More than three decades ago, twin sisters Pam and Wendy Valentine discovered a startling truth about their father.
While the sisters were looking through his World War I service records, they stumbled upon something that indicated that their father, Harry Valentine, had a previous family.
"I was showing them to my twin sister Wendy and my nephew John, and he said to me … 'What's this about a wife claiming gratuity?'," Pamela, now aged 84, tells ABC RN's The History Listen.
The dates didn't add up.
"He did not marry our mother until 1937. And we wondered who this wife was," her sister Wendy adds.
Along with Wendy's daughter Kate, the twins decided to do some research.
Little did they realise that they would spend decades following paper trails, trying to uncover their father's hidden past.
The mystery deepened
They discovered their father Harry Valentine had married his first wife Flora Cohen in 1913, when he was just 24 years old. Flora was 46.
The twins also discovered that Flora and Harry had a child, a half-brother that they had not been told about. Born in Sydney in 1910, the boy shared the same name as their father.
"My first reaction was surprise, and then shock, and then you start asking all the questions. Why didn't we know?" Pamela says.
The sisters were determined to find their brother. They referred to him as 'Harry Frank'.
"We realised of course that he was 27 years older than us. [At that time] he would have been about 79, but still, possibly alive," Wendy says.
The separation
World War I broke out four years after Harry Frank was born. A year later, in 1915, their then 26-year-old father enlisted and left Australia.
When Harry senior returned in 1919, it seems that he had little to do with Flora or his then nine-year-old son.
Then in 1925, Flora died from pneumonia. Harry Frank was 15 years old.
According to public documents, when Flora's estate was finalised in the Public Trustee office, the two Harrys were in attendance on the day. At the time, their father said he would look after his son.
But it was seemingly not a happy reunion.
"To my grandfather, it seems that looking after the boy meant giving him his mother's 322 pound inheritance," Kate says.
"[And] an upsetting paragraph was also found."
Harry senior refused to legitimise young Harry's birth.
After they discovered this, the sisters were even more determined to find out what happened to their brother.
Pamela put a call-out in a newspaper in 1989. Eventually she was contacted by one of Flora Cohen's relatives.
The man told her that Harry came to live with their family in Bondi when he was about 15. The dates matched.
The Cohen relative described Harry as "effeminate" and "somewhat overdressed".
"He was convinced that Harry was a homosexual," Pamela says.
Harry didn't stay with these relatives for more than a few months.
He went to jackaroo in Narrabri for a year but, after growing tired of it, he left.
He seemed to find it hard to pick up more work after that. At the time, Australia was in the throes of the Great Depression.
Things were tough and Harry, who had clearly spent his inheritance, was charged with petty stealing offences.
He went on to serve more than three months in prison.
Cruel punishment
Harry's next misstep feels particularly unjust, Kate says.
In 1932, the then 21-year-old was arrested in Sydney and charged with indecent assault on a male person. The police made him write an account of the incident.
"I met a boy at age 17. And we had supper at the railway station. I paid for our meals. And then we went back to my rooms at the Albion Street Salvation Army home. We sat talking for a while. And then the boy became fresh and started to handle my privates," Harry wrote.
"I didn't object. I started to undress and get into the bed. When the night porter came in, [he] took us both down to the office and called the police. I was arrested. The boy was sent for 12 months to Gosford Farm Home. I'm a single man, and I'm not in the habit of doing this kind of thing."
According to the police officer's statement, it was a consensual event, but Harry was still considered a criminal and sent to Maitland jail for two years.
The family found the original written account of the incident.
"He's only 21. He's not very old. And he's just been struck with this being called a criminal and I think you can see it in his face, in his eyes," Pamela says.
"His illegitimacy, his homosexuality, his loneliness and loss of family. He's really in a very terrible situation."
Homosexuality was illegal in Australia until 1975, when South Australia was the first Australian state to decriminalise it.
A new job opens doors
After many more years of searching, it was only in the early 1990s that Wendy and Pamela finally got closer to finding their brother.
They discovered that, after his time in prison, he worked as a nursing orderly on the Queen Elizabeth troop ship until 1946. He'd gained his nursing skills while incarcerated at Maitland jail.
The twins also found out that Harry had disembarked from the ship in London and set up a new life for himself in the UK.
Now in his 40s, he worked as a waiter at an upmarket hotel.
Finally the twins had some concrete information about their brother.
"It actually took us 21 years [to find this out]. So all that time, we are hoping that perhaps we might find him alive and get to know him and reassure him that he's OK," Pamela says.
However, when the sisters eventually located a new archive, the English Death Entries, they found the news they dreaded.
Their brother Harry Valentine had died in 1958 at the age of 47.
They were heartbroken. They were 50 years too late.
The next piece of information saddened them even more.
"When we finally got his death certificate, to find that his death was by suicide, that was horrifying," Pam says.
They found out that, because he had no known relatives, Harry Frank was buried in a communal grave in Hanwell cemetery in Westminster.
They've since visited the London cemetery and left flowers in his memory.
And, as the years have passed, they've learnt to let go of the resentment they had for their father for keeping their brother a secret.
But there are still so many unanswered questions that Pamela and Wendy think about.
"Why did he leave his own son? I found my father was a kind gentleman. He formed an RSL, he was a scout leader, helping other people in their community. So I can't understand this attitude that he seems to have neglected his own son," she says.
"But one has to accept this in your life. You can't stay angry and resentful for a long time."
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