Relationship to me:	Sister	Gen +0	Jane c.1933
Born:	June 1930 at Sutton
Died:	13th March 1948 in Ashtead, Surrey; cremated at Epsom
Age	17
Father:	Harold Ernest Montague Newman	1900 - 1991
Mother:	Margaret Helena (nee) Smith	1907 - 1965
Brothers:	(younger) Christopher John Edwin	1946 -
Sisters:	(younger) Daphne Veronica	1944 -
Married:	Never married
Children:	None

Outline her Life: Jane was born with hydroencephylitis (water on the brain) which in 1930 was incurable (the simple operation that is needed to overcome this not uncommon problem with infants wasn't discovered till later). As a result, her head grew in size out of proportion to her body. At an early age, when my parents were still living in Edinburgh, she fell from a table and cracked her skull. My notes of conversation with my father say "prolonged her life perhaps". I don't what he meant by this. Anyway, I think Jane must have suffered some degree of brain damage either from her disease or from the fall, based on what little I know of her. Hydroencephylitic children could normally expect to live only a few years in those days, but Jane lasted for 17, dying in the end of pneumonia.

Jane's life was spent mostly in a wheel chair in the company of Nanny Ingram who looked after her from birth to death, and became my nanny thereafter. My parents seldom talked a lot about her, but I recall one of them telling me that her grandfather (Walter) couldn't bear to see her, because it distressed him too much. I think my father spent so much time away during her life that he never developed a close relationship with her, and I picture her as having led a rather sad and solitary life.

She died in Ashtead the year after I was born and was cremated in Epsom the town/suburb where I was born.