She was still mired in depression the school fees and rent were more than she could afford and there was barely enough money to feed herself, let alone a growing boy.Ī five-year separation between mother and son followed. Then she moved to Ontario with Lennox but, after six months, sent him back to England. But she didn’t have a proper visa, couldn’t get regular work, and returned to England a year later.

She sent Dennis to live with his father (who had since married), left Lennox with Aunt Gee, and moved to Chicago in the hope of setting up a home in the United States for Lennox and herself. She was still depressed over the loss of Carlton and decided to start her life over somewhere else. When Lennox was four, Violet uprooted their home. My earliest memory from childhood is of a rocking-horse that I used to sit on for hours at a time.”īut those pleasant hours grew fewer and further in between. “I have fond memories of being young,” Lennox told me years ago. Violet Blake cheers her son on during his fight with Tony Tucker for the WBC heavyweight championship on. On 2 September 1965, Lennox Claudius Lewis, was born. He was the only man I really really cared for. I’m married and I can’t marry you.’ It was a great shock for me.

Then, when I told him I was pregnant with Lennox, he said, ‘I’m sorry, Vi. It turned out that he was married, but I didn’t know. “I was madly in love with him, though we never lived together. Then Carlton Brooks, another Jamaican living in London, entered her life. You think, if you don’t love him at first, if you live together, you may grow to love him. “I liked him as a brother, but I didn’t love him. “Rupert was good to us,” she later reminisced. Soon after the birth, Violet returned to work on a night shift at the hospital. The father was Rupert Daries a Jamaican who was working as a swimming instructor in London. On 27 April 1962, her first child (Dennis Stephen) was born.

She lived briefly with Gee and then in a rented room while working as a nurse’s aid. In 1956, Violet moved to London, where Aunt Gee had relocated with her husband.

Grosvenor prints