Ackerley thus discovered that his father had had a second family for more than 20 years. Roger used to visit his daughters three or four times a year when he was supposedly travelling on business, and sometimes when out to walk his first family's dog. His mistress, Muriel Perry, served as a nurse during the First World War and was busy with her career; she seldom saw their three daughters: Sally and Elizabeth, twins born in 1909, and Diana, born in 1912; all were cared for by a Miss Coutts. The birth of the youngest was never registered; but they were all given their mother's surname. Ackerley described the lives of his half-sisters in his 1968 memoir: "They had no parental care, no family life, no friends." For years the girls thought that their father was "Uncle Bodger", who occasionally brought them gifts and money. Ackerley looked after his father's second family without telling his mother, who died in 1946.