Charles Leslie Lionel PAYNE was born on 9th April 1892 at 10810 Curtis Ave, Roseland, Chicago, Illinois, USA, while his father Charles Vincent PAYNE (1868-1941) and uncle Charles Hallam PAYNE (1870-1960) were employed on the construction of the Chicago World Fair.  This is a history of Leslie rather than the family, and a description of the movements and activities of his parents Charles Vincent and Amy, and those of his uncle Charles Hallam Payne, will be given elsewhere.  However, it should be noted that Leslie's parents had travelled with Charles Vincent's younger brother Frank to Chicago the previous summer, between May and August 1891.  A photo of Leslie (at left), aged ±1 year, warmly dressed and sitting in a perambulator, was probably taken in the winter of 1892/93, while they were still in Chicago.

It was probably in about 1896 that the next surviving photographs were taken (at left & right).  Leslie is seated on a wicker chair between his parents, all three perched rather precariously on some kind of rockery.  They are certainly outside, as there is a small tree behind and slightly to the right of Charles Vincent, who appears to be sitting on a newspaper, probably to protect his trousers.  The state of the garden may also be the reason that the bottom of his trouser legs are turned up.

In 1897, perhaps with the news that Amy was expecting another child, Uncle Hallam took over the off-licence, while Les moved with his parents across to 17 Hastings Street.  They continued to live at this address after a brother Harold Victor was born on 4th January 1898, and while their father Charles Vincent worked as an estate agent, until about 1900.  It seems likely that Leslie would have attended St James' Road School.
 

At this point, Leslie’s grandparents Henry and Henrietta appear to have retired from an active participation in the shop, and moved to Sunny Hill.  Leslie and his family moved into the Hollies at number 139 shortly thereafter.  Leslie noted in his Service Records a decade and a half later that he had been vaccinated in 1900; presumably this was done by his grandfather, who was Vaccination Officer for Derby Borough from c. 1885 until he retired in 1905.  Henry Payne died at Sunny Hill on 1st April 1907.  A photo of Leslie wearing an overcoat and conical hat, standing outside in the snow (right), appears to have been taken when he was in his mid-teens, and therefore probably dates from around this period.

They continued to live at “The Hollies” until about 1910, although Henrietta Christina possibly went to live with them, since the house at Sunny Hill had been left in 1907 to Charles Vincent's sister Lucy Mary (Mag) Chadwick.  By October 1911, when Uncle Bob Chadwick sent Amy a postcard photo of a boy, presumably Harold Victor, holding a bicycle in a walled garden (above left), they had moved to 154 Almond Street.  There is a second photograph of the same boy, in similar clothes, and taken at around the same time, but at a different location, and without the bicycle (above centre).  The photograph of Leslie seated on a frilly cushion in a wicker chair (above right) must also have been taken at around this time, when he was in his late teens.
 
 

Leslie worked for his Uncle Hallam at the off-licence at around this time as a 'delivery boy'.  In later years he talked about being able to carry four quart beer bottles at a time in each hand, to which he attributed his large hands.  A photograph taken circa 1910 shows Leslie standing outside the off-licence premises at 83 St. James' Road, with his Aunt Sarah and Uncle Hallam standing in the doorway of the shop (at left).  Another lady, with a similar white apron to that being worn by Sarah, stands to the left, and a fifth person, a young man, is driving a wagon in the street.  Leslie has his right hand on what looks like a predecessor of the modern shopping trolley.

Chapter 2: First Canadian Sojourn (1912-1914)