Newsletter – 5th
September 2024
Cheshire registers online
at Ancestry NEW
Deeds hidden for
centuries found in chest
Brothers reunited
after 15 years
The LostCousins
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Cheshire registers online at Ancestry NEW
In
the last issue I mentioned that Cheshire Archives will be shut until early 2026,
but that Ancestry were close to making colour scans of parish registers available.
The
good news is that Ancestry’s images and indexes went online at the end of last
week. Whilst there are still monochrome images of Diocese of Chester registers
and Bishop’s Transcripts at Findmypast, I have been reliably informed that Ancestry have more parishes
and more years of coverage, and looking at the number of records listed on each
site there certainly seems to be a big disparity.
Cheshire,
England, Church of England Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1538-1812
Cheshire,
England, Church of England Baptisms, 1813-1923
Cheshire,
England, Church of England Marriages and Banns, 1754-1939
Cheshire,
England, Church of England Burials, 1813-1998
Cheshire,
England, Non-Conformist Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1800-1948
Deeds hidden for centuries found in chest
I
live in hope that one day the missing parish registers for Althorne,
in Essex, will show up – but in the meantime I can take some encouragement from
the rediscovery of a cache of documents which date back to at least the 17th
century. You can read more about the find in this BBC article.
There
are so many interesting snippets sent in by readers that I often group together
several items on a similar subject in order to create
a single newsletter article. However, my filing system isn’t perfect (whose
is?) and sometimes an example can be inadvertently overlooked – as happened
with the marriage certificate below, sent in a year ago by a member who is also
called Peter:
Fred
Warner and Clara Bailey married at Wandsworth Register Office, so I’m not sure
who they were trying to fool by lying about their ages – as you can see from
the annotations, the age gap was more like 43 years than the 15 years implied
by the ages recorded.
We
all have illegitimate ancestors in our tree, but it’s not always obvious from
their marriage register entries. When my great-grandparents married in 1864
there were no fathers’ names shown in the marriage register – which you can
interpret in all sorts of ways:
In fact, John Calver was the legitimate son of
John Calver & Sarah Bray, whilst Emily Buxton was the illegitimate daughter
of Robert Roper and Sarah Buxton (formerly Hunt):
Rickinghall
Inferior was in the registration sub-district of Walsham-le-Willows, something
which didn’t seem significant when I bought this certificate 22 years ago, but
since then my wife and I have visited Walsham-le-Willows several times for the
annual Open Gardens weekends – well worth a visit! Perhaps it’s not a
coincidence that my great-grandfather became a gardener after marrying Emily?
When
he wrote a year ago the other Peter also told me about this rather unusual
Gloucestershire marriage entry from 1847:
©
Copyright image Gloucestershire Archives, used by kind permission of Ancestry
They
certainly didn’t beat about the bush in Little Rissington
– it’s one thing to be described as a bastard child in the baptism register,
but in the marriage register? The rector didn’t single out John Prude for his opprobrium
– this marriage from 1844 is almost as explicit:
©
Copyright image Gloucestershire Archives, used by kind permission of Ancestry
The
fact that there were four witnesses rather than the usual two made me wonder
whether the two male witnesses might possibly have been the birth fathers of
the bride and groom – I haven’t done any research into this possibility, but
you might find it an interesting exercise (if so, please post your findings on
the LostCousins Forum).
Other
variations Peter mentioned – which many of you will have come across in your
own research – are the substitution of the name of the mother, or the
stepfather, or simply the word ‘unknown’, which is possibly a kinder way of
dealing with illegitimacy, since it leaves open the possibility that the person
marrying was legitimate but never knew his or her father.
Under
English law illegitimate children had no parents – they were filius nullius,
literally ‘son of nobody’, with no right to use their father’s name, nor any
right to inheritance. There was a similar concept in Scottish law, and most of
the American Colonies adopted filius nullius. There was just one
advantage to being illegitimate – if you were under 21 you could marry by banns
without fear of parental objection!
Even
if the parents of an illegitimate child later married this did not legitimise
the child until 1926 (in England & Wales) and, even then, only if the
parents would have been free to marry at the time of conception or birth; that
proviso was not dropped until 1959.
Whether
or not you have Scottish ancestry you might like to download this 1982
discussion paper
published by the Scottish Law Commission which summarises the situation as it
was then, and makes suggestions for changes in the law: in the course of examining
the issues the authors make multiple reference to the laws of other countries. I also found a short article
focusing primarily on American law, whilst this much longer 1968 article
from the University of Miami Law Review considers whether illegitimate
children should be able to recover damages in respect of their lost life
chances.
