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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!

Ask the expert – mysterious Scottish ancestor

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

From Hilary Hillier:

‘I am having difficulty finding the birth record of my great-grandmother Lily Mary Bruce. Her name has been spelt various ways and I have a copy of her marriage certificate for 25 December 1875 in the parish of St Luke, Kentish Town in the county of Middlesex. On this certificate my great-grandmother’s name was spelt ‘Lillie Mary’ when she married Henry Thomas Hill and her age is stated as ‘full’. Her father is Edward Ernest Bruce.

I have found Lily’s residence in the 1901 census when her age is stated to be 48 years and her birth place Scotland. Her address at this time is the parish of Clapham, borough of Battersea. I also have found Lily in the 1911 census aged 59 years in the registration district of Wandsworth.

Her name on both censuses is spelt as ‘Lily Mary Hill’ with birthplace as Edinburgh, Scotland. I have spent many hours searching birth records in Scotland and the UK using Lillie Mary Bruce, and Lily Mary Bruce and even Mary Bruce, with no success.

I did find a Mary Bruce in 1851 Scotland census, however, aged 0 with birthplace as Edinburgh in the county of Fife. This record did not give other household members, however, so I am unsure if this is my great-grandmother.

I’m hoping you can shed some light on this for me.’

Stephen says:

‘Thanks for your email about your great-grandmother. I’ve made some searches myself and can appreciate the difficulties you have experienced and can add only a little to your knowledge of the family.

Firstly, I infer from your email that you have found the family on the 1901 and 1911 censuses, but not the 1881 and 1891 censuses – as Lily married in 1875, one should expect to find those two earlier census returns too.

Here are the references for the two census returns in question:

• 1881: RG11 piece 649 folio 73 page 42
• 1891: RG12 piece 424 folio 34 page 5

You can go straight to the images in question by inputting these citations at findmypast.co.uk’s census reference search page. If you don’t already do so, I would encourage you to keep census references such as these, so you can return to the images easily in future.

In 1891, the surname has seemingly been written as ‘Nill’ but it is clearly the same Hill family – perhaps the enumerator had trouble reading the original householder’s return that he used when compiling his returns, or perhaps what appears to be an N is simply a hastily and badly written H.

In both years, the family was residing in Battersea. Both returns agree with the age data from the 1901 and 1911 censuses, i.e., indicating that Lily was born circa 1851-53 in Scotland. The description ‘full age’ at her marriage in 1875 means she was at least 21 years old and, therefore, born before 1854.

What is interesting about the 1881 census is that your great-grandmother’s name is given not as Lily but as Elizabeth. It is not commonly known that Lily is a hypocoristic, or familiar form, of Elizabeth – and, by the way, Isabella is also a cognate of Elizabeth. This means you should consider not just Lily and its multiple variations, but also Elizabeth and its own body of diminutives and variants.

The other comment I would make is that Edward Ernest Bruce does not sound like a typically Scottish combination of names – to me, the forenames shout out that he was English, or of English parentage, which is not necessarily the same thing. Perhaps the family was from the north-east, or had Scottish connections, and your great-grandmother resided only temporarily in Scotland (or not at all, but thought she was, or liked to think she was), and was not born there.

Remember that all information on census returns is based upon that provided by the individuals concerned, and accepted and recorded in good faith by the census enumerators – evidence was never part of the system. This means that much mistaken information is embedded in every census return – in the case of place of birth, people might not know where they were born, or may have forgotten, or simply given the nearest recognisable place rather than the fine detail.

Unfortunately, however, this doesn’t seem to open up as many leads as one might hope – I have checked on both findmypast.co.uk and ScotlandsPeople and not found obvious references to your great-grandmother in the 1871 or 1861 censuses for England or Scotland, nor in birth indexes for England or baptisms for Scotland (civil registration in Scotland did not commence until 1855, after she was born).

On ScotlandsPeople it is possible to search for baptisms by name of father, and this shows only one Edward Bruce having children in Scotland in the 1840s and up to 1854 – he appears to have been Edward Wilson Bruce, a hatter from Newcastle upon Tyne who married in Edinburgh in 1837. He had a number of daughters but not, unfortunately, an Elizabeth or Lily at around the right date. This negative outcome may also lean towards your ancestor not having been born in Scotland.

