Framed photograph of Linda Newell on her wedding day

On the 14th April 1923, Linda married English man Horace Arthur Hammond. Horace had enlisted and went to WWI in the 11th Battalion. On 26th July 1929, they had their daughter Patricia Anne Hammond. When Patricia was 6 years old, her father Horace died in a tragic accident. He jumped off the back of truck, coming down Bindoon Hill, leaving Linda a widow. 

Her sister Getrude ran an employment agency (Registry Employment Bureau) and got Linda a job as a maid for a Welsh farmer in Ardath near Bruce Rock. Linda eventually married the farmer Thomas Newell and they had one son together, Peter. 

Linda, Patricia and Peter left the farm when the marriage failed and came back to Perth. Patricia went to train as a nurse and midwife, Peter went to boarding school and Linda went to the Blue Mountains in New South Wales with League of Health and Beauty, a health retreat run by Thea Stanley Hughes. 

Returning to Perth, she lived with her sister Gertrude (Gert) at 10 Malcolm Street North Beach. Their brother, an accountant who worked for stations and businesses in the Kimberley and Pilbara, stayed there when he wasn’t up north. He lost a leg in his early 20s in a horse and cart accident.