The sad and troubled life of Florence "Florrie" M. Cox

An extract from God's Triangle, my investigation into what happened to Florence Martha "Florrie" Cox of Melbourne, Australia, after she married the Baptist missionary, the Revd Frank Ernest Paice, who was born in Christchurch, New Zealand, but was brought up in Australia:

Florence Martha “Florrie” Cox (later Paice) 1887-1950 

Florrie Cox was born at home in the Melbourne suburb of Richmond on November 5, 1887, the third of six children born to Arthur and Amelia Cox. It was a very religious family—extremely so in the case of some members. 

Amelia was very strict, with church-going, hymns, prayers and reading the bible being the only activities permitted on Sundays. Even the meals were prepared the day before. There were complaints in the family about the time Amelia devoted to church activities, often to the detriment to her perceived responsibilities as a mother and housewife. It was as though she were acquiring credit points to ensure her place in Heaven. 

I have not been able to learn anything significant about Florrie’s father, Arthur, as he had died before any of his surviving descendants were old enough to absorb impressions of him. 

Florrie had two brothers, Arthur and Charles. Her sisters were, in order of birth, Amelia (known as “Minnie”, perhaps to differentiate her from her mother), Alice and Lois. 

The two brothers could hardly have been less alike. Arthur was my grandfather and was a forceful, intolerant, humourless, status-conscious, hypocritical and sometimes-violent man with few friends. His religious fervour led him into several bouts of insanity that required hospital treatment. During the Second World War, he was diagnosed with religious mania and dismissed as a major in the Australian Army after declaring to his men that he was Jesus Christ’s second-in-command. 

By contrast, his younger brother Charles—universally known as “Charlie”—was a polite and placid businessman who never forced his views on anyone. He had no interest in religion and attended church very rarely and only when pushed to do so by his wife. By all accounts, he was widely liked and admired. 

Florrie Cox’s sisters, Minnie and Alice, were both married with children, while her sister Lois battled tuberculosis throughout her teenage years before dying when just 22. Little else is known of the three sisters, nor has it been possible to establish exactly what Florrie Cox was like in her early years. She was, though, sufficiently religious to become a Sunday School teacher and later to take on the considerable burdens of a missionary wife in one of the more arduous and remote postings the Baptist Church could offer. 

Florrie was unusually tall for a woman in that era—about six feet or 183cms. She became engaged to Frank Paice when she was 24, which would have been considered rather late. In those days, women who weren’t “fixed up” to be married by their early twenties were usually fearful of being left “on the shelf”, and as spinsters, were often viewed as unfulfilled persons. 

On the other hand, men who did not marry would be referred to, often with affection and respect, as “confirmed bachelors”. The strong possibility that many of these men were closet homosexuals did not seem to be considered. 

In the light of what we know about Florrie’s mother and other conservative members of that family, there must have been great joy that she was to be married—and not just married to anyone, but married to a Man of God and a missionary. 

There is no precise record of when Frank and Florrie were engaged, but the indications are that it was not long before Frank sailed for India in October, 1912. 

Though society contained pockets of uninhibited licentiousness in the early 1900s, sexual attitudes for most people—particularly staunch Christians—were very rigid and oppressive. Married women could expect to have many pregnancies in their reproductive life, but they would be told little about the “facts of life”, as sexual knowledge was euphemistically called. 

The more liberal-minded families might offer a newly-married woman a book on “married women’s health”. These books touched on reproductive matters, but were usually very coy and often ill-informed. (One such book included the “fact” that the best way to avoid pregnancies was to engage in conjugal relations midway between the monthly periods.) 

It was widely felt that wives should simply follow the lead of their husbands in the marital bed, though in the majority of cases, their husbands were almost as anxious and sexually ignorant as their wives. The only truly effective form of contraception was abstinence. This was not seen by devout Christian women as a burden, as it was considered very unladylike to enjoy sex, or at least to admit to enjoying it. 

I remember overhearing elderly female relatives declaring that it was important for married women to “maintain Christian standards in the bedroom”. I took this to mean that any sexual activity should be confined to the so-called “missionary position” with the man always on top in the traditional manner. 

These standards would also require that any nudity be as discreet as possible. (One of my Cox family aunts once proudly declared that her husband had never seen her naked.) 

The accepted attitude of married women towards sex—not helped by the fear of yet another pregnancy—often had a discouraging impact on their husbands. Even in my youth in the 1950s, it was quite common for married men to scornfully dismiss sex as “an over-rated indoor sport”. 

To avoid being carried away by sexual desires, courting couples in the early 1900s were normally not allowed to be alone together until such time as they became engaged. When they went out together on a date, they would be required to do so with a chaperone. 

