Bussey Woodrow

My second great granduncle Bussey Woodrow was born in Fulham, county Middlesex in 1842. He was the first born son of my three times great-grandparents, Bussey Woodrow and Louisa Powell.

Bussey is a unique name, and one I had not heard of in my family history until I received my two times great-grandmother's birth certificate in the post. My first thought on reading the father's name was that it said "Bufsey". Of course, I now realise the written meaning of the double S in transcripts. According to the Ancestry website Bussey means:

English (of Norman origin): habitational name from any of several places in Normandy, France: Boucé in Orne, from which came Robert de Buci mentioned in Domesday Book, Bouce (Manche), or Bucy-le-Long (Aisne). All are named with a Latin personal name Buccius (presumably a derivative of bucca ‘mouth’) + the locative suffix -acum.Altered spelling of German Busse.

I am yet to determine where the name originated from to be used in my family.

Bussey Woodrow was a Letter Carrier, and he lived in various places within the London area including Belgravia, Hanover Square and then later, in Battersea. During his life time he was married three times and had at least five known children. His first wife, Mary Ann, died after they were married for two-and-a-half years. Perhaps she died in childbirth? She was just 25 years old. Around six months later, Bussey married Susannah Catchpole with whom he had five known children, all boys: Harry, Bertie, Walter, Frank and Ernest. Susannah died in 1896, aged 48. The following year Bussey married Emma Chapman.

Bussey joined the British Postal Service on 12 February 1866 as a Letter Carrier. The occupation title was changed to Postman in 1883. This is reflected in the census returns where Bussey's occupation before 1891 was recorded as Letter Carrier and from 1891 onwards, Postman.

The Illustrated London News, 1860
postalheritage.wordpress.com

Today we have airplanes, trains, ferries, motorcycles and motorised vans to deliver all of our mail items across the world. We have a raft of express delivery services, airmail and seamail choices, and vending machines that supply stamps. Before Bussey became a Letter Carrier in the 1860s, horses and coaches were the main method of delivering mail. This was an idea first formed by John Palmer, a theatre owner in Bath, who used carriage services to transport props and actors around the countryside. In 1782 Palmer took his idea of using carriages to transport mail around the country, to London where the Chancellor of the Exchequer, William Pitt, accepted the idea and in 1784 an experimental mail coach journey succeeded in paving the way for a faster, more efficient postal delivery service. The development of the railway saw the demise of the mail coaches, with trains first used for delivering mail in 1830. Later in the 19th century, London would also undergo a massive change with the introduction of the Underground rail system.

In Bussey's time as a Letter Carrier he would have walked the congested London streets hand-delivering mail to businesses and residences in his designated area. He would have walked in all elements of weather, including thick fog and snow. His mail bag would have been made of cloth, which attracted mice so most Post Offices had to employ cats to catch and kill the mice. Horses and ponies were used to deliver mail up and down the country even after the demise of the mail coaches as they pulled the mail carts and vans until the 1930s when motorised vehicles replaced a great many horse-drawn vans (except, of course, for the more remote areas). The last horse-drawn mail van was seen in London in 1949. Bicycles did not become fully popular until the 20th century.

Horse-drawn Mail Cart, 1887
www.postalheritage.org.uk

Bussey Woodrow died in May 1905, aged 68. He was buried at West Norwood Cemetery in Lambeth. Among the notable burials there are Isabella Beeton, Sir Henry Tate and Dr William Marsden. In 1911 Bussey's widow, Emma Woodrow, was living with her sister Sarah in Kentish Town, St Pancras. It is believed that Emma Woodrow died in 1913 (Wandsworth area) but she could have died in 1928 in St Pancras. Bussey's brother, Frederick John Powell Woodrow, lived in Putney which is an area most familiar to my maternal family history. My two times great-grandmother Louisa Woodrow, who was Bussey and Frederick's sister, also lived there as a married woman.

If you have any Postal Service ancestors, I urge you to visit The British Postal Museum & Archive at http://www.postalheritage.org.uk/. There is so much to see there, and it includes just about everything you would ever want to know about the postal service. It has sections for family history, school and further education and provides an extensive history of the Royal Mail dating back to the 1600s.

William Sibley : In the wrong place at the wrong time?

