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Archive for the ‘ Interesting finds ’ Category
Find your criminal ancestors in our new Crime, Prisons & Punishment records
We’ve just launched our latest groundbreaking collection: over half a million historical records of criminals and their victims.
Today marks the culmination of our two-year project to scan and transcribe original records from The National Archives. We’ve made the records available online for the first time, and findmypast.co.uk is the only place you can view these fascinating documents.
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The Crime, Prisons & Punishment records will be crucial to your research as they contain information about your ancestors that isn’t available in other records. They really give you a sense of what kind of person your ancestor was and you could even find a photo of them!
We’re launching our collection with records for the period 1817-1931. We’ll add new records in the coming months to bring the total to more than 2.5 million records for the period 1770-1934.
On the right is a record from the collection – click on the image for a larger version.
The record tells the story of charwoman Charlotte Smith, also known as Elizabeth Smith. Charlotte was convicted of being a habitual drunkard in 1903 and sentenced to one month of hard labour.
As well as two photos, the record also provides a detailed physical description: Charlotte was 5ft 5 inches tall with a stout build, fresh complexion, oval face, dark brown hair and blue eyes. She had a slightly pug nose and scars over left eyebrow, right cheek, right side of neck, left side of lower lip and palm of left hand.
It’s time to find how many criminal ancestors are in your family tree…
Search Crime, Prisons & Punishment records now
Rumours of Royal employment
We hope you’re enjoying searching the new Royal Household staff records, published in association with the Royal Archives!
It’s surprising just how many of us have a rumour of royal employment in our family history. One customer, Mick Hester, wrote in to tell us that the records have given him a new clue to solve his own family mystery. Mick said:
“It’s been handed down that an ancestor of mine was the Chief Rat Catcher with 20 men under him to control rats in Windsor Castle and the Houses of Parliament. Until now, I’ve not found any evidence to support this story.”
When we released the Royal Household staff records, Mick discovered the record below detailing a William Hester who was employed as a Rat Killer in 1689.
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Have you found any ancestors of your own in the new records? We’ve got a selection of Diamond Jubilee goodies to give away to the most impressive finds – just email your discoveries to casestudies@findmypast.co.uk by midnight on Tuesday 5th June to be in with a chance of winning an official Queen’s Diamond Jubilee coin, tea towel, set of postage stamps or souvenir programme!
More records will be added to this collection shortly, so if you can’t find your ancestors at the moment it is worth trying again. We’ll let you know when we add more!
Search the Royal Household records now
Famous family trees: Brenda Blethyn
Welcome to the third post in our series of blogs exploring the family trees of the famous. Experienced family historian, Roy Stockdill, takes us on a journey through time as he investigates the family history of the famous, both living and dead. This time, Roy takes a look at Brenda Blethyn’s family tree.
The brilliantly versatile Brenda Blethyn, OBE, one of Britain’s best-loved actresses, has a family history that is as unorthodox as her acting career.
Brenda Blethyn - courtesy of Wikipedia Commons
The actress has made over 30 films, including the one that propelled her to stardom, Mike Leigh’s Secrets & Lies (1996). She’s veered an eclectic path between film comedies like Saving Grace and the cricket-based TV series Outside Edge, a cinema adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and gritty dramas like Vera, in which she currently stars as a dedicated, obsessive detective chief inspector solving murders in north-east England.
Brenda Blethyn was born in the Kent seaside town of Ramsgate in 1946, the youngest of nine born to a Roman Catholic couple who didn’t marry until they’d already had eight children! Brenda herself has never made any bones about this, for in her memoirs entitled Mixed Fancies (2006) she wrote:
“According to Dad, when he met Mum it was love at first sight and it wasn’t long before he popped the question. Mum, however, although she felt the same way, said she needed a little more persuading. Quite a lot more persuading as it turned out! Even after the birth of their eighth child in 1943.”
Technically speaking, then, Brenda was the only one of the nine born in wedlock. She was born as Brenda Anne Bottle on 20 February 1946.
Brenda’s parents were William Charles Bottle, born in 1894 at Boughton under Blean, a village between Faversham and Canterbury, and Louisa Kathleen Supple, born in 1904 at Canterbury. Thus, when Brenda arrived her father was almost 52 and her mother was 41. Brenda was 20 years junior to her eldest sibling.