Note:
illegitimate children who are adopted are generally treated as if they are the
legitimate offspring of their adoptive parents, however in England & Wales
adoption was not legalised until 1926. Nevertheless, it probably explains why
some mothers adopted their own children.
In
the last
issue we learned how David finally solved the mystery of his wife’s
great-grandfather, who had served in the British Army in the 2nd
Boer War and the Great War under the name William Donn. Diligent research and
clues from DNA tests eventually proved that William’s family name was not
‘Donn’ but ‘Onn’, but his army records had not survived – only his medal card
and International Red Cross records relating to his time as a prisoner-of-war.
This
was such a recent discovery that David had yet to discover why William chose to
change his name – but thanks to an eagle-eyed reader he now has the answer. It
turned out that William had originally joined the Northamptonshire Regiment in
September 1893 using his birth name, but was discharged as unfit in January
1895:
©
Crown Copyright Image reproduced by courtesy of The National Archives, London,
England and used by kind permission of Findmypast
Was
William literally too big for his boots? He had been recommended for discharge
because he suffered from corns, which are often the result of wearing shoes or
boots which are too tight:
© Crown Copyright Image reproduced by
courtesy of The National Archives, London, England and used by kind permission
of Findmypast
It
wasn’t unusual for soldiers who were discharged as unfit or underage to sign up
again – sometimes using the same name but a different birthdate, and sometimes
under a different name. A small number were caught at the time and prosecuted,
but most were undetected – or, if the army suspected, they turned a blind eye
(they couldn’t afford to lose a good soldier at time
of war).
DNA
is revealing some of these changelings, but many of the young men who were
killed in the Great War hadn’t had time to start a family, so have no living
descendants. Not a problem, perhaps, if you’re only interested in researching
your direct ancestors but most researchers want to know what happened to their
ancestors’ siblings.
A number
of
young men who joined up multiple times did it for the money. The newspaper
article on the right (from the East End News and London Shipping Chronicle
dated 28 September 1915 reports the prosecution of one Dave Martin, alias
Thomas Avery, who is said to have enlisted four times at different recruiting
centres. Headed “An Every Day Occurrence” it gives the
impression that incidents like these were common; the recruiting officer at
East Ham, interestingly named Major Cannon, is reported to have said that “They
do it for 1s 6d” and “every day we have half a dozen of these cases. The men
are very difficult to catch.”
Image © THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Used by kind
mermission of Findmypast
Having
searched the British Newspaper Archive looking for other examples I’m not
convinced that these offences were quite as common as Major Cannon suggested. Nevertheless we should always bear in mind the possibility
that an ancestor was less than truthful when joining the army, when marrying,
or when completing a census form. The time to start worrying is when you can’t
find an ancestor at home with his parents on ANY census.
The
website TVARK has short clips of television
transmissions of yesteryear – see, for example, this demonstration film which was
distributed by the BBC to manufacturers of TV sets so that they could demonstrate
the wide range of coverage to potential customers.
Though
undated, it includes a public information broadcast relating to gas masks –
which were first distributed to the civilian population in 1938 – so since
television transmissions ceased on 1st September 1939, only resuming
6 years later, we can be fairly certain that the film
was made in 1938-39.
Note
the emphasis on television transmissions being live – in those days people went
to the cinema frequently, so a television which showed mainly pre-recorded
material would have been an expensive white elephant (the first sets cost as
much as a small car). How things have changed!
Whether
you want to be reminded of a classic TV advertisement, or a TV programme that struck
a chord at the time, TVARK has an amazing selection – but please note that the
clips are short, probably for reasons of copyright.
Copyright
seems to be ignored at the Internet
Archive where you can find all sorts of classic TV programmes. Personally I prefer to purchase DVDs where these are available
– the cost is usually negligible compared to the enjoyment provided and the
quality is almost always going to be higher. My wife and I recently bought the
complete set of Columbo and are already
up to Season 3.
Many
classic radio programmes are available free at BBC Sounds, including
Hancock’s Half Hour, but there is a bigger collection at the Internet Archive,
and some may well be out of copyright.
Back
in April I read a news story about a former dance teacher from a famous acting
family who had died at the age of 106, and naively thought it would be easy to
look her up in the 1921 Census.
As
you’ll know from the articles
I wrote back then, my initial casual interest
turned almost into an obsession as I uncovered tales of deceit, adultery, and –
it was suspected at the time – fraud (see the follow-up article
published in May).