My 3xgreat-grandfather William Sibley (1826-1889) was charged, and later acquitted, in 1860 for conspiring to steal from the publican Thomas Rule of the Coopers' Arms public-house in Putney. When I discovered his name in the Police Intelligence section of The Morning Post (at British Newspaper Archive), I was initially shocked. As I read on, however, I found out that William Sibley was innocent. What follows is an extract from the aforementioned newspaper, dated 30 January 1861:

William Carlton, who described himself as a photographer, and William Sibley, a wheelwright, were placed in the dock before Mr Ingham, charged with being concerned with stealing £5 from the Coopers' Arms public-house in Putney, the property of the landlord Mr Thomas Rule.

The robbery was committed on the 11th of December 1860 and the money, consisting of gold, silver, and halfpence was taken from the bureau in Rule's bedroom. The bureau was locked but not the bedroom. William Sibley was in the house during the said afternoon and was in and out several times and in different parts of the premises. He had a cart at the back door and he went out two or three times to examine it. William Carlton was at the bar with another man, and they had some gin-and-water at the bar. They appeared very fidgety, for they kept going out and returning alternately, and they both left without drinking their gin-and-water. It further appeared that Sibley lived in Putney [in 1861 census he lived at Stratford Grove] and Carlton formerly carried on his photography business opposite to the Coopers' Arms.

My 3xgreat-grandfather denied all knowledge of the robbery, and explained the reason for the cart being at the back of the public-house. He had it to repair and was waiting for assistance to drag it home. Thomas Rule claimed that Sibley had been in his bedroom before, to do repairs to a set of drawers but that he and his daughter [Caroline Rule] were unable to say whether Sibley and Carlton had actually communicated with one another on the day in question.

Mr Ingham refused to allow bail for Sibley, despite Sergeant Blanchard knowing nothing against Sibley before. The evidence of the witness [who was not named during the trial] was that he had evidence that Sibley had known about the robbery one week before it occured.

According to the Criminal Registers on Ancestry, William Sibley and William Carlton were acquitted at Newington on 18 February 1861.

Coopers' Arms public-house, Putney circa 1905

The Coopers' Arms public-house gave its name to Coopers' Arms Lane, which was later renamed Lacy Road. Coopers' Arms Lane was formerly known as Warpell-Way, warp meaning "distinct pieces of ploughed land seperated by the furrows". A thoroughfare in Putney partly preserves the ancient nomenaclature in Warpole Road. The Putney High Street was largely unchanged until Edwardian times when the pub and cottages alongside were demolished and replaced by Edwardian shops. These were removed in the 1980s to make way for the Putney Exchange shopping centre.

Sources used for this blog post: British Newspaper Archive & Ancestry
Putney & Roehampton by Patrick Loobey

 

A Place To Call Home

I have neglected my blog here at "Pocketfull", but I do have a good excuse. Well, maybe not a good excuse but an excuse nonetheless. In recent months I've created a new blog which is dedicated to the history of my childhood hometown and I've been contributing to it almost twice weekly (See it here). For now at least, I've run out of steam so I've decided to devote some of my free time back here, amongst my family history.

A new Australian drama is set to start on the Seven Network next week called 'A Place To Call Home' and while I've been rather looking forward to watching this post-world-war-two drama it has got me thinking lately about "home" and what it means to me personally. Even though I have lived in Australia for most of my life, I still have a hankering for my childhood home. Beyond this, I have often found myself wondering what my family and my ancestors would have called home.

Both of my grandmothers were devoted to their homes. My maternal grandmother Lilian always proudly called herself a "Londoner", even long after the war ended in 1945, when she was married and living in a quiet market town in Suffolk. Then, in 1978 she emigrated to Australia. Yet, all her life, at every opportunity she could get, she went back to London. Her heart was always right there and when she died in 1983 of a massive heart attack, I always believed (and still do, to this day) that it was because her heart was broken for home.

My paternal grandmother Freda lived in Beccles all her life. She never moved away from the town, except for a few years when she moved to nearby Brampton but she quickly welcomed a return to Beccles. There was no question of her living anywhere else but Beccles. She was born there, she was married there, she raised four boys there, and it never entered her mind to travel further than was absolutely necessary. She believed in setting down your roots and staying put and, for the most part, she was content with that. It didn't make her small minded but it certainly made her homely and connected to her roots.

My grandfathers? My paternal grandfather Herbert lived in Bungay, London, and later, Beccles. I don't think that any one particular place meant more to him. I believe he went where "duty called" for the most part, even during the Second World War when he was stationed at Sutton Coldfield.

