My father-in-law, Robert Tuckett, who has died aged 90, came to the UK as part of the Windrush generation in 1955, settling down to become an early expert in computer engineering.
In London in 1958 he joined the English Electric computer firm (later to become International Computers Limited, or ICL), working on installing and maintaining some of Britain’s first business computers, including for the Ministry of Defence in the days when the machinery would fill entire rooms in Whitehall.
He was also part of the team that installed the first mainframe computer for the Civil Aviation Authority – for air traffic control at West Drayton in Middlesex – and he worked for Marks & Spencer in the 1970s, putting in their first computerised tills in the West End of London.
Robert was born in Basseterre, the capital of St Kitts and Nevis, where his parents, Wilfred and Ida (nee Matthews), ran a rum shop. On his paternal side his grandmother was of Portuguese descent and his grandfather was from a line of Kittitian Tucketts with roots in West Africa.
As a child Robert would get up in the early hours to take the family goats out to pasture in the countryside, before going on to Basseterre boys’ school. It was not until returning to St Kitts in 2003 on a family visit that he was able to travel by car to other parts of the island, which, though small, had been much too big to cover on foot as a boy.
He emigrated to the UK on the Danish ship SS Meteskou, arriving in Hull at the age of 22 and initially embarking on an engineering career with the BSA motorcycle company in Birmingham, before moving to English Electric in London three years later.
Never happier than when fiddling with huge bushels of electrical wiring, in his favourite stories he often cast himself as the brave hero saving the day with a soldering iron in hand as the bosses sweated on the outcome of his emergency handiwork.
Always immaculately dressed in a Windsor knot tie and silk square handkerchief in his suit pocket, Robert celebrated all that London had to offer for his Caribbean generation – theatre, dance halls and Tamla Motown concerts.
He was also a keen amateur radio ham, joining the Radio Society of Great Britain in 1966 and remaining active with the group until his death. He had a fully operational radio shack in his spare room, jam-packed with kit playing morse-code at low volume, and an enormous, winched aerial strapped to the back of his house in south-west London, connecting the Caribbean diaspora to all parts of the world.
In 1959 Robert married Margaret (nee Gunn), a Brummie whom he had met through his work at BSA, where she was a clerk. She died last year. He is survived by their daughters, Sharon and Clare, and grandchildren Olivia, Niall, Jacob, and Ted.
