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Ask the expert – workhouse birth

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

From Val Dunne:

‘The 1871 census shows my great-grandfather, aged 10, as a pauper, living in a house in Everton with his sister, aged 16, a servant, and the head of the house who was no relation. I am unable to find birth certificates for both brother and sister. If they were born in a workhouse, would they be on the national register of births?’

Stephen says:

‘Hi Val,

The short answer to your question is ‘yes’. The indexes to the civil registers of birth should be complete from July 1837 to date. A longer answer is ‘yes in theory, but not necessarily in practice’. Despite the threat of fines, registration was not made completely mandatory until 1875. Before that date, there was under-registration, due to a variety of factors: lack of awareness of the requirement, indifference, wariness of authority, non-compliance and transient family lifestyle, for example.

In addition to this, there is an inevitable small-percentage loss of actually recorded events due to clerical error, e.g., when copying an entry from the original district register of births into the quarterly copy prepared for the General Register Office, or accidentally turning two pages instead of one and missing out an entire spread of entries, or perhaps loss of entire registers in transit between the district level and the central office. There are also more contemporary hazards – for example, pages inadvertently not microfilmed and, therefore, not digitised for the online versions with which most of us are familiar these days, and entries that transcribers have mis-indexed (although this is unlikely to apply in your case, with your two missing entries).

Estimates of under-registration of birth vary, and perhaps can be exaggerated – the level will always be uncertain and unknowable. Even if the level never topped, say, 7%, this would still represent a lot of missing births (and potential genealogical brick walls!). In the very earliest years, to maybe the mid-1840s, one can see from comparing the civil registers with parish registers that some entries in the latter do not appear in the former. The reverse is also true of course, because the parish registers of the established church by their very nature exclude Catholics, Non-Conformists, Jews and others.

For certain districts, one sometimes also notices an unusually high number of entries indexed as ‘male’ or ‘female’ in the civil births (i.e. unnamed at registration) which bear names in the parish registers (i.e. because the child is baptised and christened). Don’t forget to consider these, just in case (they don’t necessarily denote an infant death).

Your great-grandfather would have been born circa 1860/61, by which time one would expect levels of under-recording to have fallen, although clearly not sufficiently for the state, as of course it acted to make registration compulsory from 1875. Moreover, one would definitely expect workhouse births to have been registered. Separate workhouse birth registers existed, at least for some institutions, and one would assume that these were copied to the central authorities in the normal way.

It is also worth remarking that while some families were born into poverty and never escaped it, others could fall upon hard times with alarming speed – in the mid-19th century there was no real equivalent of the modern welfare state. Just because your great-grandfather was a pauper in 1871, therefore, it doesn’t mean that he would have been born into poverty circa 1860/61.

There are other reasons why you might not be able to find his birth – you don’t give any specifics, so I can only speculate, but here are some possibilities: he may have been born outwith England & Wales (e.g., Ireland, or Isle of Man); he may have been registered under a variant of his name; he may have been born illegitimately and his birth registered under his mother’s name; or he may have been born legitimately, lost his father to premature death and taken the surname of a step-father after a remarriage of his mother; or he may have been informally fostered and taken the name of the family in whose care he was placed. Note that each of these possibilities could equally apply to the sister that you mentioned.’

If you’d like to send your question to Stephen, please register or opt to receive newsletters in ‘my account’. Stephen only has time to answer a couple of queries each month but if yours wasn’t answered this time, you could be lucky next month!

Famous family trees: Theresa May

Welcome to the latest blog in our ‘famous family trees’ series. In this blog series, experienced family historian, Roy Stockdill, investigates the family histories of the famous, both living and dead. Politician Theresa May is the subject of Roy’s powers of deduction this month.

Theresa May (Image courtesy of the Home Office)

Politics and power often run in families and dynasties, but I could find nothing in the ancestry of Theresa May to suggest that she would become the most powerful female politician in Britain as Home Secretary. Seen by some as a possible successor to David Cameron as Tory leader, she has said she wanted to be an MP ever since she was 12 years old, an ambition in which she was encouraged by her mother. Her father however, was an Anglican clergyman and kept his political views to himself. Some of Cameron’s Cabinet are regarded as ‘posh’ and ‘old school tie’. But there was no silver spoon for Theresa May. After education at a state primary school, convent girls’ school and a state comprehensive, she read geography at Oxford University, graduating in 1977, became a London borough Councillor and got into Parliament for Maidenhead after twice losing in Labour seats.