My maternal grandfather was born and lived all his life in Bungay. While he fudged his age slightly on enlistment with the Norfolk Regiment I don't think it was necessarily because he wanted to escape home life. He just wanted to do what he felt was right. He was to travel to India during his pre-World War Two service and later to Dunkirk before his capture and internment in a German Prisoner-of-War camp. Later, in 1944-45, he served with the Royal Army Medical Corps and was stationed at Epsom, county Surrey. After the war, when he married my grandmother Lilian, they remained in Bungay and raised their family there, trying (against impossible odds at times) to live by the post-war standards of a secure family life.

Aerial view of Beccles and the River Waveney

If I look back another generation, to my great-grandparents' idea of what home meant to them, it differs quite dramatically. For example, my maternal great-grandparents Albert and Elizabeth, were born in the exact same town in London. They were both from working-class families and both were baptised at the same church. Their families possibly knew one another and shared a similar social history. Albert was restless though, even as a young boy. He wanted to travel and see the world, stretch his wings and leave Putney well behind him forever. He lied about his age to get into the Royal Navy and his only reason for returning to Putney was to marry his sweetheart, Elizabeth, in 1905. After that they lived in Southwark, Fulham, Tooting, Bloomsbury and later, Sutton (where they settled and remained until Elizabeth's death in 1951).

My other maternal great-grandparents, Percy and Nellie, were much like my paternal grandmother. They remained in the Suffolk market town of Bungay all their lives. There was no question of moving away, although my great-grandfather Percy, as a younger man, did love the sea and he took to fishing on trawler boats off the coast of Lowestoft for many years before settling back to farm life after the Great War (1914-1918).

Putney, in Greater London

My paternal great-grandparents were also a mixed bunch. Albert and Eva were Becclesians to the last, although my great-grandmother Eva was born in Loddon (her parents were Loddon born and raised before moving to Beccles) but she never had a great need to return there. Beccles was her home and Great Yarmouth was her favourite family holiday destination. Albert was born and raised in Beccles, and he remained staunchly faithful to the town and its townsfolk; at home, in religious circles, and in his work.

My other paternal great-grandparents, Arthur and Barbara, lived as a married couple in the market town of Bungay and raised their family there but they were not knowingly tied to their roots. Barbara was born in Holdenhurst, county Hampshire and lived there until she was a young girl, when her father took on a new job as a Railway Gatekeeper in Woodsford, county Dorset. Less than five years later, her mother passed away, her father abandoned her and she moved to London to work in the Domestic Service. Arthur joined the Norfolk Regiment as a young man and served in both the Boer War and the Great War. It was during the Great War that Barbara moved back to London with the children (including my grandfather Herbert) while Arthur was away fighting for King and Country. When the war ended they went back, as a family, to Bungay.

So there we have it; a mixture of loyalties towards home and yet, across the board, so very similar. There are those who willingly left home to fight in the war. Those who wanted to leave their homes for broader horizons. Those who stayed in the same town all their lives, loyal to the last. Those who wanted to run from their past and never look back and those who couldn't let go of their past and so returned again and again.

To this day I share the same tug-of-war with my maternal grandmother Lilian, the Londoner, who always found a way to go back even though the memories of her childhood were not altogether pleasant or heart-warming ones. Something always called her back and she was deeply proud of her London roots, even in the impossible heat and vastness of Australia that she made home for the last remaining years of her life. My own tug-of-war calls me back to Beccles, and sometimes that call is overwhelming. It certainly reflects in my ability to write about it without getting completely caught up and swept away in a sea of nostalgia and sentiment! Even though Australia is now the place I call my home I still carry a piece of Beccles deep within my heart, and I always will. I could never let it go.

Family History Through The Alphabet Challenge : U is for...

Given that I was born in the United Kingdom it would be only fitting to write about it in this week's Alphabet Challenge for the letter U. However, that would be too easy so I am doing it yet again. Writing about something completely different!

The last known address of my 3 x g/grandfather's "wife" was Usk Road in Battersea, in 1881 (I say "wife" because they were not legally married). The census shows us that Sarah Mary Ann (nee Spencer) was living at 35 Usk Road with her husband Thomas Shepherd and three children: William and Charlotte (from her previous relationship with my 3 x g/grandfather) and a three-year-old daughter Emily. I am yet to prove a theory that Sarah died in 1883, aged 36.

Usk Road was not far from where Sarah lived with my 3 x g/grandfather Richard Humphries. In 1871 they lived together with William and Charlotte, as well as Richard's three grown sons from his first marriage, in nearby Putney. On the other side of nearby Wandsworth lies the South West London town of Battersea. Famous for the Dog's Home and the Power Station, Battersea was once a large market garden area and lavender field well before industry took over.