The couple had met in the early 1920s when both were in service at a big house in Broadstairs, next to Ramsgate. William came back from six years with the Royal Field Artillery in India, where he was a bombardier, to work as a chauffeur in a household where Louisa was a parlour maid. According to Brenda in her memoirs, the family were poor but very close.
I found William C Bottle in the 1911 census. He was then aged 17 and working as a milkman –perhaps an appropriate occupation given his surname! The family were at 77 Church Street, St Peters, Broadstairs, and William’s parents – Brenda’s grandparents – were another William Bottle and his wife, Jane Ellen.
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William snr was shown as being aged 53, a labourer, born at Maidstone, and Jane Ellen was 47, born at Ramsgate. According to the census schedule, they had been married for 31 years and had had eight children, all of them then still living, but only William and his younger brother, Thomas, 14, were still at home.
Brenda’s mother, Louisa Kathleen Supple, appears also in the 1911 census at 99 Military Road, Canterbury. She was aged seven and one of six children living with their parents, Edward Supple, a 36-year-old plasterer, and his wife who was also called Louisa, aged 34. The whole family all gave Canterbury as their birthplace. This entry shows that Edward and Louisa had been married for 13 years and had had nine children, two of whom had died.
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With Findmypast.co.uk’s marriages indexes, I found the marriage of Brenda’s paternal grandparents William Bottle and Jane Annie Ellen Challen in Thanet, Kent in 1878. I traced William and Jane through the various censuses and it seems fairly clear that, when she married William Bottle, Jane Challen was only 15, perhaps just short of 16. He would have been 19 or 20.
In those days, the minimum age for marriage was 14 for a male and 12 for a female (until 1929). Not too many girls married at 15 but it was by no means impossible.
I was fortunate enough to be supplied by another descendant with a photo of the couple, which appears on a Bottle One-Name Study website and is reproduced here.
William Bottle and Jane Challen - courtesy of Liz Samson
One slight oddity I discovered in the census records was that in 1881 William Bottle was enumerated with his in-laws, Edward and Clara Challen, at 11 Hackney Road, Shoreditch, Middlesex, in London’s East End. William’s occupation was given as ‘sweep’ and he was only eight years younger than his mother-in-law, Clara Challen, aged 32, born at Canterbury. Edward Challen, 36, was a tobacconist, born at Ramsgate.
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Where was Jane, William’s young wife? She was at 12 Staffordshire Street, Ramsgate, aged 18 and described as the wife of a chimney sweep, with their daughter, Eliza, just a year old.
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Why William and Jane were enumerated separately in 1881 is a mystery – possibly William was just visiting his in-laws at Shoreditch. However, they were together in all the subsequent censuses in Kent, William being a chimney sweep’s labourer in 1891, a bricklayer’s labourer in 1901 and described simply as a labourer in 1911.
William Bottle’s birth was found in findmypast.co.uk’s birth indexes in Maidstone in 1858. Yet when I looked for him and his parents in the 1861 census, I stumbled upon another curiosity! There was only one candidate – a William Bottle, aged 2, one of four children living with parents Charles and Elizabeth Bottle, at Bone Alley, Maidstone.
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However, William’s birthplace was shown as Stepney, which could only have been an error because in all subsequent censuses it was clearly given as Maidstone. Moreover, I could find no birth of a William Bottle at Stepney at the appropriate time.
Charles Bottle was a shoemaker, born at Maidstone, but unfortunately his age was unclear. The image suggests it could have been 61, 57 or 51. I subsequently discovered that, in fact, Charles was baptised in 1809. Whatever Charles’s age, his wife, Elizabeth, a needle woman, was considerably younger, being shown as 40 and her birthplace given as Abingdon, Berkshire. This couple, Charles and Elizabeth Bottle, were Brenda Blethyn’s great-grandparents.
Oh dear – the vagaries of censuses once more! I found Charles and Elizabeth Bottle in 1851 when they were living at 3 Bartholomew Place, Bethnal Green, Tower Hamlets with four children all born in the East End of London. Charles was a bootmaker, aged 39, and Elizabeth was 30, her birthplace in this census being given as Reading, Berkshire, some way from Abingdon.
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A close analysis of the 1851 and 1861 censuses and birth indexes – taking into account the errors – suggests that Charles and Elizabeth had half a dozen children born in the East End between about 1842 and 1856 and then another two, including William, born at Maidstone.