In researching her family background, I discovered that both of Theresa May’s grandmothers were in domestic service as young women and that she had a great-grandfather who was a butler – so her roots are very much downstairs rather than upstairs. She was born Theresa Mary Brasier on 1 October 1956 in Eastbourne, Sussex, where her father, the Rev Hubert Brasier, was chaplain to a Church of England hospital. Her mother was the exotically-named Zaidee Mary Brasier, formerly Barnes. The name Zaidee is of Middle East origins. The Home Secretary lost both parents just a few years after leaving university and marrying her husband, Philip May, in 1980. The Rev Hubert Brasier, who became vicar of two Oxfordshire parishes, was killed in a car crash in 1981 and his wife Zaidee Brasier, born in 1928, died the following year, aged only 54.

Theresa May’s parents married at St Giles’ Parish Church, Reading, Berkshire, on 16 June 1955, Hubert Brasier being then 37, a bachelor and a Clerk in Holy Orders, his address being the Chaplain’s House, All Saints Hospital, Eastbourne. Zaidee Mary Barnes was 26, a spinster, of 156, Southampton Street, Reading.  The bridegroom’s father was Tom Brasier, deceased, and the bride’s father was Reginald James Barnes, traveller. Hubert Brasier was born on 20 August 1917 at 61 Clonmore Street, Southfields, Wandsworth, London, son of Tom Brasier, then a clerk, and Amy Margaret Brasier, formerly Patterson. They were the paternal grandparents of Theresa May and their marriage certificate shows they were married at The Independent Chapel, West Street, Fareham, Hampshire, on 25 September 1909.

Tom (not Thomas) Brasier, was a bachelor of 29 and a sergeant in the King’s Royal Rifles, based at the Rifle Depot at Winchester. His father was shown as James Brasier, builder. Tom Brasier’s wife was Amy Margaret Patterson, aged 31, spinster – she was two years older than her husband when they married – of Ada Villas, Southampton Road, Fareham, and her father was David Patterson, deceased, a house steward. Tom Brasier, Theresa May’s grandfather, was a professional soldier and in the 1911 census he is found in the Overseas Military section as a sergeant in the 4^th Battalion of the King’s Royal Rifles based in Chakrata, United Provinces, India.  His birth place is shown as Wimbledon, Surrey.

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His wife Amy appears on another page in the same barracks, with the same reference, under ‘Return of wives and children of Officers and Soldiers’, along with a 6-months old son called James, born at Chakrata. However, Amy’s age was either seriously misrecorded or she lied about it, for she appears as being 24 when in fact she was almost 10 years older! Amy’s birth place was shown as Plaistow, Essex. The GRO birth indexes confirm that Amy Margaret Patterson was born in 1878, while her husband was born in 1880. Tom Brasier became a sergeant-major in the King’s Royal Rifles and survived World War I, dying at Wandsworth in 1951, aged 71. Amy Brasier died in 1967 at Oxford, aged 88.

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I couldn’t find Tom in the 1901 census – possibly, as a full-time regular soldier, he was away in South Africa fighting in the Second Boer War. But Amy Patterson, Theresa May’s paternal grandmother, then aged 22 and unmarried, was in domestic service as a parlour maid at 40 Lansdowne Road, Kensington, London, one of four servants in the household of a 65-year-old widow called Caroline Henderson from Liverpool, Lancashire, living on her own means, with two single daughters of 36 and 29.

I also looked at records of the Home Secretary’s maternal grandparents, Reginald James Barnes and Violet Jenny Welland, who were married at Reading in 1917. In 1901 Violet was only seven and with her parents in Reading, but in the census of 1911 she too was in domestic service at 18 Redlands Road, Reading in the household of a university physics professor from Australia called Walter Geoffrey Duffield, aged 31, and his wife Doris, 29. Though only 17, Violet was employed as a nurse and I assume she was looking after the Duffield’s 11-months-old daughter Joan.

