Tales From The Tree

Charley Ingold’s scandalous wife: Florence Caroline Newman Selby Linley Ingold Brown (yes, that’s her name).  

Part One:

In April of 1937, Florence Caroline Ingold sat in the witness box at the inquest into the death of her “border”, 39 year old Reginald William Frank Jauncey. On the evening of March 24, 1937, Mr. Jauncey went out drinking and never returned. Mrs. Ingold reported him missing 3 days later and he was found in her garage at the wheel of his car, dead of carbon-monoxide poisoning. 

From The Norwood News, April 2, 1937 – BritishNewspaperArchive.com

Accidental death was the verdict, but I wonder if the Court or the Police were aware that Mr. Jauncey was a former lover of Mrs. Ingold and who was 22 years his senior? Would the law have looked a little closer into Florence? I would not be surprised if she had something to do with Mr. Jauncey’s death.

She was the legal wife of my father’s uncle Charley Ingold (1890-1968) and the widow of “lyric-writer” and “comedian” Albert Linley, the father of her young daughter, Audrey. She fancied herself an “actress” and used the stage name “Florence Selby”.  I could find only 2 references to her in the theatre columns of the time, but I also believe she was living with a stage actor named Arthur Selby at one point.

I like to believe Charley was a “Stage Door Johnny”:  on leave from Flanders in 1918, he takes in a few London theatricals and meets “actress” Florence Selby. The oddest thing about these two is that they married twice – once in 1918 and once in 1920.

Photo: Charley and Florence on the “Victorian”, headed for Canada in June of 1920..

After the second marriage to Charley in 1920, they emigrated to Winnipeg. Charley worked as a confectioner and she at a grocery shop. I’m guessing she didn’t like working, so she left Charlie after a year and ran off to Australia with a man named Leslie Townsend. She also had an affair with Joe Higgins, who was on the same ship to Australia. After returning to England she took up with Reginald Jauncey, 22 years her junior, the same Reginald who would later die in her garage.

In 1927 Florence sued Charley for divorce on the grounds of adultery. Charley contested the divorce, producing convincing evidence of her above-mentioned lovers. The King’s Proctor refused to grant her a divorce. 

In the meantime, she opened up a night club in Streatham with a much younger man, Ernest Brown. Predictably, she named it “The Florence Club”…

Florence had a knack for getting her name in the newspapers. Previous to her appearance at the inquest to Mr. Jauncey’s death, she reported the disappearance of her daughter in 1926. 

…and in June 1939, a Mr. Moore was charged with passing bad cheques to Florence and her “club”…

She was enumerated as living with Ernest Brown in the 1939 War Register.

In 1945, obviously giving up on ever divorcing,  she put an ad in the London papers announcing she would be foregoing the surname “Ingold” and henceforth be known as “Florence Brown”.

To Be Continued…

I will be writing a 2nd post on Florence delving into her years in Australia, where she got her money, her “club” and whatever happened to her daughter Audrey…

 

Florence Caroline Newman Selby Linley Ingold Brown 1888-1968