I

I don't believe there was anything quite as romantic as the image above of boats on the River Thames at Battersea for Sarah Shepherd and her children. The whereabouts of my 3 x g/grandfather Richard Humphries (see my post about him) after 1871 continues to baffle me as the paper trail dies off at this time but for Sarah, who remained very much alive, it must have been a very difficult time. She was left with two small children (she had had three but one died in infancy in 1869) and no husband. It is not known how or when she met Thomas Shepherd and the first I knew of him was from the 1881 census. From there I worked back until I found a marriage between he and Sarah in June 1876. Sarah claimed she was a "spinster" which technically was true. Thomas Shepherd, son of Samuel Shepherd, worked in a Candle factory and could not write or sign his name on his marriage certificate.

Sarah Mary Ann Spencer was born in 1846 in Battersea. Records indicate she was the daughter of Christopher Spencer and Mary Ann Hosier. Christopher Spencer was born in Wandsworth about 1822. In 1851 the Spencer family lived in King Street, Battersea but the following census paints a very different picture. Christopher died in 1856 and Mary Ann, along with her four children, were living with George Temple in Red Lion Street, Wandsworth. Interestingly, Mary Ann had only aged three years between 1851 and 1861!

Battersea Power Station
Image courtesy of Wikipedia

Battersea was heavily bombed in 1944/45 and Usk Road was the last recorded road to be hit by a V2 weapon (in the Battersea district) on 27 January 1945. It is recorded that at least seventeen people died that day and more than twenty houses were fully destroyed or damaged.

I wish I knew why Sarah Mary Ann Spencer/Humphries/Shepherd was left abandoned with two small children. It was certainly not common for a bachelor to take up with an unmarried woman with children so what sort of person was Thomas Shepherd to do that so willingly? Then Sarah had a child with him: Emily. What is more intriguing is that by 1881 Sarah gave the children she had with my 3 x g/grandfather her name, Spencer and had totally dropped the name Humphries. Did Thomas know anything at all about Richard Humphries? Surely, you would think that this would totally baffle and confuse any of their descendents. Anybody trying to trace the family tree for their Shepherd or Spencer ancestors would possibly not even know of the connection with the Humphries family and that three children were registered at birth as Humphries (later becoming Spencer). These children were:

William Spencer Humphries born 1868 in Fulham

1881 census: William Spencer, aged 12

Sarah Spencer Humphries born 1869 in Putney

Died in 1869, aged 4 months

Charlotte Amelia Spencer Humphries born 1871 in Putney

1881 census: Charlotte Spencer, aged 8
When Charlotte married in 1893 to William Tilley she gave her father's name as Thomas Spencer, not Thomas Shepherd (just to further confuse the issue!).

Aftermath of V2 bombing in Battersea
Image courtesy of Wikipedia

Family History Through The Alphabet Challenge : T is for...

I could have chosen a name for this week's Alphabet Challenge post as there are several names in my ancestry that start with the letter T. For example, Thomas (son of) Thomas, (son of) Thomas etcetera. Rather than bore you all with that, I have chosen to write about Travel as my ancestors have proven, they moved around a lot.

 

 

In the times we live in today, we think nothing of walking out of our front doors expecting to access all modes of transport such as cars, mopeds, buses, trains, taxis and ferries. It is easy to take it for granted and forget that our humble ancestors had to rely (most often) on one method of travel: Walking. My London ancestors for example, would not have been able to afford the luxury of owning their own horse and cart or liveried carriage and when bicycles became popular in the Edwardian era, not everybody felt safe riding London's busy streets.

 

Let's cast our minds back to the days well before cars and buses. Before well-paved roads were in demand, our ancestors highways were mere ditches and tracks, potholed and uneven, flooded and thick with mud. If you were rich enough to be able to travel by coach or horse and cart you were at the mercy of the highwaymen. I would bet our ancestors were thankful for the likes of Scottish civil engineer Thomas Telford, who singlehandedly changed the way people travelled forever. The Industrial Revolution also put travel on the map, so to speak. Roads, canals, railway, bridges, even the penny post system, which was introduced in 1840, made travel an exciting thing for our ancestors to contemplate. My ancestors used these methods of travel to move from county to county; village to market town. Where before, in the 1600s and 1700s they remained in one village, they were now branching out and exploring a world outside of their own backyards.