I couldn’t find a marriage between Charles and Elizabeth though, either in Kent or East London. So I obtained a copy of the birth certificate of their son William from the General Register Office for England and Wales.
This revealed that he was born on 4 July 1858 in the registration district of Maidstone at 6 Windmill Row. His father was Charles Bottle, a shoemaker journeyman, and his mother was Elizabeth Bottle, formerly Wellman.
Despite being armed with this new information, I could still find no marriage between a Charles Bottle and Elizabeth Wellman. So, either the marriage was somehow not recorded or the couple were never married in the first place – shades of the relationship of Brenda Blethyn’s parents decades later!
* Thanks for help with this article to John Bottle, who runs the Bottle One-Name Study and Liz Samson, a descendant of William and Jane Bottle who supplied the photograph of that couple.
Roy Stockdill
Roy Stockdill has been a family historian for almost 40 years. A former national newspaper journalist, he edited the Journal of One-Name Studies (for the Guild of One-Name Studies) for 10 years. He is on the Board of Trustees of the Society of Genealogists and is commissioning editor of the ‘My Ancestors…’ series of books. He writes regularly for Family Tree magazine.
The sailor superstitions the Titanic ignored
Did you know that six traditional sailor superstitions were ignored on the Titanic’s maiden voyage to New York? Take a look at the evidence we’ve uncovered in our collection of Titanic records. Prepare yourself, some of the superstitions may seem a bit silly…
Sailor superstition #1: Women on board a ship make the sea angry
The header pages from the ship’s passenger list reveal that there were 353 female passengers travelling on the Titanic. The passenger list records the people who boarded at Southampton and Queenstown, but the list of those who boarded at Cherbourg does not survive.
Header page from the Titanic's passenger list, recording the passengers who boarded at Southampton
Sailor superstition #2: It’s unlucky to have a priest on board
A list of the passengers and crew who were supposed drowned can be found in our maritime death records. These record the occupation of each victim, revealing that four of the Titanic’s passengers were Ministers of Religion.
Two of the Ministers of Religion listed in the Maritime death records
Sailor superstition #3: Cutting your hair at sea is bad luck
The list of those who perished in the disaster also shows that there were three Barbers travelling on the Titanic. Two of these were crew members who would have practised their trade on the ship.
One of the Barbers listed in the Maritime death records
Sailor superstition #4: A dog seen near fishing tackle is bad luck
We’ve uncovered this article in The British Newspaper Archive which states that there were dogs (and a pig!) on board the Titanic:
An article from The Western Times, Saturday 20 April 1912
Sailor superstition #5: People with red hair bring bad luck to a ship
You can find many of the Titanic’s surviving crew members listed in our Merchant Navy seamen records. You’ll often find a physical description or a photograph included, as is the case with John Alexander Podesta. Podesta worked as a Fireman on the Titanic and his Merchant Navy index card describes his hair colour as being ‘auburn’.
John Podesta's Merchant Navy seamen record
Sailor superstition #6: Flowers are unlucky on board a ship
Another of the Titanic’s Firemen, Charles Rice, also survived and appears in the Merchant Navy records. He was recorded as having a tattoo on his right forearm depicting a basket of flowers.
Charles Rice's Merchant Navy seaman record
Do you think there’s any truth behind superstitions like these? Is there anything you do or avoid doing to bring you luck?
Love knows no age in the Cheshire parish records
How old were your ancestors when they got married? Chances are they were probably in their twenties. While this was very much the norm, a couple of rather unusual marriages in the parish records from our Cheshire collection prove that people continued to marry much later in life.
Daniel Broadbent married Martha Cheetham in Mottram-in-Longendale on 9 March 1780. You can take a look at the record of this marriage below. Alongside the information you would expect to find written in the parish register, the following note has been added:
‘Behold! N.B. A peculiar marriage! Daniel Broadbent was aged twenty-three – Martha Cheetham aged eighty-three’.
Parish register recording the marriage of Daniel Broadbent and Martha Cheetham
Another ‘peculiar marriage’ can be found in the parish registers of St Oswald, Chester. George Harding and Jane Darlington married on 6 May 1776 and a note on the record below informs us that ‘George Harding is in the 105th year of his age and Jane Darlington in her 75th’.
Parish register recording the marriage of George Harding and Jane Darlington
Have you found any similar marriages in your own family tree? Please do leave a comment and let us know how old your ancestors were when they got married!
