Newsletter 11th
March 2022
Save 30% at British Newspaper Archive ENDS MONDAY
Did your ancestors go
to China?
How did English law
view marriages in other jurisdictions?
Review: Identifying
Cap Badges
Stop Press - Ancestry DNA offers
The LostCousins
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Did your ancestors go to China?
The
website China Families (sponsored
by the University of Bristol) has information about men and women of many
different nationalities, professions and ages, who
lived and worked in China between the 1850s and 1940s. There are currently
60,000 names in the database.
Whether
you're trying to track down records, or pinpoint where one of your ancestors
was born, trying to identify and locate hospitals is fraught with difficulty
not least because of relocation, name changes, and reorganisations.
Take
for example, Ilford Maternity Hospital, where I was born in 1950 it turns out
that it had only acquired that name 2 years earlier, when it became part of the
new National Health Service. Founded as Ilford Maternity Home in two adjoining
houses in 1918, it had moved to a purpose-built building at Newbury Park in
1926, the year my mother was born though she was born some miles away in
Plaistow.
In
1978 it became part of the nearby King George Hospital, where my tonsils had
been removed in 1956 though because the two hospitals were so close together I'd wrongly assumed that they were a single
establishment, and if anyone asked me where I was born I always told them I was
born at King George's (as we called it).
In
1993 King George Hospital moved to a new modern building in Barley Lane, Goodmayes on the site of Goodmayes
Hospital, which had opened in 1901 as West Ham Borough Asylum, but from 1918 was
known as West Ham Mental Hospital (though it was some considerable distance
from West Ham).
When
my grandmother suffered from post-natal depression after the birth of her first
child in August 1910 she wasn't sent to West Ham Borough
Asylum, even though it was less than a mile from where she and my grandfather
were living, but to the Essex County Lunatic Asylum in Warley, over 10 miles
away. (She was still there when the 1911 Census was taken the following year,
though she was discharged the very next day.)
That
long complicated story is an illustration of how difficult and confusing it can
be to track down the hospitals where our ancestors were born, underwent procedures,
got well, or died. Which in turn is a rather roundabout way of introducing you
to the Lost Hospitals of London website,
a phenomenal resource created by a dedicated volunteer who is too modest to
even give his (or her) name.
Note:
there is an associated site called Almshouses
of London which is far from complete, but worth keeping an eye on.
The
website of Dr David Wright historian, genealogist, author, and currently
principal of the Institute of Heraldic and Genealogical Studies includes probate
indexes for Kent which are in PDF format and completely free to search by
surname or parish (you don't even need to register).
Dr
Wright still lives in Whitstable, the coastal town where he was born it was
also the birthplace c1764 of my great-great-great-great grandmother Mary Ratlief as well as her mother Mary Dyason,
and grandfather Joseph Dyason whose father John is
one of my 'brick walls'. Unfortunately John, who died
in 1716, doesnt seem to have left a will.
Incidentally,
Mary Ratlief's grand-daughter Rebecca Smith married
William Beamont, grandson of Sarah Beamont
.
In
the last newsletter I mentioned that my great-great-great-great grandmother
Sarah Beamont had been the licensee of the Three
Compasses at Patchetts Green, near Aldenham in Hertfordshire she took over when her husband
William died in 1837 and was still the landlady at the time of the 1841 Census:
© Crown Copyright Image reproduced by courtesy of
The National Archives, London, England. Used by kind permission of Findmypast
Fast
forward 80 years to 1921, and the Three Compasses was being run by the Hackett
family:
©
Crown Copyright Image reproduced by courtesy of The National Archives, London,
England. Used by kind permission of Findmypast
Nothing
remarkable about that except that shortly after the last newsletter was published I received an email from my half 4th cousin, who
has been one of my closest collaborators since I began researching my ancestors.
It turns out that my half 3rd cousin once removed Horace Charles Beament, a great-great-great grandson of the aforesaid
Sarah Beamont, married Ivy Irene Hackett in 1930
and in the 1939 Register they're living at the Three Compasses, where Rosalind
(now widowed) was still the licensee:
©
Crown Copyright Image reproduced by courtesy of The National Archives, London,
England. Used by kind permission of Findmypast
I
wonder whether Horace realised that he had a family connection to the Three Compasses? Less than a century had passed since his ancestor
was running the pub, but an awful lot can be forgotten in the
course of 5 generations.
Tip:
comparing birthdates in the 1939 Register with ages in the 1921 Census can provide
insight into how accurately our ancestors completed the schedules.
One
of the many organisations I belong to is the Western Front Association,
which was formed to remember all those who served their country in the Great War.
The association first came to my attention when they saved the Medal Index
Cards from destruction, and more recently they helped save millions of pension
record cards which members of the WFA can view free of charge at Ancestry's
Fold 3 website.
