Malcolm Kenneth Pridmore, Edith Pridmore (nee Saville), Sheila Patterson Horko (nee Caffyn), Tadeusz Horko, (Anne) Clarissa Patterson.
Malcolm Kenneth Pridmore was born in Coventry in October 1869, the son of George and Sophia Pridmore. The family owned a weaving mill in Lockhurst Lane, which manufactured elastic webbing until they dissolved the business in 1884. In the 1911 census he is shown as a solicitor living at The Hollies, Foleshill Road. Around this time he became a Coventry City councillor and by 1914 he was Lord Mayor, a position to which he was re-elected, serving for two years. Earlier, in 1907, along with fellow councillor George Poole, he was deeply involved in Coventry's first public housing project, the building of Short Street and Narrow Lane in Foleshill. His contribution was recognised a few years later with the naming of Pridmore Road when the scheme was extended.
He married
Edith Saville on 19 September 1928. Edith was the daughter of Jason Saville, an engineer, and she had first married Thomas Percy Caffyn, a master draper, though he died in 1920. After their marriage she and Malcolm Pridmore moved from Foleshill Road to Cromers Close off the Kenilworth Road in Coventry. Unfortunately she died just 6 months later on 6 March 1929, leaving £10,700 to her husband and father.
Her widower Malcolm survived until 30 March 1945, dying in Coventry at the age of 75. In his Will he left £86,000 to his step-daughter, Sheila Gadomska. Their house was converted, first, to a school for children with problems and later to the Beaufort Nursing Home.
Sheila Patterson Horko (nee Caffyn) was born Sheila Caffyn on 30 March 1918, in Maidstone, Kent, the child of her mother Edith's first marriage. Her father died when she was just two years old, and after her mother remarried she took her step-father's name and became Sheila Caffyn Pridmore. After graduating from Oxford she joined the War Office and then Polish House in London. Her first marriage was to a Pole, Captain Zdzislav Gadomski, on 6 May 1944 at Chelsea Register Office. Although the marriage didn't last she retained a keen interest in Poland and its émigré communities.
She was married for a second time, on 23 January 1948, to Captain Bruce Tyrrell Patterson with whom she had a daughter,
Anne Clarissa Paterson.
Sheila finally re-married
Tadeusz Horko, a prominent Polish journalist and editor on 7 May 1955, but retained the name Sheila Patterson for professional purposes.
From the early 1950s Sheila Patterson had travelled extensively, and had undertaken research into, and written about, race relations. She published widely, her best-known book being Dark Strangers (1959) concerning West Indian settlers in Brixton. Ultimately she edited for sixteen years New Community, the quarterly journal of the Community Relations Commission (later the Commission for Racial Equality).
Sheila Patterson Horko died at the Victoria Highgrove Nursing Home in Hove, on 21 June 1998, following a stroke.
Anne Clarissa Patterson born on 20 January 1952. Clarissa, as she is called on her memorial, died in Surrey on 29 January 1974.
Tadeusz Horko died on 11 December 1976 in Hove, Sussex, the place where he was born 63 years earlier, and where he and his wife Sheila had lived.
It is interesting that this striking memorial commemorates not only the Pridmores but also their daughter, son-in-law and grand-daughter.
