Feud that broke the heart of the world's oldest man, Henry Allingham

By Barbara Davies for the Daily Mail and Jenny Stocks for MailOnline
Created: 13:53 EDT, 24 July 2009

Before he died last week at 113, Britain's Henry Allingham said his only regret was outliving his two daughters. In fact, the Mail can reveal, one is still alive and well. So why did she disown him for 40 years?

Of all the things that being the World's Oldest Man entailed, Henry Allingham often said the hardest was outliving his beloved wife and two daughters.

Despite that grievous loss, the 113-year-old veteran of World War I trenches and the last surviving founder member of the RAF remained close to the American-born children and grandchildren of his younger daughter Jean right up until his death last Saturday.

Many of them are flying over from the States this weekend to see Henry finally laid to rest with full military honours at the 14th-century St Nicholas Parish Church in Brighton this coming Thursday.

Separate ways: Henry Allingham with daughters Betty (circled) and Jean

But what of his elder daughter Betty? Whether or not her son and four adult grandchildren turn up to pay their respects at the funeral in Sussex is rather less certain - despite the fact that most of them are rather closer to home in England.

Right up until his death, Henry believed that Betty had passed away, having lost touch with her 40 years ago after a bitter family rift led to all contact being cut off.

He used to say to close friends: 'If Betty was alive, she would have made herself known to me. She must be dead by now.'

But the truth is rather more complicated. For as the Mail discovered this week, Betty is alive and well.

She might have been expected to be proud of her close connection to a man who, in his twilight years, became a national inspiration, a living personification of the indomitable, selfless spirit that once made Britain great.

But at her large detached home in Stroud, Gloucestershire, this week, 89-year-old Betty Hankin, as she is now called, refused to speak about the father she last saw several decades ago, or reveal the truth about the rift that drove them apart.

'I'm afraid my life is private,' she said. 'I would never give any interview about it.'

War veteran: Henry celebrating his 111th birthday

So far, so intriguing. But what is almost more extraordinary is that such was the animosity that blossomed between father and daughter that Betty never even told her children and grandchildren that they were direct descendants of one of Britain's great heroes.

Her grandson Robin, a care worker from Dorchester in Dorset, told me this week that he discovered he was the great-grandson of Henry Allingham only a few days ago, and said that neither he nor his father - Betty's son Roland - had known of the connection until Betty revealed it to them after reading of Henry's death in a newspaper.

'It came as a complete shock,' he says. 'We are completely baffled as to why Betty kept it a secret. It's bittersweet, because I'd have loved to have known Henry. I'm very, very proud now to be descended from such a wonderful man.'

So what is at the heart of the rift which denied Henry Allingham the chance to know several of his close family?

Dennis Goodwin, his closest friend and co-author of Henry's autobiography Kitchener's Last Volunteer, was stunned to discover this week that Betty was still alive. He was with Henry just hours before his death.

'As far as Henry was concerned, I always met a brick wall when it came to talking about Betty,' he said. 'He would go off at a tangent and change the subject completely. He didn't want to tell, and it wasn't for me to challenge him.'

It must have been a heart-rending state of affairs for a man who, having experienced a military career which took in the 1916 Battle of Jutland and trench warfare at Ypres, devoted most of his final years to promoting peace and speaking out about the tragedy of conflict.

And having lost his own father to tuberculosis in 1899 when he was just three, Henry wanted more than anything to be a good father to his own children.

The poignant family album he leaves behind suggests that for the majority of his life he managed to do this. He married his wife Dorothy in 1918 at the end of World War I. Betty was born in 1920. Jean followed in 1923.

Precious family snaps of his two little girls were taken in the Twenties, many of them during happy family holidays in Norfolk. One shows Betty - whose features uncannily echo her father's - and her younger sister Jean, aged about nine and six, sitting cross-legged with matching bobbed haircuts.

Another shows the girls riding together on horseback, wearing matching cloche hats and button shoes and laughing with excitement. There are other shots, too - Henry standing with Betty and Jean next to the family motor car.

Happy marriage: Henry and his then-fiancée Dorothy May in 1916. Their marriage was to last 53 years

One of Henry's favourite pastimes when he wasn't working as an engineer for the fast-growing motorcar industry was to take the girls out on his yacht, The Teale, which he kept moored at Burnham-on-Crouch in Essex.

'I made sure the girls had a great childhood,' he wrote in his autobiography. 'They were both "outdoors" types and rode bicycles and horses. Both of them played tennis very well to a standard that they knocked up with all the players who went to the Wimbledon Championships.'

And yet despite outward appearances, it seems that he always favoured Jean over Betty. Jean went on to have five children - Jill, David, Paul, Tim and Chris - who also grew up to have several children of their own.

This week, one of Jean's sons - 49-year-old Chris Gray, who lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan - said: 'My mum Jean and her sister Betty weren't particularly close. Betty was a few years older. My mum bonded closely with her father Henry, and because of that she was always the one who would go sailing or horse riding with him.'

Betty married naval officer Ronald Hankin in 1944. A year later, Jean married American GI Lonny Gray and after the birth of her first child, Jill, she moved to Michigan.

Despite being separated by thousands of miles, Jean kept in close touch with her parents, and Dorothy and Henry crossed the Atlantic on the Queen Mary to visit the States for the first time in 1951.

Of the later pictures reproduced in his autobiography, there are many of Jean, including her wedding photographs, a stunning soft focus portrait and a picture from the Sixties of Jean with both Dorothy and Henry.

Most telling of all is the caption next to a photograph taken in 1996 at Henry's 100th birthday party.

