in 1889: Cardus himself hosted a dinner party on 2 April 1959 believing this to be his 70th birthday. His birth certificate shows a birthdate of 3 April 1888, but this has been argued to be incorrect, since the date of registration of 15 May 1888 was such that using the birth date of 2 April would have breached the requirement to register a birth in no more than 42 days. Some sources give the birthdate as 2 April 1889, Neville's mother was Ada Cardus, one of six daughters of Robert and Ann Cardus of 4 Summer Place, Rusholme. On 14 July 1888, when the baby was three months old, Ada married Neville's father, John Frederick Newsham, a blacksmith. Cardus's autobiographical works refer to his father as a violinist in an orchestra, but there is no other evidence for this. Four days after the wedding, Cardus's father left by boat for America, with the intention that Ada followed. However, Ada changed her mind and went to live with Eliahoo Joseph, a Turkish merchant and possibly a pimp, with Ada a prostitute. John Frederick Newsham returned to England and divorced Ada in 1899. It was said that within a few years Ada and Neville had returned to her parents' home in Summer Place. Robert Cardus was a retired policeman; Neville referred to him as receiving a small pension, although a search of police archives found no trace of this. The family took in neighbours' washing, and the household income was further supplemented by his daughters' earnings from part-time prostitution. In his autobiographical writings, Cardus refers to his home environment at Summer Place as "sordid ... unlettered and unbeautiful", yet enlivened by laughter: "Humour kept breezing in". Commentators have suggested that Cardus tended to overstate the deprived aspects of his childhood; his biographer Christopher Brookes asserts that "Cardus was the product neither of a slum, nor a cultural desert". Robert Cardus, though uneducated, was not illiterate, and was instrumental in awakening his grandson's literary interests. Theatres, libraries and other cultural facilities were easily accessible from the Cardus home. Neville described his formal schooling as limited to five years at the local board school, where the curriculum was basic and the methods of tuition harsh: "[T]he boy who showed the faintest sign of freedom of the will was caned". There is, however, doubt as to whether his schooling lasted only five years and