Finally, as I have mentioned in several earlier responses to questions, when you are baffled by not finding a birth/baptism at the expected date and place, you have to consider all the possible permutations – not just whether the person was born at a different location but, for example, perhaps under a different surname. Maybe she was born illegitimately and is registered under her mother’s name, or maybe she was born legitimately but lost her father at a young age and took the name of her step-father after her mother remarried.

Also, even the most casual glimpse at such records as are contained within our Crime, Prisons & Punishment 1770-1934 collection, launched in February this year, shows the astonishing variety of aliases which people used, for all sorts of reasons – including, of course, criminal ones. I’m not suggesting for one second that your great-grandmother was deeply involved in Battersea’s criminal underworld, of course! Remember, however, that the actions of parents are visited on their issue – if an ancestor changes his or her name, that name change most probably will cascade down through the generations of their descendants, and of course this is one of the major blocks which researchers will come across when researching their family trees back in time.

Good luck with your research, Hilary, and do let us know if you make any breakthroughs. Perhaps there is even a reader out there who will see this and recognise that you share a common ancestor.’

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!

Ask the expert – father or uncle?

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

From David Mirsch:

‘I’m having trouble tracking one of my ancestors through English records. Specifically, she is listed on a marriage certificate in 1881 with her father, but she is never associated with this man in any census records. She is, however, shown on census records with his brother.

I am certain the marriage certificate is hers since her husband has a very unusual name and is my ancestor. She was born in late 1860 but the marriage certificate lists her age as 20. She was also several months pregnant at the time of the marriage. My question is this: with marriage laws being what they were at that time, if her real father was against her marriage and refused to approve it, could she have substituted her uncle as her ‘father’ on the marriage certificate? Her age would seem to indicate the need for parental approval. Have you heard of anything similar to this?

Thanks for any help you can offer. It is greatly appreciated.’

Stephen says:

‘Dear David,

I believe that pretty much anything went, and that you will have to consider all possibilities in your research. Certainly, if aged 20 in 1881, legally she was a minor and not ‘of full age’ but the system of civil registration of marriages was essentially trust-based (and, therefore, open to both error and fraud).

She would have been asked for her age, but she wouldn’t have needed to provide a birth or baptism certificate. She would have been asked for the identity of her father, but again without any evidence being sought by the registrar. In essence, the registry clerk would take and record in good faith the declarations of the would-be bride and groom, unless there was a reason or suspicion to do otherwise.

In my experience of mid- and late-19th century marriage certificates, it is not at all uncommon to see recorded, in lieu of the birth father, a step-father, an uncle, a fictitious father, a blank or a line when the father was estranged, and a blank or a line when the father was known to the bride or groom but had died (rather than the late father being recorded as, for example, ‘John Smith, deceased’ as he should have been).

Good luck with your research!’

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!

Ask the expert – missing merchant seaman

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

From Vera Baccino:

‘My question is: how can you trace someone if you cannot find a birth certificate? My grandfather James Wiseman was born in around 1882 and he lived in Liverpool, where I have two wedding certificates 1911 and 1914. His age, however, indicates he was born 1887. My mother says his father was a Polish or Russian Jew, so the name may have changed but I have searched the census and cannot find any trace of him.’

Stephen says:

‘Dear Vera,

Thanks for your email. The precipitate and excitable answer to your question would be to respond that maybe your grandfather Wiseman, or at least his father, was born as Weissman or Weismann, and anglicised his name. Weissman to Wiseman would be but a short hop. There certainly were Jewish Wiseman families on Merseyside – a quick look at the 1911 census shows families from Elisavetgrad (modern Kirovohrad) and Korets, both in Ukraine, for example.

Wiseman is a widely-distributed family name across the British Isles, however, and although some Wisemans are clearly Jewish in origin, one must be cautious – your ancestor may just as easily have come from Ireland or Scotland, or from the banks of the River Irwell in Lancashire, as from the Pale of Settlement in the former Russian Empire.

I see that James Wiseman married, firstly, Jane Seddon in 1911 in Liverpool and, secondly, Catherine McComish in 1914 in West Derby (for those readers who don’t know, West Derby has no connection with Derby or Derbyshire, but is the old registration district covering areas of Liverpool such as Croxteth and Kensington).

