Chapter 11: BURNED
Gertie experiences joy and agony
After settling the Alverthorpe estate Gertie decided that she should concentrate on bringing up her young family, the twins being 10 years old and would soon be moving on to boarding schools and making the contacts that would carry them through into leading independent lives.
There had already been deaths in the family which had far reaching affects on the Winter family and their core business. Gertie felt she needed to take stock of her life and make her family her first priority.
Firstly, Johnnie's father Charles Jacob Winter, who was born at Standhope Manor way back in 1886, died at his beloved birthplace after a second stroke in 1950. This meant that Gertie's husband Johnnie became Lord Standhope and Gertie therefore became Lady Standhope. This also meant that Johnnie's mother Milly became the Dowager Lady Standhope, although everyone informally around the Manor called her Lady Milly and her daughter-in-law, who Milly regarded as a daughter in her own right, was Lady Gertie or simply Miss Gertie to the servants who had known her the longest.
Some six months after Johnnie Winter died in 1953, Gertie gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl. The male twin, the Honourable John (Jonty) Charles Jacob Daniel Henry Winter was declared Lord Standhope, even though his twin sister, the Honourable Mary Muriel Elizabeth Maud Winter, was born half an hour before him. The twins didn't even share a birthday in the same year as Mary was born before midnight on 31 December 1953 and Jonty was born a little after midnight on 1 January 1954.
Alas, within a few weeks of Johnnie's death in the summer of 1953, Johnnie's beloved grandmother Maudie slipped away in her sleep whilst under hospice care, without even being aware that her only grandson had pre-deceased her, nor did she even know that Gertie was expecting twins.
Gertie's very supportive mother-in-law Milly passed away age 82 in 1972, a couple of years before Joe Alverthorpe died and left his particular ticking time bomb of his secret family that had to be defused by Gertie and Standhope's loyal staff. Gertie really missed Milly's influence, advice and affection during this emotional turmoil and suddenly found herself at the head of the Winter family. So, over the next couple of years she groomed her successors at the bank so she could step back from the full time job of manager.
One of the first bank managers to take over from her was actually a Standhope. The male Standhope surname had certainly died out in 1865. when only one of the Lord's three daughters had a son. Jacob Weinstein was only 5 years old when he became a Lord of the realm.
Jacob Weinstein IV (who lived from 1860-1929) was born to Jacob Weinstein III (1830-1900) and Ellen "Nelly" Standhope (1840-1920) who had married in 1858 in London. It was Nelly's diamond engagement ring that was passed down to become Gertie's treasured engagement ring. The centrepiece of the ring was a half carat round cut diamond, 1/5th of an inch (5.1mm) in size that was one of the small bag of diamonds that the first Jacob Weinstein (c1770-1840) brought away from his sacked bank in Mainz in 1798, with his young family, wife Rebecca (c1775-1850) and children, Jacob Weinstein (1795-1872), Solomon Weinstein (1797-1833) and Miriam Weinstein (1802-88) who later became "Molly" Stowell.
In 1865 Charles, Earl of Standhope (1810-1865) died a comparatively young man of 55 and passed the Lord title to 5-year-old grandson Jacob Weinstein. Charles Standhope had already lost his youngest son Thomas Standhope (1842-64) in a ship lost at sea only the year before and his eldest son and heir Charles Standhope (using the honour title of Viscount or Lord Winter) (1836-1862) had died three years earlier during the Civil War in America, an innocent bystander killed when one of the conflicting armies burned his house down along with the rest of his town. By the time the news reached the Manor, it was unclear which army, Union or Confederate was responsible.
Charles Standhope had three daughters: the eldest daughter Elizabeth Standhope, (1838-1902), Ellen Standhope (1840-1920) and Mercy Standhope (1844-1927).
The second daughter Ellen Standhope married ship owner Lionel Evans and they had two daughters, Mary Evans (1863-1918) and Eliza Evans (1865-1928) and, after Lord Standhope died, she had two sons, Lionel Evans Junior (1867-1920) and Charles Evans (1873-1916).
Mercy Standhope married Jose Lopes in 1874 and relocated to Central America initially and later moved into South America; they had several male children, but by then the title of Lord had already passed to Jacob.
Although bearing the Weinstein surname, Jacob was the only male of that generation that could claim the titles, initially Viscount Winter from birth to the age of four after both his uncles died, then on the passing on his maternal grandfather, he became Lord Standhope.
However, there were later grandsons of the other two sisters who were waiting in line to make a claim should the Weinstein male line ever die out. One of these these potential claimants in the 1890s changed his legal name from Evans to Standhope, with the view of being in readiness to make a claim. He also ensured than his own sons worked in either the London branch of the bank or the Orient branch in Istanbul.
So it came to pass that a number of Standhope or Winter relatives became CEO of the bank between 1972 and the present time, a couple of Winters, a couple of Standhopes and even a Challis before Gillian Moorhouse became manager in 2016 and changed her name to Nicholls the following year after her marriage to Gertie's only grandson Jake.
Although Jonty failed to respond to all of Gertie's efforts to put him on the straight and narrow, by the time he was 22, in 1978, he dropped out of college at Cambridge and decided to spend time travelling the world as a poet, only self-published, using his Trust Fund which he had limited access to, basically just the interest without touching the core investments. Although the income was kept relatively small, designed to minimise temptations of excess, Jonty dropped out of society to the extent that he needed very little of the Trust's income to live on. Travelling in the Far East he experimented with drugs and eventually became a heroin addict.
Shortly before dropping out of college, Jonty had actually been caught red-handed paying a male prostitute for services rendered in a London park, a prostitute working with a society photographer in order to make money from victims. This was too big a scandal for even a family as powerful as the Standhope Winters to hush up completely. He later admitted to his mother Gertie that he was confused about his sexuality, that he thought he was more attracted to men than women and wanted to experiment. He visited a gay bar in London and was targeted and seduced.