 

Thomas Telford
(1757 - 1834)



Before my 4 x great-grandfather moved to Beccles around the year 1809, he came from an unknown area of Norfolk. How did he come to settle for the village of nearby Barnby? I have this rather romantic notion that he travelled by canal boat or wherry. He saw the village from the Waveney River and thought to himself, "This is pretty, this is peaceful, this will do me" and he settled there, married and he later moved to Beccles with his wife where they raised their eight children.

 

My London ancestors moved around a lot. They are found each ten years (by the census return) living in a different street. For example, one family who lived in Putney had moved two or three streets apart, every ten years. When I travelled to Putney in late 2006, I visited all the streets they had lived in and discovered that although the addresses were in close proximity, they were still quite a distance apart in terms of moving house. How did they move their personal effects from one house to another? I had visions of them having to carry everything they owned or perhaps they borrowed a neighbour's cart to put their mattresses and humble effects into. In times past, our ancestors' homes were not heavily furnished. In particular, the working classes of England who possessed little in the way of dining tables, chairs, beds, cabinets, dressers, sideboards and wardrobes. I wonder what they would make of an IKEA store if they could see one today!

 

Image courtesy of www.rushdenheritage.co.uk
 

In the past one hundred years transport and travel methods have vastly improved and we have seen many changes and upgrades with railways, cars, ships and airplanes. My first cousin 3 x removed was the first to embark on a journey from London to New York by airplane in 1947. She well and truly caught the travel bug, as passenger list records prove she travelled back and forth from England and America regularly, both by ship and by plane up until her death in 1975.

 

My great-grandfather refused to drive a motor vehicle, choosing instead to ride a bicycle. He used this method of travel wherever he went and would happily ride for miles and miles at any given journey. He was seen daily in Beccles, from the early 1900s up until around 1970, riding to and from work and to and from church, as well as neighbouring villages and market towns. When he grew much older and age robbed him of his eyesight, his family were very concerned for his safety but he was stubborn and could not bear to part with his trusty cycle. No amount of coercion convinced him to give it up until one day his sons were forced to hide his bicycle away. This story still breaks my heart when I tell it, because I know full well how my great-grandfather must have grieved this enforced loss. I do not drive either. I refuse to just as my great-grandfather did. Instead, I rely on buses, trains, lifts from family and friends, and my two size-seven feet.

 



Edwardian Gent with his Bicycle

 

 



Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge : E is for...

I feel terrible. I am sorely late with this weeks alphabet challenge blog post. My excuse is that I have been working solidly on indexing and editing a family history book. I have been so tired these past few days, I have barely been able to concentrate.

So, here we are at the letter E:

Two of my great-grandmothers had names starting with the letter E so it makes sense to write about them, right? That would be reasonable but, to be honest, I hardly know anything about either of them to do them proper justice here. Both of them died before I was born, one just months before.

Elizabeth was my mother's maternal grandmother. She was born in Putney, county Surrey in 1884. The daughter of a long line of gardeners, Elizabeth was the sixth child of eight born to Richard and Louisa Dare. My mother never met her grandmother Elizabeth, but had just one photograph of her which was inside her mother Lilian's photo album.

Elizabeth Dare
"Fondest Love, Mother"

Elizabeth was particularly fond of the cinema and she would do just about anything to go. In the early twentieth century, before the advent of television, this was her only outlet from a tumultuous home life. Some family members have said she would usually take her coat to the pawnbrokers, or sometimes clothes belonging to her husband and children. This may sound cruel to some but I actually feel quite sorry for her. Being a wife and mother in Elizabeth's time would have been extremely hard. Before the age of welfare and women's rights, women like Elizabeth had to find respite wherever they could. Elizabeth's respite was the cinema.

Elizabeth's love of cinema extended to her daughter (my grandmother Lilian) and to me. One of her favourite actors was Laurence Olivier and a favourite film was Rebecca. I may not know who Elizabeth revered most in the cinema but I can well imagine her sitting in her favourite spot each week, anxiously awaiting the black screen flicker into light and sound, eager to escape into a world of imagination and fairytale.

Eva was my father's maternal grandmother. She was born in Loddon, county Norfolk in 1887. The daughter of a Painter & Glazier, Eva was the eldest child of three born to Robert and Mary Bowes. Eva was the only one of those three to marry and have children. Her brother Fred and sister Winnie lived together in Beccles. My father dearly loved his grandmother Eva, and always talks of her very fondly. She died two months before I was born.

Eva (second from left with her daughters)

Eva was very fond of writing and in her life she wrote many letters to all of her family and also wrote articles for the Beccles Methodist Church parish magazine, of which she was a staunch member alongside her husband who was a Verger (my great-grandfather).