At the time of the 1911 census, his young family was residing with Joseph and Mary Soley – Mary was Jane Seddon’s sister – at 81 Braemar Street in Kirkdale. Actually, in the 1911 census, James has been struck out by a census clerk, on the strictly correct grounds that he was “at sea” on census night and only those resident overnight should be recorded on the form. His entry is still perfectly legible – he was aged 25, married, with the one child (Annie, probably an infant), a fireman (i.e. stoker, shovelling coal on a steamship), born in England and British.

Click to enlarge

As it was clear from the census that James was a mariner of some kind, next I looked at our collection of merchant seamen records. I found no fewer than five CR cards for him – these being a kind of ID card that merchant mariners carried. Two cards are CR1s, a further two cards are CR2s, but the best find is a CR10 card which includes a passport-style photograph – see the image on the right.

These cards give a multitude of information about his voyages on specific ships (identified largely by their official registration numbers), plus, for example, James’ height (he was only a touch over five foot in height) and a description of a fascinating tattoo (flag of all nations on his right forearm). One has to say that he doesn’t look Jewish (as far as it can be said that there is a definably Jewish look, although one could attribute this to him being, say, only half-Jewish).

His role on board ships seems to have varied between donkeyman, greaser and fireman. The CR10 card also gives an exact date and place of birth – 3 August 1882, Liverpool. Clearly, Liverpool is where James himself believed and/or claimed to be from, although there are other explanations, e.g., maybe he believed he was from Merseyside but actually moved there with his parents as an infant or young child, unremembered.

As you say, however, there is no apparent trace of this James Wiseman on the 1901 or 1891 census – nor under any of the various permutations of the Jewish surname Weis(s)man(n), Weiszman(n), Wiesman(n) etc. – and no obvious birth for him in 1882. A number of things could explain this, even if we leave to one side under-capturing of households in the census.

Firstly, of course – feeding into the Eastern European Jewish immigrant suggestion – he may not have yet arrived in England, or may be in the census but under an (unknown) original Ashkenazi Jewish name, as yet un-anglicised. A great many Jewish families arrived in Britain between 1901 and 1911, so this is a possibility. It would be time-consuming (if possible at all) to establish, however, unless he became naturalised. This was probably the course of action of only a minority of Jewish immigrants at this date, due to the expense and the dealing with the authorities that it involved.

Secondly, he may have been born outside England and Wales but still within the British Isles, i.e., in Ireland, Scotland or Isle of Man etc. Before you go considering research in the former Russian Empire, I think you need to look further into the possibilities elsewhere within the British Isles. Scottish birth, marriage and death records can be accessed on the ScotlandsPeople website. Basic Irish and Manx BMD indexes are also available online but there are no immediately obvious entries there and it is uncertain how complete the records are.

You might wish, therefore, to consider all these places, and even the Channel Islands, which provided a disproportionate number of British merchant marines. There are other possibilities, such as Wiseman being the name of his step-father, rather than birth father, and you may need to work through each possibility carefully in a process of elimination.

Good luck with the search, Vera!’

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!

Ask the expert – Peruvian Navy

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

From Bob Andrews:

‘On the marriage certificate of my great grandfather (George Thomas Andrews, married at Plymouth on 28 April 1867) his father’s (Thomas Ebenezer Andrews, born on 8 June 1833) occupation is recorded as ‘Engineer Peruvian Navy’. I have been unable to discover any details to support this fact. I would like to know if Royal Navy personnel were seconded to the Peruvian Navy in the 19th century. I have found George’s service with the Royal Navy but not his father Thomas Ebenezer Andrews. I have also been unable to find a death date for Thomas Ebenezer, although I suspect it to be between 1867 and 1871. I would be most grateful for any help on this subject.’

Stephen says:

‘Hi Bob,

Thanks for writing in with a copy of your great grandfather’s marriage certificate. His father’s stated occupation of ‘Engineer, Peruvian Navy’ is remarkable but isn’t perhaps as improbable as it may at first appear. I wouldn’t claim to have any knowledge of the history of the Peruvian navy, although the British signed various treaties with Peru following its 1821 independence from Spain – for example, in 1837 and 1850, touching upon commerce and navigation.

British commercial interests in Peru included mining and bird guano (used for fertilizer), and I expect also the construction of railways later in the 19th century. Moreover, the British Royal Navy and merchant marine were everywhere – take a look at the dropdown list of ports at which British (and other) ships were calling in an admittedly more modern period (1890-1960) in the outward-bound passenger lists of record series BT27.

