Yorkshire Day is held on 1 August every year and is a celebration of the culture and history of the county. We’re getting in the spirit here at findmypast.co.uk and have found some lovely Yorkshire examples in our records.

First up is the family history of the newest member of the royal family, Mike Tindall. Tindall married Zara Phillips, the Queen’s granddaughter, on Saturday at Canongate Kirk in Edinburgh.

As with the marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton earlier this year, this weekend’s royal wedding was an example of a royal marrying out of the upper classes. We can see Mike Tindall’s working class Yorkshire roots by taking a look at his ancestors in the 1911 census.

Mike Tindall's maternal family - please click to enlarge

Tindall’s maternal great-great-grandparents Charles and Fanny Machell were living in Yeadon in the West Riding of Yorkshire at the time of the 1911 census. Their census form reveals that Fanny had given birth to a staggering 13 children, three of whom had sadly died by 1911.

Charles and Fanny were living with nine of their surviving offspring in 1911. Charles was employed as a stone mason at a stone quarry, while the eldest of the Machell brood were employed as nippers, woolliers and twisters at a cloth mill. The census form also reveals that their property only had five rooms – rather small for such a large family!

Mike Tindall's paternal family - please click to enlarge

Tindall’s paternal great-great-grandmother Sarah Ann Tindall can also be spotted in the 1911 census. She was a widow at this point in her life and was living in Skipton in the West Riding of Yorkshire with two daughters, three grandsons and a boarder.

Sarah’s daughters, Mike Tindall’s great-great-aunts, appear to have been rather entrepreneurial. Each was recorded as being a ‘joint restaurant proprietress’ in the 1911 census.

Check back later today for another Yorkshire example from our records and enjoy Yorkshire day!

The newest addition to the Beckham clan, Harper Seven Beckham, was born yesterday to much speculation about the inspiration behind the little girl’s name. Findmypast.co.uk has searched through the 1911 census and can reveal that baby Beckham is not the first to have been given the name Harper, though most people with this name 100 years ago were male.

We’ve found four female Harpers in the 1911 census, including fourteen-year-old Harper Lane. Harper was working as a Nurse and Housemaid at The Bank House in Royston, Hertfordshire – just 45 minutes away from where Victoria Beckham was born herself.

Harper Lane's 1911 census return - please click to enlarge

By comparison, there were 128 male Harpers in the 1911 census. It seems odd that after reportedly wanting a girl for so long, the Beckhams appear to have given their baby a traditionally male name.

What do you think of the Beckhams’ choice of name and have you found any ancestors named Harper?

Today sees the world premiere of the final Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (part two). It’s therefore very apt that this should also be the day that findmypast.co.uk discovers a wizard in the 1911 census!
John Watkins Holden had been born in Worcester but was lodging at a house in Bournemouth at the time of the 1911 census. Holden, aged 68, recorded his occupation as ‘Wizard of Ye Wicked World’, stating that he was working in the magic industry and that at this point in 1911, he was ‘on tour’. Amusingly, he also reveals that he was ‘very much married’ when asked about his marital status.

A wizard in the 1911 census - please click to enlarge

Our wizard can be found in a number of the earlier censuses too. He was working as a Conjuror when the 1891 census was taken and was listed as ‘The Queen’s Magician & Wizard of the Wicked World’ in the 1881 census.

Have you made any interesting discoveries while searching the 1911 census? Give it a go now and see which ancestors you can conjure up!

We’ve unearthed Adolf Hitler’s half brother in our 1911 census records and his census return makes for fascinating reading.

Alois Hitler Jr had a troubled childhood and is said to have had a rocky relationship with his parents. In 1910 he met Bridget Elizabeth Dowling in Dublin. Alois and Bridget eloped to London and married in June 1910.

Alois’ 1911 census return shows him and Bridget living at 102 Upper Stanhope Street, Toxteth Park, Liverpool. This house is reported to have been destroyed in a German air-raid on Liverpool in 1942.