The father of low-carb diets in our parish records
We’ve just spotted a bit of a character in the Westminster parish records that were published earlier this week and thought we’d share his story with you. The record below details the baptism of William Banting, son of Thomas and Ann, on 11 December 1796 at St Martin in the Fields.
William Banting's baptism record from the Westminster parish records
William Banting grew up to become the father of the low-carbohydrate diet when he published a pamphlet entitled A Letter on Corpulence, Addressed to the Public in 1863. The pamphlet detailed the diet that had helped Banting (an overweight undertaker – we said he was a character!) lose weight, namely by cutting out bread, butter, milk, sugar, beer, soup, potatoes and beans and replacing them with meat and fish.
Following the publication of his pamphlet, the term ‘banting’ or ‘to bant’ began to be used when people referred to diets and is still used today in some languages. Have you come across the phrase before? We’ve spotted it in Graham Greene’s novel Travels with my Aunt which was published in 1969 – over 100 years after Banting’s diet guide!
The Great Lafayette in the 1911 census
Calling all family history super sleuths! Can anybody tell us what is recorded in the infirmity column of this 1911 census return?
Famous family trees: Charlie Chaplin
Welcome to the first in a new series of blogs which explores the family trees of the famous. Experienced family historian, Roy Stockdill, takes us on a journey through time as he investigates the family history of the famous, both living and dead. Roy’s first blog focuses on silent film star Charlie Chaplin.
Did you read those speculative headlines about Charlie Chaplin, perhaps the greatest British icon of the Hollywood cinema, having been born a Frenchman? Yes, I laughed too!
Charlie Chaplin (courtesy of Wikipedia Commons)
It seems, however, that the story wasn’t quite as daft as it first sounded. MI5 records released from The National Archives revealed that in the early 1950s the security snoops investigated Chaplin’s background at the request of the American authorities during the anti-communist McCarthyite witch-hunt.
The Americans apparently thought he was a Russian Jew who had been born near Paris in the name of Israel Thornstein. The investigators, however, found no birth certificate for Chaplin, either in London or France, and also found no hard evidence of his supposed communist links.
That didn’t stop the Americans from declaring the ‘Little Tramp’ persona non grata and refusing him a re-entry visa when he sailed back to Britain in 1952.
This story intrigued me so much that I decided to look into Charlie Chaplin’s appearances in the censuses of 1891 and 1901 – and this in itself threw up some fascinating material.
Virtually every reference to Chaplin’s birth says he was born as Charles Spencer Chaplin on 16 April 1889 in East Street, Walworth, South London, but no birth certificate has ever been found. Another story has it that he was born in a gypsy encampment at Smethwick, near Birmingham, his mother Hannah Harriet Pedlingham Hill being descended from a travelling family.
The Wikipedia article on Charlie’s elder half-brother, Sydney, says he was born illegitimate as Sidney John Hill on 16 March 1885, to the then 19 year old Hannah. This is supported by entries in the birth indexes on findmypast.co.uk for the June quarter of 1885 in the St Saviour, Southwark registration district.
In the same quarter of 1885, Hannah married Charles Spencer Chaplin Snr, also in the St Saviour registration district, but it’s thought a different man was Sydney’s father. Charles Chaplin Snr was a music hall artist and an alcoholic and by 1891 he and Hannah were living apart. She too was a music hall artist under the name of Lily Harley.
The 1891 census shows Hannah and her sons living at 94 Barlow Street, Newington, South London, with Hannah described as a ‘Professional Singer Music’, Sydney aged six and Charles Jr aged two. All three were said to have been born at Walworth:
- The Chaplins in the 1891 census – click to enlarge
When I looked at the image, however, a somewhat curious fact emerged. Also in the household was a Mary A Hill, a 50-year-old wardrobe dealer who I subsequently discovered was Hannah’s mother and Charlie Chaplin’s maternal grandmother. Two unidentified women were also listed as being in the household, described only in the name column as ‘NK’ and said to be aged 30 and 35.
A note in the profession or occupation column, written in a different hand to the enumerator’s, read: ‘These two females were admitted Saturday night & turned out Monday without information being offered.’ Who were these mysterious women? Stage friends of Hannah? Prostitutes? We shall never know.
