Russian Relatives - 16th Nov '08

While playing Absolute Balderdash this afternoon, Mum told me the following;

During the Russian revolution the father of her Gran's husband fled and bought a house on Jersey, called Lashasse House (?). At a later date this place took in unmarried mothers (some kind of workhouse?). The son - Mums grans husband - frightened of the Russians, changed his name from Sweitoslovsky (?) to Ward. The former name related to the Russian ancestry (though there was once a photo of the family in Poland). He was a taylor and had nine children with Mum's gran.

Mr Ward was afraid to leave his house and would get his children to deliver his tayloring. One day none were available and so he left his refuge and at some point, through nerves and a weak constitution perhaps, collapsed and ended up in hospital. On coming to consciousness he feared he'd been captured by the Russians and had a heart attack, and died.

Mad Uncle Ted (?), who got himself discharged from the army by feigning insanity (he faked hanging attempts on repeated occasions until they decided he was a liability) spent a few years, in his later life, researching this history and the fortune supposedly attached to it. Somewhere there may be some unclaimed wealth. Mum isn't sure where his research ended up after he died.

There was a fear and hence a desire to cover things up in the past, because Russian powers could reach beyond boarders and apparently some felt that the Sweitoslovsky history would make them a target.