The form appears to include lots of different styles of handwriting, so we can assume that the boarders in the house each filled in their own details. We believe, therefore, that Alois completed his family’s details, especially when we look at his son William’s entry. Above ‘boarder’, which has been crossed out and re-written underneath, Alois has referred to William as ’sohn’, the German word for ’son’:

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Alois has recorded a different name on the census return: Anton. Bridget has also recorded a different name: Cissie Hitler. We can see that the first recording of her name is crossed out on the form but the name ‘Cissie Dowling’ is still clearly visible - having married less than one year earlier, it seems Bridget was still adjusting to her new married name.

We can also gather from the census form that Alois was born in Austria. At the time of the 1911 census he was working as a ‘Chef waiter’ in a Lyons cafe. This is particularly interesting as Lyons was a Jewish company, leading us to wonder if Alois’ views differed drastically to those of his infamous brother.

This census return is just one example of the rich detail the 1911 census can provide. We’d love to hear about any interesting or unusual facts you’ve found while searching the 1911 census - post your story underneath this blog.

This month, our expert family historian answers two questions from Lucy Lawer:

1. My grandma Ethel Ann SINGLETON was born 1909, she is not on the 1911 census. I have looked for this family so hard over 20 years. John SINGLETON and Hannah HOWARTH are her parents, my mum said they had a large family. Where should I look now?

2. My Dad Zygmunt BORYS who has recently passed away, was born 1926 Gdansk Poland. He was brought through the French underground to England. Then sent to Scotland to join the Polish ranks up there, he was then sent out to Italy to fight. If he was part of British army then I can’t find his records and have no clue where to look next. He told me he got a demob suit and lived in London for a time. I am interested how he became a British citizen. Any help would be so appreciated.

Our expert, Steve Rigden, answers:

“Thanks for your enquiry.

In my experience, the proportion of the population missing from the 1911 census is much smaller than for earlier census years and normally I would expect to find someone with a little digging. I see from the marriage indexes that John Singleton married Hannah Howorth in the December quarter of 1904 in Preston registration district. Using this, I was then able to find the 1911 census return, which was completed by John himself. The census shows John, Hannah, your grandmother Ethel and her brother John junior living at Charnock Moss, Penwortham near Preston. John was born in Penwortham and his wife and children in Preston itself. If you go to the census reference search you can retrieve the image by selecting 1911 (RG14) in the Census dropdown list, inserting Piece no 25236, and then using RD no 476, SD no 1, ED no 3 and schedule no 180.

With this information, you should be able to work back in time, finding John and Hannah on the 1901 and earlier censuses.

For example, if John was aged 35 in 1911, he would have been born circa 1875/76. Searching on the 1901 census, you then find John Singleton aged 25, born Penwortham, residing in Charnock Moss with his parents John and Sarah A Singleton and their large family (reference RG13 piece 3942 folio 54 page 26).

Similarly, we can find Hannah, who was aged 26 in 1911 and therefore born circa 1884/85. Searching on the 1901 census, you then find Hannah Howarth aged 16, born Preston, residing in Newton Street, Preston with her parents John and Elizabeth Howarth and a couple of siblings (reference RG13 piece 3945 folio 118 page 38).

Incidentally, if you wish to look for brothers and sisters of Ethel Ann Singleton born after 1911, you can do this using the birth search. Search under Singleton with mother’s maiden name Howorth and repeat under Howarth, selecting dates from 1911 to, say, 1925. If you know that the family stayed in Preston district, or at least in Lancashire, you can also safely select the right geographical parameters for your search. This search finds possible siblings named Ellen, Fred, Annie and Cecilia.

As for your father, many Poles fought in the British armed forces during WW2, notably in the air force, in which they played a key role. There are few digitised online records for Poles serving in the British forces during WW2. However, as a child of a soldier serving after 1920, you should be able to obtain a copy of his service records from the MOD by going to their Veterans UK website and then following the relevant links.

Good luck with your research!”

If you’d like to send your question to our experts, please register or opt to receive newsletters in My Account. Unfortunately our experts only have time to answer a few queries each month. If yours wasn’t answered this time, you could be lucky next month.

Our resident expert Stephen Rigden, pictured below, answers your queries.