My grandmother Freda always believed I was an exceptional letter writer, and would constantly tell me that I took after her mother Eva. Freda always knew I would be a writer one day, bless her. When I began writing articles for a genealogy society and I told my father about it, he wistfully assured me I was following in Eva's footsteps. I did not know (or had likely forgotten) that she wrote articles for magazines. This made me feel so good inside, I can't begin to articulate what significance that has to me.

Last, but not least, my letter E blog must make mention of Emails. Without the ability to email people I would quite possibly not effectively communicate with half the people I do. All thanks to message boards, genealogy websites, or my website, I know the very lovely June, Angela, Jim, and Terry, today.

Of course, emails don't quite mean the same as a carefully handwritten letter, folded and posted and delivered to your mailbox. That is one of the many things I miss about my grandmothers. Both were keen letter writers, especially Freda. The reality is though, we live in the technological age where everything is faster, speedier and accessible on the internet. Emails are the quickest (and sometimes, only) way to communicate and "keep in touch". Without emails, I would not have half the amount of family photographs in my photo collection or have been able to share and compare the family history information that I have researched. So, thank you Emails.

 

An Elusive Ancestor : Richard Humphries

Every now and then an ancestor comes along, destined to elude you. We all have at least one in our family tree, right? I have several but none has proved as elusive (or as frustrating) as Richard Humphries.

Born in Hammersmith in 1829, to John Humphries and Ann Rogers, Richard was the eldest of seven children. They lived on The Mall, which fascinates me because when I was a teenager I lived in a block of units by the river, not unlike the scene here (left).

John and Ann were both employed as Mattress Makers, and when Richard went out to work he got his trade as an Upholsterer.

Around 1849 the Humphries family were dealt a cruel blow when the house they moved to in Putney was infested with the deadly cholera disease. Within days of moving in, one son was dead and the father, John, quickly followed. Suddenly Ann was left alone to raise the remaining children, two of which were mere infants. She sent the youngest four to the North Surrey Industrial School in Penge. The eldest two, including Richard, were old enough to fend for themselves. Richard took work in Lambeth and later that same year, married Mary Ann Smith.

Richard and Mary Ann had four children, the first child (an only daughter) died of Scarlatina. Their remaining three sons were born and raised in Putney and they lived in relative comfort until 1871. Then the real confusion began. The census of that year was very revealing in that Richard was no longer married to Mary Ann. His new wife was listed as Sarah Ann. In addition, there was a new child listed. I automatically assumed that Mary Ann had died and Richard married again. Searches for Mary Ann's death and Richard's second marriage almost caused temporary insanity, as both turned up nothing. Eventually I located Mary Ann as having died at the Wandsworth & Clapham Union Workhouse (oddly, 10 years older than she actually was), being listed in their records as a "Widow". Long story number one...

Richard and Sarah Ann were not married, but they had three children together nonetheless, the last of whom was born in 1871, three months after the census of that year. Then the search goes cold for Richard. He is not in the 1881 census, and interestingly, Sarah Ann is married to someone else and they are living in Battersea. She married in 1876 and used her maiden name of Spencer. Her three children are all listed on the 1881 census as Spencer children, not Humphries!

Which begs the question? What happened to Richard Humphries? All manic searches have proved dead end after dead end. The paper trail has, time and again, gone completely cold, having been thwarted at every turn. For example, there are three possible death registrations for a Richard Humphries, however, all three have been investigated and I can attest with every fibre of my being, that they are not my ancestor. I have several cousins who believe they know when he died (1890 is one theory, 1915 another) but I have gone back through the records with a fine tooth comb and can assuredly disprove their theories. It is maddening to not know the truth. Hence, long story number two...

When I poured over the Putney parish registers seven years ago, I came across a burial for an unknown man, around the age of 40 years, drowned in the Thames at Putney. The year was 1875. He was given a burial at St Mary's Church and a coroner's report found that the unknown man had drowned as a result of his leg being caught in a barge. I know I am an ardent lover of Charles Dickens (see previous post) but could it be? Could it possibly be Richard Humphries? Tell me I am grasping at straws, clutching to a romantic fictional notion but it is the best theory I have to go on. Richard disappeared, without a trace, sometime between 1871 and 1876. His "second wife" who he was not legally married to, but had three children with, marries another man in 1876 and carries on with her life, as though Richard Humphries did not exist.

Where did you go Richard? What on earth happened to you? Why has your trail gone cold? Why don't you want me to find you?

Image from Genea-Musings