Who was Bill Tompsett?

Not too much is known about Carol's first husband.  This is his family tree.  Most of his family came from New York, and before that, from England. His grandfather Charles Helmer had been an RFD (Rural Free Delivery) for the US Post Office Department. He was born in Michigan.

He and Carol were married in September 1939.  The 1940 Federal census tells us this:

He was 19 years old, he only completed 2 years of high school, and during the previous 52 weeks, he had worked a steady job for the city as a street cleaner, earning $520 for the year.

Carol was 18 years old, completed only 3 years of high school, and did not have a job during the previous 52 weeks. (We know she was living with sister Nina, helping with baby Jerry)

What was not recorded in the census was that they were expecting their first baby, who would be born in June 1940.

Carol hated Bill Tompsett as much as she hated her sister Nina.  From the time I was very young, she would tell me stories about their drama-filled marriage.  She said he had a job with the railroad and was required to be gone most of the time.  But when he came home and they were together, they fought constantly, and there was violence between them.  Also, every time he came home, she got pregnant, and then he would be gone again.

Carol told me that Bill Tompsett had been named after a brother who had been born a year earlier and who had died.  She found it extremely creepy to be named after a dead sibling. The creepy thing about this was that the older child died on Fed 20, 1920--exactly one year before Bill was born on February 20, 1921.  She also said his mother Laura was crazy, and that Bill was a schizophrenic.

They moved from place to place in the Detroit area.

In 1949, when Carol was pregnant with her fifth child Skippy, Bill Tompsett died.  I have no evidence of this yet, but here is the story she told me again and again when I was a child:

After 9 years of a super violent marriage, she was pregnant with number 5.  For some reason, Bill Tompsett, who was living somewhere else other than with his family, wrote a long emotional letter to her, telling her how much he loved her and how sorry he was that he couldn't be a good husband to her, and that the only solution would be for him to take his own life.  Then he rigged up a hose to the tailpipe of his car, got inside, started up the engine, and suffocated on gas fumes.  She said the cops came to her house and told her what happened and gave her the note.

I cannot substantiate this story yet.  I don't have a death certificate, never saw the suicide note, and cannot find any newspaper articles, obituaries, or corroboration from anyone who knew Carol at the time. But that fact was, he suddenly died in 1949, leaving her with 4 young kids and one more on the way. And I have a theory about why he committed suicide, which I will explain in another post.