From Helen Conway-Blake in Denmark:

‘I hope you can help. My husband’s mother was born around 1907. She died on 8 April 1951 and we have her death certificate, which says that she was 44 when she died.

Her name was Vera Nellie May Slater. When she died, she was married to William George Udall - they got married in 1939. Vera died at 31 Copse Hill, Wimbledon; we think this is a hospital. My husband was only 10 years old when she died and he never knew where she was buried.

Vera had two sisters. Peggy (probably Margaret) Slater and Sissy (we don’t know her real name). Sissy married a Lovegrove and they had a daughter. We don’t know if she is still alive.

We cannot find my husband’s mother’s family anywhere. We cannot find what town/city his mother was born in and can find nothing about her sisters or parents. If you can help us we would be most grateful.’

Stephen says:

‘Thanks for your enquiry. It’s hard to know what to suggest without knowing what you have tried already. The following suggestion is what I would do were I in your shoes, starting from scratch.

Firstly, if you do not have it already, you should purchase a copy of the 1939 marriage certificate. You can do this online at the General Register Office website. The statutory fee is £9.25 at present. The purpose of getting the marriage certificate is to a) find out Vera’s age at marriage in case this suggests a different year of birth to that calculated from the recorded age at death; b) find out the name of her father and his occupation; and c) see if any of the witnesses to the marriage are the known siblings or other family.

I have looked up the marriage entry in the marriage indexes on findmypast.co.uk and her name at marriage was Vera May Slater (without Nellie as a middle name). The only individual of this name of the right era in the birth indexes for England & Wales is one born in 1904 in West Ham registration district. This, however, may not be correct (the birth is earlier than you are expecting) and it is possible that she was born as plain Vera or plain May or even as ‘female’, i.e., unnamed at registration of birth. This is not unusual and is not simply synonymous with death in early infancy.

Once you have the certificate, and assuming that it names Vera’s father and confirms that she was born circa 1906/07 or otherwise before 1911, you should search the 1911 census of England & Wales. First, look for her in combination with her father using the advanced person search. If you cannot find her with him, then try looking for him alone using as base information a year of birth at least 16 years before Vera’s and his occupation as per the marriage certificate of Vera.

Should you find Vera on the 1911 census, which will give her place of birth, you can then search for her birth in the birth indexes for England & Wales (or elsewhere if the census suggests she was born outside England). From there you can proceed with systematic step-by-step research.

As mentioned above, I do not know what you have done to date. It is likely, however, that the negative outcome of all your searches suggests a perhaps less than straightforward family structure. Vera and her sisters may have been born under a different last name, for example, before their mother married a Mr Slater, i.e., he could be their step-father. This would be one possible explanation why you cannot find records under the name Slater. Or the two known sisters could be half-sisters with a different maiden last name. Or Mr Slater could have been the foster parent of the three girls. Or they could have been born in Scotland or elsewhere beyond England & Wales. So there are various permutations to consider. The best way forward in problematic cases like this will almost invariably be through the kind of methodical systematic approach sketched out earlier.’

If you’d like to send your question to our experts, please register or opt to receive newsletters in My Account. Unfortunately our experts only have time to answer a few queries each month. If yours wasn’t answered this time, you could be lucky next month!

Following our look at The People newspaper from 1911 census day, we’ve turned our attention to The Times from 3 April 1911 - the day after the 1911 census was taken.

In an article called ‘The Taking of the Census’, the newspaper describes the royal household’s completion of the 1911 census. It reports that the royal family ‘set an excellent example in the careful and accurate filling up of the Census schedules.’ Not all the credit should go to the royals themselves, however, as the article goes on to say, ‘the Royal Family did not supply the details personally, but the necessary particulars were carefully compiled and returned on their behalf.’

Looking at a very different section of society, the article then focuses on how homeless people were recorded in the 1911 census. It reports that the Salvation Army walked the streets of London on census night ‘to gather men in from the highways for food and rest and enumeration and classification.’