I expect that your great-great-grandfather Thomas was in, or attached to, the Peruvian Navy for a relatively short period of time, perhaps restricted to all or part of the Chincha Islands War of 1865-1868 during which Peru (and Chile) fought against the Spaniards. I imagine it would not have been at all uncommon for British mariners to take up posts in the Peruvian Navy at that time.

Note that, strictly speaking, this would be in breach of the Foreign Enlistment Act. This was enacted in 1819 to stem the flow of British men eager to support the cause of South American nations against the Spanish – as Richard Cobden observed in 1863, the British ‘generally sympathise with everybody’s rebels but our own’. The 1819 Act was probably not rigorously observed, therefore, it is likely that Thomas was not officially seconded, but volunteered for political or financial reasons to serve with the Peruvian Navy.

Official Foreign Office correspondence of the time may refer to British subjects joining up with the Peruvians, or of the activities of the Peruvian Navy circa 1867. If you have the opportunity, and are sufficiently interested, you could try browsing through the surviving files that The National Archives holds in Kew – for example, pieces within FO177, FO 178 and FO855. TNA’s Catalogue entry for Home Office piece HO45/7800 also refers to material which may be of relevance and interest. Such materials would almost certainly only supply you with background context, however, and not with any details specifically about Thomas, so you would need to manage your own expectations.

By the way, if George was indeed 21 years at marriage in 1867, as the marriage certificate records, then he would have been born circa 1845/46 and, therefore, it seems unlikely that his father Thomas was born in 1833 as per your email – that would have made Thomas only 12 or 13 years of age when he fathered him.

Finally, for those readers who are not aware, the General Register Office’s overseas BMDs are online on findmypast.co.uk and include returns of births, marriages and deaths despatched to England from British embassies, high commissions and consulates in South America, as from elsewhere overseas. If you search the deaths for last name Smith and region South America, for example, you will receive three and a half pages of search results.’

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!

Ask the expert – military conundrum

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

From David Griffiths-Parry:

‘My late father started his family history research a year before he passed away, and I am carrying his work forward.

His grandfather Francis David Parry was born in Liverpool, Lancashire on 19 April 1883 and died in Liverpool Lancashire in 1958. I have traced Francis David Parry’s family back to 1846. Prior to this date, they lived somewhere in Wales.

The surname is often recorded as ‘Perry’ and this may have been due to handwriting/dialect. Throughout his life he was addressed as ‘David’, but also ‘Francis’. I have searched the military records on findmypast.co.uk to find Francis David Parry, but to no avail.

My father claimed that Francis David Parry served in the Merchant Service in 1903. During WWI he served for 4.5 years and was in active service in France for 3.25 years. His army number was 17344. He was wounded in 1916 and at some stage was deafened by gas. As far as I know, he was not a prisoner of war. I am guessing he enlisted for WWI in the city of Liverpool.

If you can offer any advice I would be most grateful. I am aware that I can obtain records from The National Archives at Kew.’

Stephen says:

‘Dear David,

Thanks for your question.

Firstly, I looked up your great grandfather on the Medal Index Cards (record series WO372) available online at The National Archives’ ‘Discovery’ – this contains the record sets formerly accessible via its Documents Online pages. This gives some interesting information about Private 17344 Francis D Parry of the 2nd Btn, South Lancashire Regiment.

He was entitled to the usual British War and Victory Medals but also, as an early volunteer, to the 1915 Star. From his regimental number, he would have joined up in mid or late March 1915. He first served abroad, in France, on 18 December 1915, as part of a draft to replace losses in the 2nd Btn (which was a pre-war regular battalion then fighting with the 75th Brigade in the 25th Division of the Expeditionary Force). He was discharged on 8 June 1919 in class Z, which means that he was liable to recall if hostilities resumed before the formal peace was concluded.

At the time of the 1911 census, as I am sure you know, he seems to have been a dock labourer for the stevedores Coggins & Griffith, who were based at 29 Roberts Street, down by the Liverpool docks. The fact that he names a specific firm may suggest that he was a permanent employee rather than casual labour.