Turning to Charles Chaplin Snr, I found another curious entry in 1891 – he appeared to have been enumerated at the same address twice! He was living as a boarder with other music hall artists at 38 Albert Street, Newington:
- Charles Chaplin in the 1891 census – click to enlarge
The index shows him to have been aged 26, described as a music hall artist born in London. On the image, however, on the line immediately below his entry – and clearly in the same household – was another entry for a ‘Charles do’ (indicating the name was also Chaplin), aged 27, a music hall singer born at Paddington.
Is it conceivable there were two men of the same name and near-identical age, both following the same profession and both boarding in the same household? I never cease to be surprised by anything in genealogy but it would be an extraordinary coincidence! I suppose it’s just remotely possible there were two of them and they could have been cousins.
What seems more likely, however, is some sort of mistake by the enumerator. Perhaps the head of the household filled in one schedule and the enumerator gave a separate schedule to Charles Chaplin Snr, who also filled it in and somehow both got into the enumerator’s book?
I made a still further interesting discovery when I looked for Charles Chaplin Snr in the census of 1871 and found him living with his parents (indexed as Caplin) at 15 Rillington Place, Notting Hill, London:
- Charles Chaplin in the 1871 census – click to enlarge
Charles’ father, Spencer, was a 35 year old butcher born at Ipswich, Suffolk. His mother Ellen, aged 33, was also born in Suffolk and young Charley – as he was described – had half a dozen siblings. Spencer and Ellen Chaplin were Charlie Chaplin’s paternal grandparents and it was presumably from his grandfather that he got his middle name.
In 1881, Spencer Chaplin, now a widower, was still at 15 Rillington Place with four of the children:
- Spencer Chaplin in the 1881 census – click to enlarge
Decades later Rillington Place was to become infamous as the site of the murders of a number of women by the serial killer, John Reginald Halliday Christie. Ten Rillington Place was the subject of books and a film and was only five doors away from where the Chaplin family had lived. The street was torn down in 1971, exactly 100 years after the Chaplins were first recorded as living there.
The Chaplin family saga got more complicated in 1892 when Hannah Chaplin gave birth to a third son as the result of a relationship with another music hall entertainer, Leo Dryden, real name George Dryden Wheeler. The boy was named Wheeler Dryden and taken to live with his father. Later, he met his Chaplin half-brothers and worked for Charlie in Hollywood.
As a result of the affair, Hannah’s marriage to Charles Chaplin Snr finally broke up and her mental state declined until she was admitted to an asylum. Sydney and Charles Jr spent some time in a school for orphans and destitute children.
When he was 12, Chaplin joined a troupe of young male dancers called The Eight Lancashire Lads and got his first break in show business. He is found with them in the 1901 census at 94 Ferndale Road, Lambeth, South London:
- Charlie Chaplin in the 1901 census – click to enlarge
Chaplin does not appear in the 1911 census because by then he was in America with the Fred Karno troupe. He was to go on to become the most famous film star in the world and a Hollywood legend. Was he born a Frenchman? I very much doubt it!
- Roy Stockdill
Roy Stockdill has been a family historian for almost 40 years. A former national newspaper journalist, he edited the Journal of One-Name Studies (for the Guild of One-Name Studies) for 10 years. He is on the Board of Trustees of the Society of Genealogists and is commissioning editor of the ‘My Ancestors…’ series of books. He writes regularly for Family Tree magazine.
Findmypast.co.uk records tell Charles Dickens’ story
Today is Charles Dickens’ 200th birthday and to mark the occasion, we’ve been investigating the records on findmypast.co.uk to see what they can tell us about Dickens’ life.
We feel like we know Dickens a little bit better following our research – read on to find out what our records reveal about this extraordinary man.
Baptism
It seemed logical to start at the beginning, so our first stop was to search for Dickens’ baptism record. Dickens’ unusual middle name makes it easy to be sure that we’ve found the right man.
Dickens record shows that he was baptised in Portsea St Mary, Hampshire on 4 March 1812. We can also learn that Dickens’ parents are called John and Elizabeth:
Charles Dickens' baptism record - click to enlarge
Marriage
Fast-forwarding a few years, we discovered the record of Dickens’ marriage to Catherine Thomson Hogarth. The pair married in Chelsea, Middlesex on 2 April 1836:
Charles Dickens' marriage record - click to enlarge
Dickens and Catherine lived in Bloomsbury where they went on to have 10 children. Sadly, the couple separated in 1858 but never divorced; this wouldn’t have been a socially acceptable action for someone as well-known as Dickens.