Project
Alias seeks to identify the thousands of men who enlisted to serve in the
British Army during WW1 under an alias you can find out more here.
How did English law view marriages in other
jurisdictions?
Professor
Rebecca Probert writes:
When talking to members of Lost Cousins
recently I had a few questions about couples going outside England and Wales to
be married. It's not something that I have had to worry about in my own family
tree (setting aside the sheep-stealer who was transported to Australia, few of
them ventured beyond Warwickshire). I should also warn you that the law in this
area is particularly complicated! That said, there are two basic rules that it
is useful to bear in mind.
First, an individual's capacity to marry is governed
by the law of the country where they are 'domiciled'. 'Capacity' here refers to
who can get married - so relevant factors would be age, prohibited degrees, or
an existing marriage. Domicile is another technical legal concept but in
essence a person's domicile is where they are permanently resident. So if in the mid-nineteenth century a man wanted to marry
his deceased wife's sister, there was no point in them travelling from England
and Wales to a country that permitted such marriages. English law would still
regard their marriage as void.
By contrast, the 'formal' validity of the
marriage is governed by the law of the country where it takes place. So if a couple eloped to Gretna Green, then they would be
able to get married with very little formality. And English law would accept
that informal marriage as valid under Scots law.
There
is a link to the fascinating presentation Professor Probert gave on 26th
February on the Subscribers Only
page at the LostCousins site.
Both
the offers in the last issue are continuing, but they won't last for ever. You can
subscribe to Who Do You Think You Are? magazine for around half price (or less)
when you follow this link
or see this article
for a breakdown of the offer terms in each country.
Equally attractive is the offer of Diamond
subscription to The Genealogist for the price of a Gold
subscription, SAVING £41 (and if you decide to renew next year you'll get the same
deal then). You'll also get a free subscription to Discover
Your Ancestors online magazine, worth £24.99, and a £10 voucher
to use if you decide to buy TreeView 2. Follow this link
to take up the offer but, if you want to know more about the search techniques
and resources on offer, watch Mark Bayley's recent presentation to runners-up
in my recent competition you'll find it here.
Review: Identifying Cap Badges
I think we've all got
photos of servicemen who we can't identify or, even if we know who they are, can't
work out which regiment they served in.
Identifying
Cap Badges a family historian's guide offers us a chance to answer some of those
difficult questions. As the author points out, other books on this topic are
arranged in 'order of precedence', with the regiments that were formed earliest
at the beginning but that's not much use to the layman whose only clue is the
design of the badge.
Accordingly the photos in the book are organised
thematically and alphabetically, starting in Chapter 2 with designs that feature
'birds and wings', followed by 'bugle horns', 'castles', 'circles and ovals'
and eventually reaching 'wreaths' in Chapter 31. Some badges appear under more
than one heading, for example the Duke of Lancaster's Own Yeomanry wear a badge
that incorporates both a rose and a wreath, so it is found in Chapter 12
('flowers and plants') as well as Chapter 31.
By
and large it's a reference book, one to refer to when needed, but there is a section
which explains the history of badges in the British Army, whilst Chapter 1
provides an extensive introduction, including tips to help with dating badges. I
should mention that it includes a section on women's services including the Women's
Land Army and I also noticed some munition workers badges.
Whilst
I havent attempted to count them, there must be well over 1000 photographs in
this 320-page book. I have the hardback edition, which is priced at £25, but I
note that Amazon are selling the paperback for around half that price, including
delivery that's a bargain for such an impressive and useful book.
Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com Amazon.ca Amazon.com.au
Sadly the prices in North America are higher,
possibly because this is such a heavy book, whilst it's not due out in Australia
until November.
Maurice
Chevalier helped to popularise the saying "Old age isn't so bad when you
consider the alternative", and that's the way I feel about living with
COVID-19. The easing of legal restrictions was supposed to lead to individuals
taking responsibility for their own safety and the safety of others, but large
swathes of society are acting as if there's no longer a need to take any precautions.
We
all thought that by the time we'd had our booster shots which in my case was on
9th October we were fairly immune to infection. And so we were against the original virus and the Alpha and
Delta variants.
However
the arrival of Omicron threw a cat amongst the pigeons, for whilst our booster shots
provided reasonable protection in the early weeks, their effectiveness has waned,
as you can see from the UK government's latest vaccine surveillance report,
published yesterday. In late October my booster was providing around 95%
protection against symptomatic infection by the dominant Delta variant, and it's
likely that even today it would offer about 80% protection against Delta.
However if you refer to Figure 1 on page 5 of the
report (reproduced above) you'll see that my protection against symptomatic
infection by the Omicron variant peaked at around 62%, would have fallen to
around 30% by the end of January, and extrapolating the decline suggests that
it could now be as low as 10%. If you had your booster at the same time as me,
you could be just as vulnerable as I am.