This
week I had a feeling of déjà vu, and whilst this new investigation isn’t
in the same league, the problems of conflicting information in media reports,
online trees, and even in official records are common to both. I’ve done my
best to make sense of what I’ve discovered but there are some additional records
I would have liked to access to support my findings, so my apologies to any
family members reading this if I’ve got something wrong (in which case, do
please let me know!).
Image ©
Midland News Association. Image created courtesy of THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD. Used by kind permission of Findmypast
One
of the old TV adverts I found at TVARK, probably from 1966-67, featured the once
popular DJ Simon Dee promoting Smith’s Crisps – you’ll find it here. If, like me, you are old
enough to remember Simon Dee, you’ll know that his meteoric rise to stardom was
matched only by his dramatic fall from grace – by 1975 he was training to
become a bus driver for London Transport (though I don’t believe he got the
job).
If
you didn’t grow up in the UK in the 1960s the name Simon Dee probably won’t
mean anything to you, but do please continue reading
because I’ll think you’ll not only find the investigation intriguing, but
interesting and instructive.
As
with so many celebrities, Simon Dee was not his birth name – though nor was he
born Carl Nicholas Dodd, the name he used when he married for the first time in
1959, or Carl Nicholas Henty Dodd as The Times wrote in 1968, or even Cyril
Nicholas Henty-Dodd as his Wikipedia
entry asserts.
In
fact, the GRO birth index for the third quarter of 1935 records him as Cyril N
[Dodd], mother’s maiden name Simon:
I
haven’t found any evidence of the surname Henty-Dodd being used before 1949,
though there’s no doubt where Henty comes from – it was the maiden name of
Simon Dee’s paternal grandmother, Edith Maud[e] Henty.
Some
sources, including his obituary in The Times, erroneously suggest that Simon
Dee was born in Ottawa, Canada: see, for example, this article on the Old Brightonians website. As I’ve been unable to find either him
or his parents in the 1939 Register it’s certainly possible that the family
were in Canada around that time, though I’ve so far not found any passenger
list entries to support this hypothesis.
Although
Dee completed his education at Brighton College between 1951-52, from 1949-50
he was a boarder at Shrewsbury, a prestigious public school on the banks of the
River Severn, founded in 1552. Past pupils include Charles Darwin and, more recently,
Michael Palin and Richard Ingrams (founder of Private Eye and The
Oldie). Though if you’re thinking of sending your grandchildren there, please
note that it now costs about £47,000 a year (and I believe that’s before VAT,
which is being introduced at 20% from next year).
©
Image provided by Heritage Assets. Used by kind permission of Findmypast
One
of the many articles about Simon Dee that I found online mentioned that
Shrewsbury was where his family had traditionally been educated, and this prompted
me to look for the entry for his father. Intriguingly the relevant page (97) of
the alumni directory was missing from Findmypast, presumably inadvertently omitted
during digitization, so it was very useful that I could turn to The Genealogist
in my hour of need:
Copyright
© Genealogy Supplies (Jersey) Limited 2024. Use by kind permission of The
Genealogist
Note
that father and son were both in the same house, as is traditional at public
schools, and that his father’s middle name was not Edward – as stated at
Wikipedia and in his death and probate calendar entries – but Edwin. It is clearly
shown as Edwin in both the 1911 and 1921 Censuses and further confirmed by his
birth register entry:
It’s
quite important because they were several boys whose births were registered as Cyril
Edward Dodd, but there seems to have been only one Cyril Edwin Dodd. Though the
1980 death index and 1981 probate calendar entries are wrong, the correct
middle name is recorded in his death notice in The Times of 20th
September 1980, which was placed by his son:
“HENTY-DODD,
CYRIL EDWIN. Born Salford, July 9, 1906, son of Cyril Dodd and Maud Henty; greatly-loved father and much missed by your only son
Nicholas. RIP Pop. 1 Kings 2 v10”
This
short notice also tells us that Cyril Nicholas Dodd (Simon Dee) was known to
his father as ‘Nicholas’, and confirms that even
though his father married three times, there was only one son.
Simon
Dee may well have inherited his chutzpah from his pop – a search in the British
Newspaper Archive reveals Cyril Edwin Dodd to be quite a character, one who
didn’t like playing by the rules. For example, at the age of 19 in 1925 – a year
after leaving Shrewsbury – he was fined £5 for dangerous driving, having allegedly
told the policeman who apprehended him “I don’t care, I never pay fines”.
