it came to being schooled back in England, he enjoyed the fact he could simply sail home from Dartmouth rather than take the bus and train like the other pupils. "He was always rather pleased with that!", chuckles his daughter. She says he was possessed of a brilliant brain and, while he employed a mariner to sail his boat, he managed to get a Master's Deep Sea ticket of his own accord. The sea-faring life evidently appealed to him and he joined the Royal Navy sometime before the Great War. He is known to have occasionally lunched at Devonport with his cousin, Philip Goldsmith. One of his friends ran the nursing home in London where Horace de Vere Cole lay low for some months after the Dreadnought Hoax in which he'd dressed as the Sultan of Zanzibar and deluded the entire Royal Navy. Ian reckoned they'd have thought it extremely funny at the time, particularly if one of your siblings was in the Navy.

 

THE BATTLE OF JUTLAND

During the battle of Jutland in May 1916, D'Arcy Benson and an engineer pal navigated a 'terribly fast' motor torpedo boat deep into the heart of the German fleet. The idea, explains Ian, was that one 'rushed up to a German boat with a bomb in one hand, steering wheel in the other, sank it and dashed off again'. But they sank a few and managed to live to fight another day. D'Arcy later confessed to a delighted Wendy that, in spite of all the naval discipline and his stern upbringing, the horror of this 'terrible little boat, whizzing along' had been the most terrifying event of his life and that 'he thought of jumping overboard'. In the controversial aftermath of the battle, D'Arcy took the side of salty old Admiral Jellicoe rather than the cocksure Admiral Beatty. 'My father thought Jellicoe was the cat's whiskers. A lot of people didn't but he did. I grew up with photographs and chat about him and everything'. Indeed, D'Arcy went around the world twice on board the Hood with Jellicoe, describing the ship as 'the most beautiful, absolute perfection of a ship'. The loyalty to Jellicoe came good again over forty years after Jutland when Wendy and Ian moved to the Blackwater only to discover that the Admiral's daughter Norah Wingfield was living just down the road in Cappoquin.

Above: A rare photograph of the battle which waged between the British and German Navys at Jutland, in which D'Arcy Benson served. Although Britian suffered more casualties, the battle crippled the German Navy so much that Britain retained its command of the seas for the remainder of the First World War.

MRS. D'ARCY BENSON - THE SURGEON'S DAUGHTER

 

On 24th December 1917, D'Arcy Benson married Margerie Douglas, twin daughter of the Australian surgeon, Dr. Alfred Douglas, MD (Edinburgh), of Cootamundra in New South Wales. Her sister Dorothy would go on to marry D'Arcy's brother Geoffrey. Apparently, Dr. Douglas died in a horse-riding accident which is something of a coincidence as the same fate had befallen D'Arcy's grandfather, Dr. John Robinson Benson. Margerie was an enthusiastic tennis player and once played for Ireland, qualifying for Wimbledon while D'Arcy still in the navy. Their only child, Joan ('Wendy') Benson was born on 11th April 1919.

As the daughter of a naval officer, Wendy inevitably grew up following her father around the world, although they always maintained a residence in England, such as near the Royal Hospital School at Holbrook in Suffolk. In 1926, for instance, Captain Benson took his family to Simonstown, a coastal port in South Africa where the waters of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans meet. They stayed there for nearly three years, during which time Wendy recalls an encounter with her 'sweet pudding aunt Alice', a nun. 'We actually didn't know where she was so it was a bit strange to find her there'. They lived in a house set upon pillars and surrounded by a verandah, the tidal waters rising and falling directly beneath them. These were happy days. The Earl of Athlone was Governor and Wendy learned to swim. Shortly before the Wall Street crash of 1929, they returned to England.

The next major event in their lives occurred in 1932 when Greenwich Hospital was left a considerable estate in Suffolk. The board decided it would be a good thing to build an exact replica of the hospital in Greenwich and open it as a school for the sons of deserving sailors - some 800 boys whose fathers had perished or been disabled in the wars. They felt the school would be much more healthy in the country air and such like. After he retired, Lieutenant-Commander D'Arcy Benson took charge of this, the Royal Hospital School. He particularly wanted the post and "waggled his retirement earlier than he might have done" in order to get it. Ian says it was "an unbelievably wonderful set up", one of the most positive steps taken in Britain during a time when such steps were sorely needed. The school boasted "a fearfully elaborate grand chapel" on account of a great friend of D'Arcy's called Gilbertson, who was 'very High Church'. 'Every Sunday there was a parade with a Boy's Band and 800 boys in uniform with my father in a cocked hat and sword presiding', recalls Wendy. 'This is why I find church rather dull these days'. Almost all of D'Arcy Benson's pupils joined the Navy afterwards. The war inevitably brought much sadness to the Benson household. Many of D'Arcy's former pupils died in the conflict.

HOOD SUNK!

A particularly black day came in 1942 with the sinking of D'Arcy's old ship, the Hood, the pride of the Royal Navy. The ship sank without trace just minutes after the Bismarck fluked a bomb down its magazine. One of the three survivors was an ex-schoolboy of D'Arcys who had been on deck just before the bomb struck but ran back below deck to collect a postal order for 5-bob he'd forgotten and was saved. Pat Stewart, a great friend of Wendy, was Chaplain on board the Hood. For years, he had famously preached sermons with rugger shorts and riding britches under his cassock. The 31 year old was apparently taking a service on the quarter-deck during its final minutes. He was the son of Surgeon Rear-Admiral Robert Stewart, O.B.E., and of Mabel Stewart, of Bayswater, London. When the news came through at 9 o'clock that evening, Pat Stewart's mother Mabel was actually staying with the Bensons. The reaction to the Hood was widespread horror in Britain. In a POW camp in Germany, Jack Leslie told me the news brought morale lower than at any other point during the war.

DEATH OF D'ARCY BENSON

D'Arcy Benson died in 1966. His cousin Ian described him as "an extraordinary guy" very like his own father, "a big part academician" and a keen tennis player. His wife played tennis for Ireland and qualified for Wimbledon when D'Arcy was still in the navy. As for the Royal Hospital School, the post-war Labour government put paid to that. 'Money had been bequeathed specifically to keep it as a school for naval sons', explains Ian. 'But when Labour came into power after the war, they ignored the whole point and all the thought that had gone into the building of the place. All the best efforts of the Royal Navy had been focused on it. And they turned it into a normal school. It was the most heinous crime'.

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