| Administrative History | Alfred Craven Greenwood, JP, OBE, was born in Kentish Town, London, in August 1863. After entering the British Colonial Service, he was initially posted to Nassau in the Bahamas serving as Aide-de-Camp and Private Secretary to the Governor of the Bahamas (Sir Ambrose Shea) before taking up post as Colonial Treasurer in Gibraltar in 1897 where he continued until he retired in 1926. Whilst in the Bahamas, he met Julia Wickham Leigh (d 1978), of America, whom he married in New York in 1896. They had a daughter, June Greenwood (1898-1978) and two sons Alfred Leigh Greenwood and Shirley Carter Greenwood (Shirley Greenwood died in 1917). June Greenwood married Alfred Henry Abbati in 1928; they had a son, Shirley Antony Abbati, and daughter, Joy Virginia Penelope Abbati (later Abbati-Yeoman). Joy was born in 1936; Shirley Abbati died in 1968.
Spending much of their time living in hotels in France, Switzerland and Italy, Alfred and Julia Greenwood were living in France at the onset of World War II and witnessed the German occupation; Julia died in Cannes in January 1940 but their daughter and her husband worked to help Alfred leave France. To this end, June corresponded with family friends, Neville and Anne Chamberlain; her husband travelled to France in 1940/1941 and it is believed that one of his reasons for doing so was to assist his father-in-law. Alfred succeeded in reaching Portugal where he was supported by long-standing friends before his death in Estoril in June 1941.
Alfred Craven Greenwood (1863-1941) and Neville Chamberlain started what was to be a lifelong friendship whilst they were both working in Nassau in the Bahamas, c 1893 (and Greenwood helped Neville Chamberlain at his sisal plantation for a period whilst the plantation manager was on leave after his wife's death). Chamberlain stood as godfather to Greenwood's daughter, June, and son, Alfred Leigh Greenwood, and also to June Abbati's son, Shirley Antony Abbati.
Source: information supplied by the donor, June 2013; Neville Chamberlain papers (GB 0150 NC7/5). |
| Custodial History | Prior to donation to Cadbury Research Library: Special Collections, the records passed from Mrs June Abbati to her surviving child, Mrs Joy Abbati-Yeoman. |