Dickens in 1861
By 1861, Catherine and her son, Charles Jr, had moved out of the family home and Catherine’s sister, Georgina, was living with Dickens and the rest of the children. Georgina took Dickens’ side in his rift with Catherine and took over the running of the household.
In the same year that ‘Great Expectations’ was published, Dickens’ 1861 census return provides us with a glimpse into his life at this time. Dickens is described as ‘married’, giving away nothing of his separation from Catherine.
Dickens’ occupation is listed as ‘Author Novelist Essayist & Editor’ and Georgina is recorded as ‘Servant Housekeeper’:
Charles Dickens' 1861 census return - click to enlarge
Death
Next we found Dickens’ death record. He died on 9 June 1870 in North Aylesford, Kent – view the record here:
Charles Dickens' death record - click to enlarge
As well as this record, we unearthed a different record of Dickens’ death on findmypast.co.uk
Dickens was a shareholder in the Great Western Railway, which means that a record of his death appears in the GWR Shareholders Index.
The GWR recorded all transactions that related to shareholdings which changed hands due to an event other than a simple sale. The most common event recorded in the ledger was the death of the shareholder. When a shareholder died, their shares were passed to their beneficiaries and the executors handled the administration of the estate.
Displaying further evidence of his rift with his wife, Dickens’ record shows that his wife’s sister, Georgina, and friend, John Forster, were the executors. View this beautifully handwritten original document here:
Charles Dickens' Great Western Railway Shareholders Index record - click to enlarge
We hope you enjoyed discovering what the records on findmypast.co.uk reveal about Charles Dickens’ life.
Findmypast.co.uk records tell Charles Dickens' story
Today is Charles Dickens’ 200th birthday and to mark the occasion, we’ve been investigating the records on findmypast.co.uk to see what they can tell us about Dickens’ life.
We feel like we know Dickens a little bit better following our research – read on to find out what our records reveal about this extraordinary man.
Baptism
It seemed logical to start at the beginning, so our first stop was to search for Dickens’ baptism record. Dickens’ unusual middle name makes it easy to be sure that we’ve found the right man.
Dickens record shows that he was baptised in Portsea St Mary, Hampshire on 4 March 1812. We can also learn that Dickens’ parents are called John and Elizabeth:
Charles Dickens' baptism record - click to enlarge
Marriage
Fast-forwarding a few years, we discovered the record of Dickens’ marriage to Catherine Thomson Hogarth. The pair married in Chelsea, Middlesex on 2 April 1836:
Charles Dickens' marriage record - click to enlarge
Dickens and Catherine lived in Bloomsbury where they went on to have 10 children. Sadly, the couple separated in 1858 but never divorced; this wouldn’t have been a socially acceptable action for someone as well-known as Dickens.
Dickens in 1861
By 1861, Catherine and her son, Charles Jr, had moved out of the family home and Catherine’s sister, Georgina, was living with Dickens and the rest of the children. Georgina took Dickens’ side in his rift with Catherine and took over the running of the household.
In the same year that ‘Great Expectations’ was published, Dickens’ 1861 census return provides us with a glimpse into his life at this time. Dickens is described as ‘married’, giving away nothing of his separation from Catherine.
Dickens’ occupation is listed as ‘Author Novelist Essayist & Editor’ and Georgina is recorded as ‘Servant Housekeeper’:
Charles Dickens' 1861 census return - click to enlarge
Death
Next we found Dickens’ death record. He died on 9 June 1870 in North Aylesford, Kent – view the record here:
Charles Dickens' death record - click to enlarge
As well as this record, we unearthed a different record of Dickens’ death on findmypast.co.uk
Dickens was a shareholder in the Great Western Railway, which means that a record of his death appears in the GWR Shareholders Index.
The GWR recorded all transactions that related to shareholdings which changed hands due to an event other than a simple sale. The most common event recorded in the ledger was the death of the shareholder. When a shareholder died, their shares were passed to their beneficiaries and the executors handled the administration of the estate.
Displaying further evidence of his rift with his wife, Dickens’ record shows that his wife’s sister, Georgina, and friend, John Forster, were the executors. View this beautifully handwritten original document here:
Charles Dickens' Great Western Railway Shareholders Index record - click to enlarge
We hope you enjoyed discovering what the records on findmypast.co.uk reveal about Charles Dickens’ life.