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Returning to Theresa May’s direct male line, her paternal ancestors, the Brasiers, lived at Wimbledon for many years but in earlier generations were carpenters and builders in the picturesque Surrey village of Limpsfield, near Oxted, at the foot of the North Downs. I found her grandfather, Tom Brasier, in the 1891 census as a scholar aged 10, living with his parents, James and Sarah J

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Brasier, and five siblings at 6 Strachan Place, Crooked Billett, Wimbledon, on the edge of Wimbledon Common. James Brasier was aged 50, a builder, born at Limpsfield, while his wife Sarah was also 50, born at Rodmell, Sussex. Their children were: Richard, 22, a joiner; Jane, 21, dress milliner; Charles, 17, joiner; Maud, 12, scholar, Tom, 10, scholar; and Anne, 8, scholar. All the children were born at Wimbledon.

James Brasier and Sarah Jane Barnes, Theresa May’s great-grandparents, were married in 1865 at Lewes, Sussex, registration district, probably in the bride’s parish of Rodmell. By the 1871 census they were already in Wimbledon at Belvedere Cottages, St Marys. James was a carpenter and they had two children, Richard E Brasier, 2, and Jane Ann Clara Brasier, 1. in 1881 their family had grown to six and they were at 8 Chesnut Place, Crooked Billet, Wimbledon. The children were: Richard Edward 12; Jane Ann 10; James Charles 9; Charles George 7; Maud Eliza 3; and Tom 1.

James and Sarah Jane Brasier were found at the same address as they had been at in 1891, 6 Strachan Place, Wimbledon,  in the censuses of 1901 and 1911. By the latter they had been married for 45 years and the number of children born to the couple was eight, of whom seven were still living, but only one daughter, Annie Emeline, 28, by then remained with them. As the birth place of James Brasier was consistently given in every census as Limpsfield, Surrey, I looked for him in 1861. I found him quite easily living with his parents, Richard and Ann Brasier, who were the great-great-grandparents of Theresa May. They were found at Limpsfield, with the address given only as ‘Village’.

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Richard Brasier was aged 49 and a master carpenter, his wife Ann being the same age, both shown as being born in 1812. Richard’s birth place, however, was given as Greenwich, Kent, and his wife’s as Walton-upon-Thames, Surrey. They had six children, all born at Limpsfield: James 20, a carpenter journeyman; Maria 17; Charles 15, also a carpenter journeyman; Emmeline 12; John 10; and Emma 8. Ten years earlier in 1851 the family were also in Limpsfield with Richard again shown as a master carpenter and his wife Ann as an infant school mistress. Four of the children were as shown in 1861 but there was an older daughter, Clara Amelia, 12, and Emma had not yet been born.

In the 1841 census I found what were almost certainly two generations of the Brasier family at Limpsfield, living close together and enumerated on the same page. Richard, 30, and Ann Brasier, 25, were there with four children: Richard 8, Charlotte 4, Clara 2 and James 8 months. Remember that in 1841 the ages of adults over 15 were usually – but not always – reduced to the nearest lower multiple of five. Apparently just a couple of doors away were James Brasier, 58, a carpenter, Ann Brasier, 59, and three children, Charlotte 21, Emma 15 and Mary Ann 5. Because of the considerable difference in age, it seems possible that James and Ann Brasier were Richard’s parents, who were said to have been born in 1783 and 1782 respectively. If I surmise correctly, they were the 3x-great-grandparents of Theresa May.

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In online trawling I found a reference to a house called Brasier’s Cottage in Limpsfield, which still stands today, and a mention that the family had been in Limpsfield since about 1690. However, I bore in mind that Richard Brasier had given his birth place not as Limpsfield but as Greenwich, Kent, and I found in the International Genealogical Index (IGI) a marriage at St Mary’s, Lewisham, Kent, on 15 August 1831, of Richard Brasier to Ann Needle. I couldn’t find a baptism for Richard but I found at Walton-on-Thames on 6 July 1809 the birth of Ann Needles [sic], daughter of Thomas and Mary. Also on the IGI is the baptism of James Brasier at Oxted – very close to Limpsfield – on 22 September 1782, son of Richard Brasier and Ann, who could have been the 4x-great-grandparents of Theresa May.