Earlier, in 1901, he is a 17-year-old coal carrier working for his mother Jane, who is described as a coal dealer, in Circus Street (very close to his 1911 address in Downe Street). It is not inconceivable that he had a career in the merchant navy at some date between 1901 and 1911. Unfortunately, this is a period not covered by the large collection of merchant navy records on findmypast.co.uk, digitised from sources at The National Archives, which is divided between a mid-Victorian era series (1835 to 1857) and a largely inter-war period (1918-1941).

We also have merchant marine crew lists 1861-1913 on findmypast.co.uk, but these, although extensive, are by no means complete. I checked them but there is no apparent reference to the correct Francis or David Parry or Perry.

There is no reference to your ancestor in the Maritime History Archive’s online database, which covers seamen aboard Newfoundland-registered vessels engaged in the Atlantic trade. I don’t believe there are any other large collections of digitised merchant seamen records for the 1900s online at present, although this could well change in coming years. This means that, for now, you may well have to take a yomp down to Kew, or engage a professional researcher there to examine the available paper records at The National Archives, for example, crew lists in record series BT99 and BT100. I cannot stress enough how speculative this would be in the absence of name indexes.

You could also take a look at an online information sheet 43 called ‘Tracing Seafaring Ancestors in the Merchant Navy’ to be found on the Merseyside Maritime Museum’s website, which may help by way of background.

As matters stand at present, therefore, there appear to be no immediate ways forward for your research into Francis David Parry’s possible career in the merchant navy between the 1901 and 1911 census years – sorry!’

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!

Ask the expert – 'old school' research methods

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

From Linda Jones:

‘How can I trace a maiden name? I know my ancestor was called Mary Ann, born in Liverpool in 1838. She married a John Jones, born in Liverpool in 1842 and their first child was born in Crewe in 1868. Mary Ann and John Jones are very common names in Liverpool.

John was an engine tuner who eventually ended up in Swindon with his family. John’s mother was Mary and we think his father was another John. Any tips would be helpful.’

Stephen says:

‘Dear Linda,

Thanks for your email. This is an example of when it may be best to use ‘old school’ family history methods. We’re all spoilt nowadays by the proliferation of vital records available online; however, not all answers can be found with ease online and without resort to paper!

In this case, where you have a marriage between two people with very common names – John Jones and Mary Ann with an unknown maiden surname – the easiest and surest answer is to purchase a birth certificate to ascertain the maiden name. Of course, it could be Smith or Jones or Williams, but on the other hand it may be more unusual and, in any event, you would then be able to conduct a more focused two-surname online search for John marrying Mary Ann.

I suggest that you buy the birth certificate of whichever of their children either most interests you, or means the most to you; or (given that there will be so many Joneses each quarter of the registration calendar) the one who has the most distinctive name. You can order the birth certificate online from the General Register Office, which will post it out to you (usually with three to five days if you’re in UK) for the statutory fee of £9.25.

I had hoped that you might be able to avoid buying the birth certificate, if the baptism of their first child (in Crewe, in 1868) was included in findmypast.co.uk’s Cheshire parish registers collection. I should emphasise that these are Anglican registers. There are 17 baptisms entries for Jones in Crewe in 1868 +/- 1 year. From spot-checking these, however, it appears that they do not usually record the mother’s maiden surname. So back to paper certificates…

When the certificate arrives, it should show the maiden surname of Mary Ann, as well as others details such as exact place of birth, informant at registration of the child, etc. You can then search for and purchase a copy of the marriage certificate online in the same way, and from that you should get confirmation of the name and occupation of Mary Ann’s father.

With luck she was indeed born in 1838 and, therefore, her birth will (or should) appear in the civil registration indexes (there is known to be a degree of under-registration of events in the early days of civil registration). If, however, she was a little older than you currently expect, and her birth was registered before July 1837, she won’t be in the birth indexes, and you would need to consider Anglican parish registers (or appropriate Non-Conformist or Roman Catholic registers, if applicable). You can cross that bridge when you come to it.

Good luck!’

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!

Ask the expert – RAF Muster Roll

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

From Lawrence Plaskett:

‘I am amazed, since I have a family chart of 1600 names, to find a surprising absence as late as WWI. My grandfather was Herbert Charles Plaskett. He was born in June 1875 and died in 1964. I knew him fairly well and I possess a short account of his life but I have little idea about his war service in WWI. I have had periods of searching for it but to no avail. I also have the 1911 census record of his family.