But
whilst these government statistics are available for all to read (and have been
for some time), I doubt that one person in a thousand is aware of them. We all know
that Omicron is far more infectious, and yet we think we're protected by the
booster though sadly 30% protection translates to 70% vulnerable.
It's
no wonder that in country after country the infection rates, which had been falling
steadily, have gone into reverse. In the UK yesterday's case numbers were up by
56% on the previous week; on Wednesday they were up by 53%, on Tuesday they
were up by 59%; Monday's figures, which are for 3 days, were up by 54% on the
same period a week earlier. It's unlikely to be a temporary blip it's what
happens when you throw caution to the winds, as many seem to have done.
The
good news is that protection against hospitalisation (and worse) doesn't seem
to decline quite as quickly, but even so the protection vaccination offers me against
hospitalisation by Omicron now is significantly lower than my protection against
hospitalisation by Delta 6 months ago (see page 12 of the report). It's seems strange that then I had a booster to look forward to
now there is nothing on the horizon for someone of my age, other than a
possible 4th dose in the Autumn. Thank goodness that in the northern hemisphere
we have the summer ahead of us!
Each
of us has a different attitude towards risk, but I'd like to think that as
researchers we ALL want to know the facts before making important decisions.
It's true that Omicron tends to be milder than previous variants, but hospitalisations
are going up again, and in Scotland this week the number of people in hospital
with COVID-19 was at its highest level for more than a year (see this BBC article).
Note:
this article
about Spanish Flu provides historical perspective; this article
from yesterday's Guardian is also worth reading.
The
war in Ukraine is clearly a tragedy for the people who live there, but the
knock-on effects on the rest of us will be considerable, thanks to the impact on
the supply of oil and gas. If the demand is greater than the supply then the
price will just keep rising, so we have to do what we
can to stop that happening.
The
most obvious thing we can do is reduce the amount of travelling that we do, especially
now that we're all adept at using Zoom, but driving more slowly or using public
transport whenever practical could have an even greater impact.
However there's something else that we can do that
will also make a big difference, and that's shifting as much as possible of our
electricity consumption to off-peak hours, just as you would if you were on an
Economy 7 tariff. This time-shifting won't save you money directly (unless
you're on an Economy 7 or similar tariff), but by smoothing out the peaks and
troughs in demand it will significantly reduce the demand for fossil fuels thereby
reducing the upward pressure on prices and benefiting ALL consumers.
Currently
most of us in the UK are shielded from rising prices by price caps and fixed
price tariffs, but just to give you an idea of how dramatically prices have
risen, when I bought heating oil 4 weeks ago I paid the highest price per litre
that I've ever paid, just over 60p, yet if I was to order today I'd have
to pay 130p per litre, more than twice the previous record price, just a month
later (and 5 times what I paid in late 2020).
So
please try to conserve fuel of all types we may not be at war, but we do have
to fight inflation, because rising prices have the great impact on the poorest
and weakest in society. Only by reducing demand can we break the vicious
circle.
On
a lighter note, I'd like to recommend some cheese to readers in the UK. If you
like strongly-flavoured cheddar I can thoroughly recommend
Davidstow 36 month Reserve, which has a sharp nutty
flavour. Bearing in mind that 'Extra Mature' cheddar is matured for 15 months or
more, 36 months is really special (though if you go to Davidstow's
own website they offer a 60 month Reserve at £22 per
kg!).
The
36 month Reserve is on sale at Tesco, priced £2.75 for
200g, which works out at a slightly more affordable £13.75 per kg but you can
do much better than that when you buy 3 for £5, which brings the cost down to a
modest £8.33 per kg or £3.78 per lb, an absolute bargain price for cheese this
tasty!
Finally,
a reminder that despite all the inflation of the past two decades there's one
thing that you can still buy at the same price as in 2005 it is, of course, a
LostCousins subscription!
Just after this newsletter was published I discovered that Ancestry had
launched a Mother's Day DNA offer in the UK - click
here to save 25%, bringing the cost
down to £59 plus shipping. Of course, Ancestry DNA isn't just for mothers - anyone
can take the test.
And in Australia you can save $40 on Ancestry DNA in their St Patrick's
Day offer, which ends on 17th March - click
here to bring the cost
down to $89 plus shipping. This offer also applies in New Zealand (but remember the
price is in Australian dollars).
Last but not least, in the US you can save $40 on Ancestry DNA in their St Patrick's
Day offer, which ends on 17th March - click
here to bring the cost
down to $59 plus shipping.
I'll be back soon with more news from the world of genealogy
hopefully by then the floods that have affected so many readers in Australia
will have subsided.
Peter Calver
Founder, LostCousins
© Copyright 2022 Peter Calver
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