Finally, in the brief space left to me, I’d like to return to my earlier mention that the Home Secretary had a great-grandfather who was a butler in service. He was the father of her paternal grandmother, Amy Margaret Patterson, and he was called David Paterson or Patterson (both versions appear in records). I researched his antecedents at the ScotlandsPeople website and discovered he was born in 1852 in a former mining village called Kennet in Clackmannanshire, on the north bank of the River Forth, the son of Alexander Paterson, labourer, and Margaret Watson. He married Jane Poole, who was from Southwark, London, in Glasgow in 1875 and the couple moved to England, where David was found as a butler at Wimbledon in the censuses of 1881 and 1891, living not far from James Brasier and his family. David Patterson died at only 42 in 1893 and his wife was left a widow. It seems likely it was in Wimbledon that Theresa May’s paternal grandparents, Tom Brasier and Amy Margaret Patterson, first met. Little could Amy, a butler’s daughter and a humble parlour maid, have dreamed in her ‘Upstairs Downstairs’ world, that one day her granddaughter would become the Home Secretary and one of the most powerful women in Britain!

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.

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.

Olympics baby found in birth records

The London 2012 Olympics are now exactly one year away, with the opening ceremony taking place on 27th July 2012. In celebration of this, we’ve had a look through our birth records and have found one British child born with the surname Olympics.

Michael Olympics was born – quite fittingly – in Athens, Greece. Athens was the host of the first modern Olympic Games in 1896.

Michael Olympics' birth record - please click to see full page

Although he wasn’t born in the UK, Michael’s birth is listed because it was registered with the British Consul. The General Register Office index of British nationals born overseas 1818 – 2005 is available at findmypast.co.uk and can be searched at the same time as births registered in England and Wales 1837 – 2006.

June newsletter competition winner

Congratulations to Jack Henderson who correctly answered that Ethel M Dublin’s maiden name was Rowley. He’s now the owner of Ian Maxwell’s ‘Your Irish Ancestors’.

But if you haven’t won there’s no need to be overcome with jealousy! You can enter this month’s newsletter competition to win a DVD, ‘Tracing your Great War Ancestors’.

Manage your account settings if you would like to receive the newsletter and are not yet doing so.

April newsletter competition winner

We are pleased to announce that the winner of the April newsletter competition prize, ‘Tracing Your Ancestors On The Internet’, is Rachel Andrews. We asked which registration district and county was film director Alfred Hitchcock born in. The answer is West Ham in Essex – well done for tracking him down, Rachel!

Do look out for our next competition which will appear in May’s newsletter.

A single search for all our births and marriages

Findmypast.co.uk has always had the most comprehensive England & Wales birth and marriage records – now we’ve added our exclusive additional records to create one simple search.

As well as England & Wales records, you can now search for your British ancestors’ births and marriages in our overseas, military and at sea records, some of which date back to 1761.

You won’t find a search this powerful including all these records anywhere else. It means that you can now find previously elusive births and marriages from a single search.

When you search for a birth record, one search will provide you with results from the following sets of records:

• England & Wales births 1837-2006
• British nationals born overseas 1818-2005
• British nationals born in the army 1761-2005
• British nationals born at sea 1854-1887

Below is an example of how your search results will look:

Note the wide variety of countries and places. Sort your results by country and place by clicking on each column heading.

We’ve given our marriage records the same treatment. Search once for your ancestors’ marriages in the following records:

• England & Wales marriages 1837-2005
• British nationals married overseas 1818-2005
• British nationals married in the army 1796-2005
• British nationals married at sea 1854-1908

We’re very close to completing our project to fully name index our death records. Once this is complete, we will combine all our death records into one search to finish the series.

Try our new search now to see how many ancestors you can find.

Ask the Expert – missing family

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!

Who Do You Think You Are? Rupert Penry-Jones in our records

Last night’s episode of Who Do You Think You Are saw actor Rupert Penry-Jones eager to learn more about his Indian heritage.

Rupert was born in 1970 and he is listed below in the fully indexed birth records on findmypast.co.uk:

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Rupert began his journey by speaking to his mother, Angela Thorne. Angela was born in 1939 in Karachi, India, which was part of British India. We found Angela in our overseas birth records, as shown below.

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For the first five years of her life, Angela’s father, William Thorne, was a doctor in the army. William commanded the 29th field ambulance unit as part of the Indian Army in World War Two. William died when Rupert was 12 and he wanted to learn more about his grandfather’s time in the Indian Army.

Rupert Penry-Jones (copyright Owen Benson)

William was posted to Italy from India and was involved in the Battle of Monte Cassino in 1943, one of World War Two’s most vicious battles. Rupert’s mother told him that William never talked about his experiences in the army, so Rupert travelled to Cassino to find out more.