It was said in my family that Herbert went to Italy, where he backed up the forces as a lorry driver. Apparently he found it very pleasant because he could get around and visit the various art galleries of Italy, something that his menial railway job at home could not provide for him. There was no mention of warlike activities but I think that since this was often repeated it is likely to be right. I have a photo of him wearing an Air Service badge but I have no idea whether he was always in the Air Service and do not know in which year he went in and came out, but suspect 1915 as the year for entry.

Recently, on contacting my cousin, a daughter of Herbert’s sister, I was told surprising things. She lived with Herbert during his later life and said that he had a respiratory symptom that he blamed on gas that he had been exposed to on the Western front. She said he was at Ypres, where he experienced a ‘hard time’, being finally invalided out due to the exposure to gas. Was he in the Air Service there?

There were some WWI records destroyed in WWII in London. Could they have been among them? Or is there a special place to look at the Air Service records?’

Stephen says:

‘Thanks for the interesting question about your airman grandfather Herbert Charles Plaskett.

Generally speaking, records for servicemen in the Air Force and Navy are less well served online than those of the Army. At present, on findmypast.co.uk we have one interesting record set which does provide certain information about your grandfather. This is the RAF Muster Roll as at 1 April 1918. There was no RAF as such prior to the spring of 1918, when it was formed out of the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service. This set of records shows Air Mechanic 1 no 16183 H C Plaskett. He is described as having been previously a Driver (Mechanical Transport). He joined the forces on 11 December 1915, enlisted for the duration of the war, and was promoted on 1 June 1917. His normal rate of pay in RAF from 1918 was 4s 0d per day.

So he certainly was in the RAF and in one of its precursors, although which isn’t clear at this juncture. The National Archives holds a very nice record set, series AIR 79, which includes service records of men such as your grandfather and which will be digitised and appear online in the fullness of time – probably within the next one to two years. In the meantime, you could either visit The National Archives at Kew, or hire a local researcher there, to look at the original papers. This should clarify what your grandfather got up to during WWI.’

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!

Ask the expert – tricky surname spellings

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

From Carole Buck in Hampshire:

‘I have come up against a block. My grandfather’s (Arthur Henry Willsher born in 1887 in Neath, Glamorgan) parents are listed on the birth records as Henry Willsher and Elizabeth Ann Richards both from Kilkhampton, Devon. This makes sense as he married Madeline Mary Pedlar of Ilfracombe. I have found John Willsher born in 1858 in Kilkhampton and wife Elizabeth Ann born in 1863 in Kilkhampton in the 1901 census. I haven’t found any marriage record and can find no further information on them, despite having searched various census and birth records. Where do I go from here?’

Stephen says:

‘Thanks for writing in with your family puzzle.

My first thought when looking at the problem is about the surname Willsher. There are a whole cluster of phonetically identical or similar names and, when searching online databases or, for that matter, original paper sources, you must consider spelling variants (and clerical misspellings). Online this is usually easy enough – for example, on findmypast.co.uk, you just tick ‘include variants’ under the name boxes on the search screen.

If we do this for the 1891 census, for example, searching for Arthur Willsher born 1887 +/- 3 years, we get 26 results to consider. Scrolling down through the list, there is an Arthur Henry in Neath registration district, which is clearly your grandfather’s entry. The spelling is Willshire not Willsher. He’s in Aberavon with parents John Harry, a stone mason, and Elizabeth Ann, plus siblings Mary Elizabeth, Thomas John, Albert Lewis and Annie Maude. His parents are both from Kilkhampton, as you say, but all their children are born in Glamorganshire.

The eldest child shown, Mary, was eight in 1891 and, therefore, was born after the 1881 census. One would expect to find her parents’ – your great grandparents’ – marriage within the years 1880 to 1883. Going to the civil registration indexes of marriage and conducting a search for John Willsher marrying an Elizabeth and using the ‘include variants’ option brings up a handful of entries, including your grandparents – John Henry Willshire married Elizabeth Ann Richards in December quarter 1881 in Neath registration district. This means that we may expect to find them living apart in the 1881 census return which was taken on 3 April 1881.