He
was up before the magistrates again in 1927, accused of driving through
crossroads at 60mph. Bear in mind that that there no road signs in those days,
and judging from this article
on the history of road markings in the UK it’s likely there were no stop lines
at the crossroads either.
In
fact, writing the previous paragraph I had a momentary vision of the way that
Siegfried Farnon drives in the TV adaptations of All Creatures Great &
Small. Surprisingly there were nearly three times as many road deaths in
the UK in 1927 as there were in 2022, even though were far fewer vehicles on
the road in the 1920s. Then again, in 1927 there was no Highway Code, and driving
tests were yet to be introduced.
During
the 1927 court case the magistrates were told about the 1925 offence, and also informed
of three further convictions in the interim, one for driving with an obscured
rear number-plate, another for dangerous driving, and
the third for obstruction. The Police Superintendent who had brought the charge
suggested that a suspension of Dodd’s driving licence would be appropriate; in
mitigation the defence lawyer explained that his client was still only 21 and
needed to drive for his business. Notwithstanding this plea Dodd was fined £5 and his licence was suspended for one month.
In
June 1928 he got married for the first time, to Evelyn Addis Bisset. Settling
down doesn’t seem to have improved his driving – in November he was once again
in court accused of dangerous driving, though this time he was merely fined £5
and had his licence endorsed.
Perhaps
he didn’t settle down at all: by May 1933 his affair with Mrs Gwen Pilling had
led her husband to sue for divorce – a decree nisi was swiftly granted. In January
1934 Cyril married Gwen, and the following year their son Cyril Nicholas was
born.
The
newspaper report of the Pilling divorce case presented a conundrum: Gwen Simon
and Walter Pilling were said to have married in 1921, but according to the GRO
death indexes Gwen Henty-Dodd was only 45 years old
when she died in 1952. Things certainly didn’t add up! Fortunately a Google
search provided confirmation of the marriage date, and you can see a glorious
photo of the happy couple here.
Notice
that the caption to the photograph describes the bride as the niece of Sir
Ellis Griffith and his wife Lady Griffith: Lady Griffith was formerly Mary
Owen, sister of Jane Owen, the mother of Gwen Simon (who was actually
born in 1899). Wikipedia erroneously names Dee’s mother as “Doris
Gwendoline Pilling (née Simon)”, presumably misled by the incorrect age given
at her death. There was a Doris Gwendoline Simon whose birth was registered in
the first quarter of 1906 – I suspect this may have contributed to the
confusion.
I
managed to find a brief newspaper report of his mother’s funeral in the Sussex
Express of 2nd May 1952 – this also gave the incorrect age of 45:
Image
© National World Publishing Ltd.
Image
created courtesy of THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD.
Used
by kind permission of Findmypast
In
1956 a Captain Cyril L Henty-Dodd was reported to have become the first person
in Devon to receive the Institute of Advanced Motorists certificate – despite
the misleading ‘L’ this must surely be Cyril Edwin, who had married for the
third time in Bideford in the first quarter of 1953, less than a year after the
death of his second wife.
This also strongly
suggests that he was the 2nd Lieutenant Cyril Edwin Dodd who was
court-martialled in February 1941 for leaving his guard without permission and
taking two subordinates with him to a gentleman’s club where they consumed
alcohol into the early hours. The fact that he was in charge of
Whitehall defences, including the Government offices and the Houses of
Parliament must have been an aggravating factor.
Image © Reach
PLC. Image created courtesy of THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD. Used by kind
permission of Findmypast
This
article comes from the Grimsby Daily Telegraph of 13th February 1941,
but the case also featured in other newspapers – although I haven’t been able
to discover what the sentence of the court martial was. I suspect he was demoted
or possibly cashiered, since notices in the London Gazette show that he had been
promoted to 2nd Lieutenant in the Grenadier Guards on 21st September 1940, and was subsequently promoted
to temporary 2nd Lieutenant in the Royal Marines on 21st
August 1941.
There
was some interesting background information in the Grimsby Daily Telegraph
article – it reported that he had private means, and
had enlisted in the Irish Guards on 25th October 1939 (which is
after the date of the 1939 Register, so doesn’t explain his omission). He was
promoted to Corporal, and in May 1940 was sent to Sandhurst, receiving his
commission in September.
One
of the other newspaper reports was more detailed – it reports that the
defending solicitor said of his client:
“He
has been fortunate or unfortunate in that during his life he has never had the
necessity to follow any profession, or to earn his living
“It
is not the same as the case of a man who has been brought up to submit to discipline.
