Dring Family Research

After her husband's death, my grandmother Anne Dring lived in reasonable comfort in a house on Miall Street, Radford with her only son Maurice. When he left school, Maurice joined the London, Midland & Scottish Railway Company hoping to become an engine driver one day. As was then usual, he started as an engine cleaner and had progressed to firemen by the start of the War.  He joined the Home Guard and started courting a local girl Barabara.  As the War progressed, he and his driver often had to stop their train and take shelter under it during air raids. It was following one such occasion that he caught pneumonia and had to go into hospital. All seemed to go well initially and he was moved to a sanatorium to recuperate and whilst there he took up leather working to help to pass the time. Fate, however, intervened. Maurice caught meningitis and died  at the age of in 1943. He was buried in his father's grave in the Carlton cemetery -his coffin carried to the grave by fellow members of the Home Guard.

His mother continued to live in Radford until her death in 1952.

By Alan Bednall