The Hadwen Family of Lancashire

Denise Klein, later Robins, was the daughter of Kathleen Clarice Cornwell, who was also a prolific author who wrote under several names, and of her first husband, Hermann Klein, who was a professor of music and journalist. Of Russian ancestry, he had been born in Norwich in 1856. Two of the Kleins' children became writers. Adrian Bernard Klein (1892-1969) was an artist and wrote books on photography and cinematography. After serving as an officer in the British Army, he became a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society and changed his name to Adrian Cornwell-Clyne. There was a third child, Daryl, born in about 1894.[2][3]

Kathleen Clarice had been born in Melbourne, Australia, on 11 March 1872 and was the daughter of George Cornwell and his wife Jemima Ridpath, married in 1850.[4] George Cornwell was a railway guard who became a successful gold prospector in Australia, operating several mines. His eldest daughter, Alice Cornwell, born 1852, was spectacularly rich by the 1890s, returning to England and buying the Sunday Times newspaper.[2]

The childhood of Denise, Adrian and Daryl Klein was far from settled. Their parents had married in 1890. Kathleen Klein began an affair with a Worcestershire Regiment officer called Herbert Berkeley Dealtry, who was much younger than her husband and herself, and when Hermann Klein became aware of it he filed a petition for divorce, which was granted in December 1901. Kathleen then married Dealtry.[2]

In 1905, the Dealtrys had some serious troubles in connection with the promotion of dog shows, which they had been drawn into by Kathleen's sister Alice Stennard Robinson, a leading member of the Ladies' Kennel Association (founded 1904) and the National Cat Club. Somehow, the money from the first dog show went missing, and the Dealtrys held a second show to pay the prize money owed on the first. After the second show, prize winners sued Dealtry, which led to his being declared bankrupt.[2]

The family then lived in America for a few years but, by 1908, Kathleen (or 'Kit') Dealtry was back in London, writing Christian novels.[5] In 1918 she married for a third time and wrote at least three books[6] as Mrs Sydney Groom.[2]