Again, your great grandfather appears as John H Willshire, not Willsher, so it appears that his name was fairly constant at this time. He is in Kilkhampton, a journeyman mason, living with his parents Thomas and Ann. His mother is also Kilkhampton-born, while his father is from ‘Finsbury, Kent’. This is almost certainly Frindsbury (near Rochester), which I have often seen corrupted in census returns. Thomas’ occupation is noted as ‘Pensioner, Woolwich’ – a second hand (that of the census clerk, rather than enumerator) has written against this the word ‘Army’. Other evidence (see below) suggests, however, that he was actually a Navy pensioner. He was 69 in 1881 and, therefore, born circa 1811/12. This opens up all sorts of new possibilities.

Firstly, we can search for Thomas Willshire in parish registers. On findmypast.co.uk we have a collection called Thames and Medway parish registers, which covers the interesting strips of land extending out from London on either side of the Thames Estuary into Essex and Kent. This collection includes Frindsbury and, sure enough, there is a Thomas Wiltshire (sic) baptised on 25 April 1813 in Frindsbury All Saints to parents William and Mary.

It’s then possible to try to find Thomas and Ann Wiltshire in the other census returns and find details of their various children. This is a little tricky – for example, in the 1871 census, Thomas Wiltshire is a 55-year old agricultural labourer born in Maidstone, Kent, while in 1861 he was a 48-year old Greenwich pensioner born in Woolwich, Kent. In both years, they are living in Kilkhampton, Cornwall, so I believe we can be sure it’s the right couple.

It looks like they married in March quarter 1853 in St German’s registration district, Cornwall – if so, it was under the names Thomas Wilshire and Ann Furze. Thomas was quite old by that time, and he may well have been widowed and had a previous wife – you need to buy the marriage certificate to find out.

In any event, there is much you should be able to investigate, using the above information, and remembering to consider all possible spelling variations – already we have Willsher, Willshire, Wilshire and Wiltshire and it is likely that you will discover others! Good luck.’

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Ask the expert – mystery surname

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

From Kim Hazell:

‘My great grandmother Elizabeth Hazell is shown in the 1901 census living with Thomas Hazell (RG13 piece 3753). How can I find out who Thomas Hazell was, as Hazell was not his real surname? It seems Elizabeth and Thomas never married and Hazell was Elizabeth’s surname, not Thomas’. Thank you.’

Stephen says:

‘Dear Kim

This is a challenging question, and one which frankly may never find an answer, and I’d like to throw it open to readers of this blog to see if anyone can come up with some creative thinking and constructive suggestions.

Some first thoughts on the various possibilities behind this rare example of a man seemingly taking his wife’s or partner’s surname at this date include the following:

1. He took her name to escape a criminal or miscreant or indebted past, e.g., deserting the army, or fleeing creditors
2. As above, but to escape a previous marriage and wife
3. Stipulations of a will
4. He came from overseas and it suited him to have an anglicised name
5. Hazell was his surname – by coincidence, or by distant kinship

If 5 above is not the case, then I think the chances of finding evidence of the change of name are quite slim. Formal changes of name by deed poll were always in a minority, perhaps five per cent of total name changes, but you could try search in the London Gazette just in case he took this course.

Sometimes death certificates record an alias or earlier name, if known to the family or other informant at death, and I’d recommend that you purchase a copy if you don’t hold it already – in my view, death certificates are under-appreciated anyway and often are interesting in their own right. The same citing of former names can also be true of marriage certificates but, of course, that won’t help you here if you know that this couple were not married. If Thomas fathered an illegitimate child by Elizabeth Hazell, then there’s an outside possibility that you might find evidence of him contributing towards maintenance of the child, e.g., in petty sessions.

If Thomas and Elizabeth Hazell had been living not around 1901 but in, say, the first decades on the 19th century, one could have considered ‘poor law’ type records: examinations, settlements and removals etc. Such records can sometimes be found with parish chest materials in local archives, particularly if the mother was from an alien parish and the parish of residence did not wish to pay to support the mother and child – although naturally this only applies if the family was needy and turned to the parish for relief.

I’d recommend that you contact the relevant county record office and enquire what records survive that may be of assistance to you. RG13 piece 3753 is for the parish of Newton Heath in Manchester, so the local archive would be the Greater Manchester Record Office, 56 Marshall Street, New Cross, Manchester, M4 5FU (phone 0161 234 1979).

Do any readers have any helpful suggestions for Kim?’

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