[a][3] His father was George Beynon Harris, a schoolteacher from Port Eynon in South Wales, who, after passing the Incorporated Law Society final examination in 1889,[4] practised as a solicitor in Cardiff, becoming a member of the Town Council in 1897.
His father then attempted to sue the Parkes family for "the custody, control and society" of his wife and two sons, in an unusual and high-profile 1913 court case, which he lost.
[2] The case, which re-exposed previous allegations of sexual impropriety, pre-dating his marriage, left the boys' father a broken man.
[2] Gertrude moved with the children to a smaller house in Edgbaston until 1915, and then lived in a number of hotels as he and his brother attended boarding schools.
I promptly started another while he got back to work at the Penn Club on a thriller in which people were splattered on water & burst on pavements like poached eggs.