DEARMAN & MOLLETT

​I know it’s a terrible photo but it’s one of just two we have (both are awful), and at least it gives an impression - the dapper moustache, the jaunty hat...  It’s actually taken from a family portrait.  The photograph  was not great quality in the first place, and blowing it up has made it even worse - so apologies - but you have to use what you’ve got!

This other ‘Dearman’ grandfather was a doctor - a doctor who specialised in mental cases, at that - a career that has so far not appeared to be attractive to his grandchildren and their descendants - at least in this particular branch.

Ferdinand is rather a work in progress.  I have yet to obtain some vital bits of documentation - birth and death, and since nobody now living ever knew him and nobody ever spoke of him voluntarily I am relying on a few oblique comments by his wife in her autobiography, medical directory entries and the odd newspaper article.

Ferdinand (or was it Kate?) seems to have been responsible for changing the spelling of the family name from Merrick to Meyrick.  An anglicism perhaps, though ironically Meyrick seems to be a Welsh name?  A desire to drop the Irish connection?  I now know that it was something to do with a partnership with one of his brothers and a desire to differentiate  the two but I am not clear on the details as yet.

So an adventurous life of a hard ruler, if you take the meanings of his names to be apt.  And they possibly could be, though I suspect that both meanings rather lost their power as his life unfolded.