Family Background and Childhood, 1879-1896
Photograph of Kathleen from c 1894
Kathleen’s large extended family played a key role in her artistic life.
Kathleen Emily Temple was born on 12 November 1879, in Ipswich Suffolk. She was the daughter of Thomas Henry Temple aged 30 (1849-1935) born in Boston Lincolnshire, and his wife Emily Anne (nee Bird) aged 23 born in Ipswich Suffolk.
Thomas Temple was part of a large family (12 siblings) on a farm in Boston Lincolnshire. He trained as a draper, had a drapery business in Ipswich, where he met and married Emily Anne Bird in 1878. He then had drapery businesses in Boston, where he employed 12 girls and four men (three living in). He moved to Southampton to be a draper’s manager for two years, before returning to Ipswich to become a coal factor and help run his dying father-in-law’s coal and brick business.
Oil ‘Thomas Temple Esq’, c 1932
Emily Anne Bird’s parents were a railway superintendent and his assistant. Later, her father became a coal merchant. Both of Emily’s parents were part of the large extended Bird families living throughout Suffolk. Emily had two younger siblings and three close cousins in Ipswich, and more cousins throughout Suffolk. Thomas and Emily had their only child Kathleen Emily Temple in 1879.
Pencil ‘Emily Anne Temple’, 1943
Kathleen’s mother and father, Emily, and Thomas, were supportive of her artistic career and always lived nearby. They were living in neighbouring houses in London when Thomas died in 1935, aged 86 years. Emily, aged 84 years moved, with Kathleen to St Ives Cornwall, for the duration of the Second World War. When Emily broke her leg, she moved to a nursing home in nearby Hayle Cornwall, with her sister Kate offering support. After the war Emily was transferred to Dunmow Essex, where she died in 1946, aged 90.
For Kathleen, the vast array of relatives across Suffolk and Lincolnshire provided many people to paint and places to stay with beautiful landscapes (see section: Start of Career and Travels in Britain).
Large oil ‘Aunt Kate’, c 1900s
Emily’s younger sister, Kate Bird (1860–1947), was Kathleen Temple-Bird’s aunt. Like many in her wider family group, Kate trained as a draper’s assistant and worked in family related businesses in Ipswich, and then in London where, by 1891 aged 31 years, she was living in Camberwell, and might be who Kathleen stayed with when studying at The Slade School of Fine Art.
Kate was Kathleen’s favourite aunt, and appeared throughout Kathleen’s life, in her son John’s diaries, and family history. She regularly visited Emily, Frank, Kathleen, and her son, John in London; and for periods in the 1930s she lived in Worthing, Sussex and John’s diaries record family visits to her there. In 1940 (aged 80 years), she moved to St Ives Cornwall with Kathleen and Emily, where she stayed for the duration of the Second World War. She died in 1947 aged 87, a year after her elder sister Emily passed away.
Kathleen’s childhood
Ipswich Suffolk: Kathleen was born at 31 St Matthew’s Street, Ipswich where her father had a drapery business at Brunswick House (ref. birth certificate, newspaper articles)
Boston Lincolnshire: When Kathleen was one year old, she lived in Strait Bargate, Boston, Lincolnshire, where her father was a draper employing 12 girls and four men (ref.1881 census)
Southampton Hampshire: When Kathleen was 11 and 12 years old, she lived at St Botolph, Denzil Avenue, Southampton, where her father had taken a position as a draper's manager (ref. 1890 & 1891 electoral registers)
Ipswich Suffolk: Kathleen attended Ipswich Girls School, (1892-1896) where her love of performing in plays and musicals started and her artistic skills noted – her memory sketches of the High School gymnasium were chosen to be exhibited at the Victorian Era Exhibition (ref. newspaper articles). By 1896, the family lived in the house of her mother’s father at 30 Westgate Street, Ipswich as he was unwell (ref. 1896 & 1898 electoral registers).
Very early painting by Kathleen ‘Interior of Ipswich Workhouse Chapel from Memory’