“He
is addicted very much to sport, such as hunting, fishing, yachting and
shooting, and he is in short what one might term a typical English sportsman.”
On
the other hand the same report states that the
defendant was 36 and a married man with a young daughter – whereas we know that
Dodd was 34 with a young son. Since the same information appears in other newspapers
it was probably an inadvertent mistake by the defence lawyer, but I can’t entirely
rule out the possibility that there were two officers with the same name.
In
January 1970 TV Times published a series of three articles purportedly
written by Simon Dee and describing his life and career up that point – the
articles are online and you’ll find links to them here. It’s difficult
sorting fact from fiction, and I certainly hope that in trying to make sense of
the records I’ve not introduced new errors.
Brothers reunited after 15 years
On
31st August 2009 the Irish Independent reported the death of
former disc jockey, Simon Dee, the previous day. A much larger story on the
same page reported a split between two brothers – you may have heard of them –
called Noel and Liam Gallagher.
Note:
if you have a Findmypast Pro or Ultimate subscription you can view the articles
here.
These
days we only hear about family reunions brought about by DNA – so the fact that
Oasis are reforming is quite newsworthy. Almost exactly 20 years ago, on 15th
July 2004, my wife and I went to see Simon & Garfunkel perform at London’s
Hyde Park – they had split up in 1970. Their reunion concert also featured the
Everly Brothers, who had split up in 1973 – it was quite an incredible
experience!
Talking
of reunions, it reminds me that right up to the day that John Lennon was shot,
in December 1980, I was one of millions hoping that the Beatles would one day ‘Get
Back’ together. When the news came through the following day
I was with my then partner and her children at the house of a friend. On
hearing the news my partner’s young son innocently said
“Wasn’t he in the Beatles?” at which point my friend’s wife burst into tears –
it was an added reminder that it was the end of an era.
Coming
full circle, John Lennon was one of the celebrities to feature on Simon Dee’s talk
show…..
When
I told David about the army record for William Onn (see article above), the first
thing he said was that it demonstrated the benefits of having access to records
at more than one website.
Few
of us can afford to have annual subscriptions to every site, but we can alternate
them, or take out subscriptions for a shorter period.
Only fools make the mistake of assuming that all the major sites have the same
records – even where there is an overlap, being able to search at more than one
site reduces our dependence on the accuracy of transcriptions, or the quality of
scans.
Free
searches at subscription sites can help, as can totally-free websites such as
FamilySearch, FreeBMD, and FreeREG
– but also check out what your local library has to offer: you won’t be able to
access the main family history websites from home, but there are usually other
resources that are available online. For example, I used the Essex Libraries
subscription to The Times when I was researching the article about Simon
Dee’s family.
You
won’t find The Genealogist in many libraries, but from time to time I find their
site invaluable – whether for the records that other sites don’t have (such as
tithe records and the Lloyd George Domesday valuation), or for the unique search
capabilities. It was also very handy when I was writing about Simon Dee’s
father, who seemed to be missing from the directory of Old Salopians (as
Shrewsbury alumni are known).
The
Genealogist has digitized a lot of books and directories, and whilst some of
them may also be available free at the Internet Archive, the latter isn’t the
easiest site to use. Recent additions to their collection comprise nearly 300,000
landowner records, including: Berwick, Index to Register of Sasines Volume I. A-H 1617-1780; London and Middlesex, A
Calendar to the Feet of Fines 1179-1485; Yorkshire Feet of Fines 1327-1614;
Huntingdon Calendar of the Feet of Fines 1194-1603; Scotland, Index to
Particular Register of Sasines for Sheriffdom of
Dumfries and Stewaertries of Kirkcudbright and
Annandale 1617-1732;
Scotland
Record Office, Index to Register of Deeds, 1661-79.
By
the way, if you don’t know what ‘Feet of Fines’ are, see this article
from the very first (1952) issue of The Amateur Historian, the journal of the British
Association for Local History. It begins “No record is more often consulted by
genealogists and local historians than the Feet of Fines….”.
OFFER:
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follow this link,
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are up. In the first year you’ll also get a free subscription to Discover
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Would
you like 6 issues of Who Do You Think You Are? magazine for under £10? I’m
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the world:
UK - try 6 issues for just £9.99
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To take advantage of any of these deals (and to
support LostCousins) please follow this link.
My
wife is currently too busy in the garden to write an article, but she did ask
me to mention that Sarah Raven are offering 25% off almost everything until
Sunday 8th September, with free shipping when you follow this link
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Peter Calver
Founder, LostCousins
© Copyright 2024 Peter Calver
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