Regent’s Hall was ‘prepared for some hundreds of wanderers’ and, although midnight was given as the official opening time, ‘an hour earlier scores of men, shabby in appearance and too poor to pay for a bed in the cheapest “doss-house,” had lined up on the pavement in front of the Westminster shelter.’ It’s easy to understand the incentive for these men to be included in the census: after being enumerated, each man received soup and bread and a place to sleep until 4am when they were sent back to the streets with ‘two big hunches of bread and margarine’.

The police had orders to take a census of anyone they found living on the streets on census night but the Salvation Army’s work had ‘practically cleared the streets of its usual nomads’. We discovered 10 homeless men who were recorded in the 1911 census as being ‘found in open air’:

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In another article in the same newspaper, ‘A Last Word on the Census’, The Times poignantly comments: ‘We are all, by faithfully writing a line or two in the great Book of the Nation, helping each other; and, to an extent and in ways in which we can now imperfectly realize we are also helping ages to come.’ We couldn’t have put it better ourselves!

In the lead up to the 2011 census on Sunday 27 March, we’ve been looking at The People newspaper from Sunday 2 April 1911 - the day that the 1911 census was taken.

In an article named ‘Numbering Nobs’, the paper informs readers about the different census questions, the problems they could pose and offers tips on completing the form.

Directed at the head of the household, the article stresses the importance of filling in all the questions: ‘any evasion is treated with the severest penalties’. Slightly menacingly, the paper goes on to state that, ‘No one, however great or however insignificant, can escape the census’.

On the issue of how to approach potentially sensitive questions when filling in the census, the article uses the example of a cook who is separated from her husband. The head of the household is advised to ‘postpone his questions till after dinner - otherwise the dinner may be spoiled.’

Here you can see a 1911 census return which suggests that the head of this household didn’t read The People’s advice on how to fill in the form:

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The article also mentions the suffragettes, saying ‘the avowed determination of the suffragists to withhold all information about themselves is likely to lead to considerable friction in some quarters.’ It goes on to say that ‘the more hardy’ protesters would probably spend the night in Trafalgar Square. We know all about one famous suffragette’s whereabouts on census night - Emily Davison spent the night hiding in the House of Commons.

It’s fascinating to read about how the nation prepared for the 1911 census. Perhaps in another 100 years, future generations will be doing the same with the 2011 census.

This morning’s Woman’s Hour on BBC Radio 4 featured a piece on suffragette Emily Davison in the 1911 census. Many people don’t know that Emily hid in the House of Commons on the night of the 1911 census so she could be enumerated within Westminster.

Last year, we made the fascinating discovery of the census returns that prove this. They reveal Emily’s hiding place and the errors in recording which kept these documents secret for so long.

Listen to Jane Garvey on Radio 4 as she meets historians Jill Liddington and Elizabeth Crawford to find out more.

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the execution of Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen.

American homeopathic physician Crippen was hanged in Pentonville Prison, London, after being found guilty of murdering his wife Corrine.

We found Crippen and Corrine (’Cora’) in our census records - here you can see them in the 1901 census living at 34 Store Street, St Giles In The Fields and St George Bloomsbury:

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Cora ‘disappeared’ after a party at their home on 31 January 1910. Crippen first claimed she had returned to America, then changed his story to say that Cora had died and had been cremated in California. Following these suspicious claims, Chief Inspector Walter Dew interviewed Crippen and searched his house but found no evidence of anything unusual. Crippen wasn’t aware of this and fled to Brussels with his new lover Ethel ‘Le Neve’ Neave.

The next day they went to Antwerp and boarded the Canadian Pacific liner SS Montrose, bound for Canada. Unbeknown to Crippen, the captain of the ship, Henry George Kendall, recognised him and Neave (despite Neave disguising herself as a boy) and ordered a wireless telegram to be sent to the British authorities. Chief Inspector Dew, who had been investigating Crippen, then boarded the ship as it docked in Canada and arrested Crippen for murder. Crippen was the first ever criminal to be caught using wireless technology.

We found Chief Inspector Dew on the 1911 census, living with his wife and four children in Wandsworth, London:

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We also discovered Captain Kendall in our passenger lists. Crippen doesn’t appear on this record as he boarded the ship in Antwerp:

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Read more about Crippen’s fascinating and macabre story.