Wedding of Lionel Tripp and Jean Heggie in 1924

I’m in love with this stunning wedding photo! And how lucky are we that it is identified! It shows the wedding day of Lionel and Jean Tripp with their flower girls, Sheila and Margot Wyckham (Wykeham had a spelling mistake).

Although I didn’t have an obvious location clue, with both the groom and the bride’s names I could find out that Lionel Tripp and Jean Heggie got married in the summer of 1924 in Prescot, Lancashire in England.

Our handsome groom was Lionel Harper Tripp, born on April 3, 1892 in Indianapolis in the United States. His father William Owen Harper Tripp from Somerset, England, was employed as an agent in the beer industry, his mother Mabel Winifred was Welsh. I don’t know why Lionel and his younger brother William Maurice were born in the United States, perhaps their father’s line of work brought the family to Indianapolis; by the time their youngest brother Glyn Owen was born, the family had moved back to the United Kingdom.

Lionel and his brother Maurice enlisted in September 1914, pretty much as soon as WWI broke out. They were still both Grammar School boys. Lionel served in the 20th Batt. of the Royal Fusiliers (City of London Regiment) which was a line infantry regiment of the British Army. According to wikipedia  the 18th–21st (Service) Battalions (1st–4th Public Schools) of the regiment were recruited from public schools; all four battalions saw action on the Western Front. He was wounded in February 1916, as was reported by Evening Chronicle of Manchester:

He was in hospital for a year as a consequence of his wounds. For his bravery, Lionel later received the British War Medal and Victory Medal for his military services as a private of the Royal Fusiliers between 1914-1920.

I’m sure as relieved as Lionel was to survive the war and the severe wounds he obtained in battle, he grieved his younger brother Maurice Tripp, of Royal Fusiliers, who was killed in July 1916 at just 21 years of age. Maurice was a member of the Manchester Society of Architects and twice obtained first-class distinction in design. He was a well-known tennis player and a clever amateur actor.

Now back to Lionel, I know from his obituary that Lionel was on the head office staff of Martins Bank, Liverpool as well as the honorary secretary of the Aughton Tennis Club for more than a decade. In 1924, he married Jean.

Jean Duncan Heggie was born on April 28, 1898, in Kildrummy, Aberdeenshire in Scotland. By 1911, the Heggies had moved from Scotland to West Lavington, Wiltshire in England. Jean was the only child of James Gorrie Heggie, an estate agent, and Janet Cochrane Heggie. 

In the 1934 Register of Electors as well as in the 1939 Census, no children were listed living with the Jean and Lionel. I assume there are no direct descendants for the couple.

In 1938, the abbreviation behind Lionel's name suggests he might have been Esquire (lawyer). Lionel passed away in 1950.

As the churchwarden of the Aughton Church Parish for the last four years of his life, his funeral was impressive with choral service and muffled chruch bells, as reported by The Ormskirk Advertiser. His obituary published in The Ormskirk Advertiser on Sept 7, 1950, reveals many details form Lionel's life:

I don’t know when it was Jean’s time to go.

Let’s now look at the sweet little flower girls, Sheila and Margot Wickham. The surname of the girls has been somewhat misspellt, it should read Wickham, instead of Wykeham.

I was able to find the sisters in the records.

Sheila Jessie Wickham was born on July 24, 1914, and Margot Kathleen Wickham was born in January 1916 in Ormskirk, Lancashire in England. As students, Margot and Sheila travelled frequently between England and Canada. I believe the girls were enrolled in some student exchange programme in Canada. Their father Gordon's obituary from 1964 reveals that the girls' father met his wife Nora in Canada, so perhaps that was their connection to Canada later in their adolescence. The sisters also had a baby brother George, born in about 1926. I find father Gordon Wyke Wickham, mother Nora and the 5-year-old George on a passenger list leaving from Liverpool to Boston and New York in November 1931. Were the girls perhaps studying abroad at the time?

I find father Gordon, and the girls Sheila Jessie Wyke and Margot Kathleen living together in Aughton in 1939:

I believe that Sheila married officer Wilfred Thomas Wilkinson in the same year. In 1946 Sheila and her two small children, Peter and Norah Ann Wilkinson, travelled  to Kenya. And in 1949, I find Wilfred, Sheila, son Peter and daughter Sheila (what happened to Norah Ann?) travelling to Durban in South Africa. Her father's obituary from 1964 mentions that Sheila was living in Hong Kong at the time. Sheila was widowed in August 1965.

Margot married John Raymond Stokke, an American WWII veteran with a military career in defense. In February 1945, John found himself in the Air Force station hospital with a concussion (non-battle injury), where he stayed until April 1945. I first wondered if John met Margot during the war in England. But then I found Margot, occupation home duties, travelling alone from Montreal to Knutsford in Cheshire, England, in 1952. So she wasn't married then. I don't know where the couple met, but it was only at the beginning of 1957, she married John R. Stokker (misspelled, should be Stokke) in Cheshire. Her father's obituary from 1964 mentions that Margot was living in Panama at the time. Margot, like her sister, seems to have travelled a lot and lived in many countries. In 1994, when Margot's husband John died, they were living in Vashon, King, Washington. I suppose the couple did not have any children.

I was wondering where the connection between our bride & groom and the girls was. Since the girls’ father Gordon Wyke Wickham was listed as a retired bank clerk in the 1939 Census, I thought perhaps Gordon and Lionel were colleagues in Ormskirk, Lancashire. And looks like my assumptions were correct. Gordon's obituary, published in The Ormskirk Advertiser on Oct 29, 1964, mentions that Gordon was on the staff of Martin’s Bank for many years, as was Lionel. And, among the mourners mentioned in the same article, was none other than Mrs. Jean Tripp. How wonderful that the family kept in touch for all those years, and even 14 years after Lionel had passed away, Jean paid his respects at the funeral service for the man whose daughters were eternalized as flower girls in her wedding photo taken 4 decades earlier.

I wish I knew who the other two flower girls were. Their story will remain a mystery.

But I am so pleased that we could piece together 4 life stories that intertwined in the summer of 1924 in Prescot.