Charles Christopher Danby (1944 - 1993)
Charles was the wartime illegitimate son of an American officer. He was born on 9 April 1944 and was adopted by Ruth and Ian when he was a small baby. As a child he contracted tuberculosis of the bone which permanently affected one leg and gave him a pronounced limp for the rest of his life.
Despite this problem he loved cricket; his other great love was bird watching. As a small boy, while he spent much of two miserable years in hospital, he developed a strong Yorkshire accent. He was educated at home before going to grammar school. He then fell in with a rough crown from Hoyland. He worked as a clerk for the Coal Board but found that VDU screens (and TV) gave him terrible headaches.
He married twice. In December 1966 [Staincross 1966, 4th qt] he married Sharron Richardson who had helped look after the children of Charles' stepsister Anne. A devout Roman Catholic she has been described as “a lovely girl and very genuine” but Charles was a depressive type and a heavy drinker and Sharron left him after several difficult years of marriage. In 1982 he married Gloria Weilandt [Barnsley 1982, 2nd qt].
Charles never really got over Ruth's death and, though for a while his inheritance helped ease his money problems, he committed suicide in October 1993 [Barnsley, Nov 1993].