Mabel Jacqueline CAPON (née BUTLER) (1882-1945)

Mabel Jacqueline Capon, née Butler (1883-1945), known as May, was the niece of Eugénie Sladden, being the daughter of her sister, Fanny Butler.

May was born at Gloucester House, Claremont Road, Surbiton, Kingston upon Thames, on 30^th March 1883, the sixth of nine children of Charles and Fanny Butler.  She was baptized at Surbiton on 4^th May 1883.  She attended a boarding school at Bexhill.

On 7^th October 1908, May married Charles Eldred Capon, a stockbroker, at Weybridge; he was the younger brother of Edward Orford Capon who married May’s older sister, Winnie, the following year.  At the time of the 1911 census, they were boarding in Colwall, Herefordshire.  An entry in the 1912 Phone Directory shows them living at Cowl Barn, Colwall.  They are not thought to have had any children.

On the outbreak of war, Charles joined the Royal Army Service Corps.  In early 1915 he was based at Southampton and May went to live with her mother, Fanny Butler, at Addlestone during his absence.  When both her sister, Winnie, and her sister-in-law, Josephine, were expecting their children, she went to stay with them for a couple of weeks to help out.  Charles went to Salonika in late November 1915 and it is believed that May remained living with her mother for the duration of the war.  A letter written by Jack Sladden on 15^th January 1916 indicates that May was doing some kind of war work.  Other letters written by Eugénie Sladden, Cyril Sladden, Fanny Butler and Polly Robinson refer to May.

According to post-war phone directories, May and Charles seemed to live a rather peripatetic life after the war.  They lived at Penton, Addlestone, until at least 1922; by 1926 they were living at Treforfan, Woodville Road, Bexhill; by 1930 they were living at Mill House, Windmill Hill, Herstmonceux; in 1939 they were living in the Bexhill district.

May died intestate in the Battle district of Sussex in 1945 and Charles in the Hastings district in 1949.