Rupert met a soldier who served in the battle and paid tribute to how brave William’s medical unit was. William’s unit worked on the front line, treating over 1,500 casualties with no regard for their own safety. William stayed in Italy until 1945 and returned to India where he worked until 1971.

Still with no answer as to his Indian heritage, Rupert went on to investigate his great grandfather Theophilus Thorne. Rupert visited The British Library and discovered that Theophilus was a self made man who did well for himself, despite a humble upbringing.

Theophilus was born in Somerset and joined the army as a private when he was 18, leaving behind his job as a gardener. He arrived in India in 1881 when Queen Victoria was empress of India and the British Raj was at its height. At this time in India there were plenty of opportunities for young men to prosper. Theophilus quickly rose through the army ranks to become major and he looked after ceremonial and state camps. These camps were lavish places where India’s and Britain’s elite paid homage to each other. Rupert learnt that Theophilus was part of the 1911 Delhi Durbar, a mass assembly held in Delhi to commemorate the coronation of King George V and Queen Mary as Emperor and Empress of India.

Theophilus’ army service record lists his marriage to Sarah Jane Todd in 1885 – here you can see them both on the General Register Office Index of Army Marriages in findmypast.co.uk’s armed forces marriages 1818-1994:

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Rupert discovered Sarah Jane’s baptismal record which showed her parents to be Thomas Todd and Louisa Johnstone. They got married in 1866 in South India when Louisa was just 15.

Louisa’s father, Thomas Johnstone, first went to India in 1842 where he was a sergeant in the Indian army.

Rupert travelled to India to find out once and for all if he had true Indian blood. He discovered that Thomas was stationed in Allahabad in 1857 during the uprising in India, when the Indians were rebelling against the British and their western culture. Thomas was 38 at the time and fought to calm and control the rebellion. At this time his wife Louisa and their children were in South India out of harm’s way. Rupert read some of the letters Thomas had written to Louisa which portrayed him as a loving husband and father. In 1857 Louisa received a letter from a commanding officer telling her Thomas had died after falling victim to cholera.

After tracing back six generations of his family in India, Rupert found out that Louisa’s parents were John Smith and Susannah (no surname). Rupert went to Nagpore to find out more about Susannah. Susannah’s baptism record shows her as an ‘Indo Britain’. Susannah’s and John Smith’s marriage record shows her surname as Collum.

Rupert then discovered that Susannah was baptised in June 1817 and the baptismal record showed her parents as Samuel and Elizabeth Collum. Elizabeth was born in 1816 but Rupert was unclear as to whether she was a native Indian or an Anglo-Indian.

Rupert successfully traced his mother’s line back eight generations, spanning two centuries, but never really achieved clarity around the origin of his Indian ancestry.

Monty Don on Who Do You Think You Are?

Last night, Monty Don became the latest celebrity to get the Who Do You Think You Are? treatment.

Monty Don (copyright jo-h)

The episode focused on two branches of his family tree, his maternal Hodge and paternal Keiller lines.

One of the ancestors focused on was Monty’s great-grandmother, Charlotte Augusta Hodge. The programme revealed that Charlotte was one of nine children born to the Reverend Charles Hodge and his wife, Ann. Charlotte was left behind in England when her parents and four of her elder brothers emigrated to New Zealand in the 1850s.

While taking a look at the large Hodge family in the all-new fully searchable birth records this morning, findmypast.co.uk has discovered that there was actually a tenth child – Charlotte’s twin. The image below shows the record of Charlotte Augusta Hodge’s birth in East Retford, Nottinghamshire in the July / August / September quarter of 1846. Nine lines below Charlotte is an entry for a Harriet Vere Hodge, born in the same district.

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The death index for the same quarter of 1846 reveals that Charlotte’s twin died soon after her birth. Reverend Charles and Ann Hodge’s youngest child was born four years after this tragedy and was also named Harriet, presumably in memory of the child they had lost.

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This fresh information may help Monty understand why his great-great-grandmother, Ann Hodge initially emigrated to New Zealand without her husband and family in 1850. It was speculated last night that this showed a wish to escape from her husband. However, we feel that Ann’s emotional state following the loss of one child and the recent birth of another must have played some considerable part in her actions.

Please do let us know what you thought of last night’s episode and what you think Ann’s motivations may have been for leaving her family in 1850.