It reads: 'The loving relationship Henry enjoyed with Jean was seen in her joining him for his 100th birthday party in 1996. Sadly, she died within a few years of this picture being taken, aged 72 years old.'

Survivor: He went on to fight in two world wars and receive the Legion d'Honneur

And so what of Betty? According to one family source, her relationship with Henry deteriorated when his wife Dorothy was diagnosed with leukaemia.

According to Jean's son Chris, Henry's grandson: 'Something occurred before Dorothy's death. My mum thought it was related to the care of Dorothy when she had leukaemia. There was some disagreement over the treatment.'

Dorothy died from acute and chronic lymphatic leukaemia in 1970 at Princess Alice Hospital in Eastbourne, Sussex. Henry scattered her ashes on the South Downs and in the promenade gardens at Eastbourne.

Chris continues: 'Henry lost contact with Betty after Dorothy's funeral. No one knows what drove this wedge between them. My mum tried writing to Betty numerous times after that, but she never wrote back. We used to get photos from her, but those stopped, too.

'It was especially sad for Grandpa Henry because there could be a whole British branch of his family out there.'

And indeed there is. Betty had a son, Roland Hankin, who became a GP after studying at Dundee University.

Roland, now 61, set up his practice in the town of Dorchester where he and his wife Joanna raised their four children, Oliver, Robin, Rosie and William.

The family was rocked by scandal in 2001 when Roland was convicted of defrauding the NHS of £676,000 by writing false prescriptions, invoices and cheques.

He was jailed for three years and nine months, with half the term suspended. Three years later, he tried unsuccessfully to persuade the General Medical Council to allow him to practise again, claiming that he had spent the stolen money on patient care and surgeries.

According to his son Robin, the news this week that his family was related to Henry Allingham has come as a great shock.

'I never met Henry in my life,' he said. 'Neither did my father Roland. I only learnt about this two days ago. I once saw Henry on television and thought what a lovely man he looked, with no idea that he was my great-grandfather.

'I spoke to my father on the phone this week and he said: "You need to come round. I need to talk to you."

'He only learned that he was Henry's grandson when his mother Betty told him this week. It's been a shock for all of us.'

According to Henry's friend Dennis Goodwin, Henry would have been equally stunned to know of this secret family.

'We always used to say that with all the publicity about Henry, if there was anyone out there who was related to him, they would have got in touch,' said Dennis Goodwin.

'It was so long since he had seen her that Henry used to say: "If Betty was alive, she would have made herself known to me."'

But, tragically, it seems that his daughter was too stubborn to make the first move - just as Henry himself had been in the past.

Despite Betty's silence on the subject of her father, her only son, Roland, hints that she still harboured feelings for Henry.

'My mother, as you can imagine, is very upset about the death of her father,' he said. 'I'm afraid I don't entirely know my own family history and I am still getting to grips with it all. It's very difficult and I really feel I shouldn't say anything which might upset other people's sensibilities.'

But one of Henry's other grandsons, Jean's son Chris, added: 'We are not really happy that if this other branch of the family are alive, they haven't made contact. Personally, I wouldn't invest a large amount of energy and resources to find them. Henry certainly did not ask anyone to find them.'

Henry Allingham was, in addition to everything else, a man who knew his own mind. According to Dennis Goodwin: 'He was his own man and no logic or reason would change his mind. You just had to accept it. He used to say: "There are two ways of doing things -the wrong way and my way."

'There were a lot of things he wouldn't elaborate on. I don't know why he had this bee in his bonnet about it.'

And yet Henry's rift with Betty contradicted so much of what he stood for.

As he himself once claimed: 'War's stupid. Nobody wins. You might as well talk first. You have to talk last, anyway.' Except that in his own case, the much-needed talk with Betty never took place. Now, he has taken the rift with his elder daughter to his grave.

The one glimmer of hope is that now both sides of this extraordinary man's family will come to together after his death.

Having discovered his family's connection to Henry, Betty's grandson Robin says he hopes to attend the funeral on Thursday.

'Now that I know about this, I think I'd like to go and make contact with the other side of Henry's family. It would be nice if we could do at least that.'

An American relative, Jean's son David (Henry's grandson), said: 'We always thought the English side of the family chose not to acknowledge Henry. Now that we know differently, it changes everything. I'd like to meet my English family.'

At the end, says Dennis Goodwin, Henry was ready to leave this world.

In what was the final chapter of his life, the 113-year-old veteran of both World Wars received the Legion d'Honneur and an honorary engineering doctorate from Southampton University during his last two public appearances in May.

'He had fulfilled everything,' said Dennis. 'And those two awards spanned his military and civilian life. There was nothing left for him to achieve.'

Henry died a week ago today, in the early hours of Saturday.

'I saw him the day before he died,' says Dennis. 'I realised then it was just a question of time. I just thought to myself: "Henry, we have said a few farewells in our time, but I'm sure this will be the last one."

'He was very peaceful and I squeezed his hand and talked to him, and he registered some of it with a few grimaces and hand squeezes.'

Perhaps it was a blessing that Henry had no idea that his daughter Betty was still alive. Perhaps the hurt of knowing she chose to stay away from him would have been hard to bear.

Most poignantly of all, he wrote: 'I had 53 years of happy marriage and two daughters. These were the best things that happened in my life.'

If only Henry Allingham, a man who knew so much about human agony and who spoke out so passionately against conflict, could have been reconciled with his daughter - perhaps it could have been Betty at his bedside last week, together with her father again as he breathed his last.