Keeping this in mind, Florrie and Frank would have had few opportunities for sexual encounters before Frank left Australia. Even when Florrie joined him in Calcutta two years later, she and her fiancé would have been allowed little or no time together. Nor, as devout Christians, would they have wanted it any other way. 

If the social and sexual climate had been more relaxed—dare I say, enlightened—it is quite possible that the marriage between Frank and Florrie would never have taken place. However, given their status in the community and the laws of that time, breaking off an engagement was almost as difficult as a divorce is today. One or other of the parties could have sued for “breach of promise”. This was something not treated lightly by the courts and often ended up with public humiliation in the newspapers and the payment of financial compensation by the offending party. 

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Paperback, Kindle and eBook copies of God's Triangle are available HERE.  

Read the reviews HERE.

Genealogy: The complexity of marriages and other sexual relationships

Modern society’s broad acceptance of cohabiting couples and children born out of wedlock is creating a severe headache for genealogists who love to see their ancestors’ families neatly laid out.  

Previous ages, though often dominated by strict church dogma, had more than their share of de facto marriages and births judged to be “illegitimate”, but nothing compares with the present time. 

      
One of my friends had three marriages and at least two settled cohabiting relationships. Another friend married the same woman twice with a divorce and a 10-year gap between the marriages.  And I know of another man who married the same woman twice with a divorce and another marriage and divorce in between.

These examples of multiple relationships are raising serious challenges for family historians. At what point, for example, does a sexual relationship become formally recognised? Is it when they move in together? When they have been together, say, for a year? When they get married, if they ever do?

It’s a nightmare.

Then there is the related issue of homosexual relationships, both male and female. If a same-sex couple moves into an established relationship, should that become part of the family tree, no matter how messy it might be judged in genealogical terms? I think it should. So, what would I then do if a lesbian relative not only married another woman, but with the aid of artificial insemination, had children? Would I skirt around the subject and write “father unknown”? And finally, what should go on the family tree when a traditional male-female couple have a child whose natural father was a sperm donor?

Questions, questions, questions. But no simple answers.

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The book resulting from a story I stumbled across while researching my family history:

https://www.godstriangle.com/

A special photograph that escaped being destroyed

     As a keen genealogist I have many family photographs that I would regard as “special”, but this is one that I wasn’t supposed to see. Nor were any other descendants of the couple who are pictured.  

      The couple were my great aunt, Florence “Florrie” Cox, and the Rev. Frank E. Paice, on the day they were married in Calcutta (now Kolkata) in December 1914. 

Both Frank Paice and Florrie Cox were Baptist missionaries from Melbourne, Australia, stationed in the early 1900s in East Bengal, now Bangladesh.  

Their marriage fell apart in scandal for two primary reasons: 1) Frank Paice had fallen for another missionary, Olga Johnston, during the two-year engagement that the church required Florrie and Frank to spend apart. 2) Florrie had a rare variation of the intersex condition, Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome. Although she looked and felt like a woman, she had male chromosomes and no internal female organs. 

When Frank and Olga’s scandalous affair became known, both were forced to resign.  Florrie returned to Melbourne, but was a family embarrassment with the breakdown of her marriage a relentlessly taboo subject.  

The Australian press – normally addicted to such juicy stories – was prevailed upon to look the other way when the divorce went through the Supreme Court and the judge ordered that the file be “closed for all time”.  

Frank and Olga married on their return to Bengal where Frank took up an engineering management job. 

When they returned to Australia some years later, they reinvented themselves as pillars of society, with Frank taking on a number of high-profile civic positions in Melbourne.  No mention was ever made of Frank or Olga’s time in India or their six years as missionaries. Not even their only son and close friends knew of their missionary past. 

I learned of the scandal only because my mother let it slip when we came across a photograph taken just before Florrie was about to depart for her wedding in Calcutta. 

It took me 18 months of email exchanges, letters and telephone calls to get a Supreme Court judge in Melbourne to lift the ban on access to the divorce file, revealing Florrie’s condition. But nowhere could I find photographs of Frank and Florrie’s wedding as they had been destroyed by the family – probably out of embarrassment and anger.  

      
Then I got lucky.  

      
A very distant cousin showed me a photograph of two people he could not identify. I was stunned to see that it was Frank and Florrie after their wedding at the Circular Road Baptist Chapel, Calcutta.  

      
My hunt was over thanks to a large dollop of luck, and the fact that the distant cousin's family had never been told about the scandal and didn't realise the photo's significance.  

The story of Florrie Cox and Frank Paice is told in Ian D. Richardson’s book God’s Triangle, available in paperback, Kindle via Amazon.