Forum Topic

June 19 1921 census...

For those fascinated by what our ancestors were getting up to a century ago, the 1921 census will be published in January next year, exclusively on FindMyPast..Some time after that it will obviously land on Ancestry and the other big sites.  But if (like me) you can hardly wait to see it soonest you'll need to join FindMyPast for a while..Among other mysteries on my tree and others I do for friends, it'll hopefully be a day of reckoning for Grandma Alice (1973-1945).  Was she living with Mr Lewis in Hackney?  Were they pretending to be man and wife?  And who was Mr Jacobs currently wooing?  Come to that, where on earth was John Kerr hiding out...?

Stuart Kerr ● 2060d13 Comments

There’s an area in Wanlthamstow where a local artist used the 1911 census and made ‘fake’ blue plaques which people put in their windows, showing the 1911 occupants and their professions/trades. V interesting to see which names were common too.

Vivienne Cox ● 2060d

I have a Jacobs and a Spencer in my ancestry 400 years ago, and all sorts since.

Janice Evans ● 2060d

"Where was John Kerr hiding"?Just before the War a John Kerr was living at 175 Gunnersbury Lane according to Kellys. There were other Kerrs living in Chiswick too at that time.In the 40s and 50s I knew a Kerr family living in Whitehall Gardens.You may find a Directory of Directories type website linked to Leicester University. Have you performed at Hackney Empire?

Jim Lawes ● 2060d

Hi Jim..I'm lucky, in the sense that my own family tree is littered with fascinating skeletons – the root of plenty of real life drama and the basis for many a made-up tale.. But none of this ancient history took place in Chiswick.  Grandma Alice was the “victim” of an 1890's  arranged marriage in St John's Wood when she was nineteen years old.  Her chosen husband, John James Kerr was the son of a successful builder and the two of them ran a small chain of pubs and shops until (I suspect) about 1906 when they drifted apart.  Almost certainly  acrimoniously.  Naughty Alice skipped the 1911 census but I found John in that year, living alone and running a hotel in Clapham.  Three years later my father was born in Islington.  But Alice (illegally) waited well over a year before she registered the birth.. and then entered a tissue of lies declaring John as the father.  Which, I've since proved he couldn't possibly have been.By 1921 I'm pretty sure I've found her on electoral rolls living in Hackney as Alice Lewis.  Next years census release of that year will confirm all that stuff but I'm pretty sure it's accurate.  The Jacob (John) Lewis story is even more entertaining leading to stories of billionaires in Los Angeles and the family that founded BEJAM in the UK.  But alas, Alice herself managed to lose everything she had - and ended her days penniless in the care of my dad.Re the Hackney Empire.  No, I've never worked there.  BUT – my maternal grandfather's eldest brother was a dapper one-legged chap name of Richard Charles Jones (smart overcoat, homburg hat, kid leather gloves) who was well-known around the Hackney Empire for years between the wars -  looking after the Rolls Royces of the stars who were appearing there.Richard's sister, Mary Ann Lucy Jones, told a pack of lies on the 1911 census which I had great fun unravelling.  My mum knew her as her Aunt Polly and told me she was a terrifying lady, very proper,  thick glass, fur coats in  winter - who made plenty of money from running a cat meat business in Well Street.  What mum never knew (until I told her) was that Polly had children from various chaps and spent years living under false names.  Things like that were kept very quiet in them days....carry on...

Stuart Kerr ● 2059d

Very interesting Stewart.

Janice Evans ● 2059d

Sorry Stuart.

Janice Evans ● 2059d

Stuart, I admire your diligence. All I know is that my paternal grandfather was fined 5s for riding a horse furiously in Uckfield, and that my maternal great grandfather was a brewer's drayman - which somehow seems appropriate. More spare time needed to delve further.

Ken Munn ● 2059d

Oh I dunno Ken...I actually don't do “diligence”.  I'm probably the least diligent local you've never met.  But sure, I remember my own images of doing “ancestry” as being boring old farts in sandals roaming around windy graveyards and isolated country churches.  Which is why I avoided it like the plague for years.Thankfully internet ancestry and DNA research is miles from that dull image.  All you need is money to research and fund the project - and enough curiosity and love of social history to want to know how people lived in them days:  what they did to survive; how they behaved; how they found their entertainment; how they struggled; how and why they courted their partners and on and on endlessly..Then you need a “nose” to do all that successfully.  Tie all the knots together.  There has to be something of the Endeavour/Morse in you – to accurately sense things and spot the clues...  It's either a fun hobby OR don't touch it with a bargepole..(I'm a big fan of TV Prof David Olusoga and his Liverpool/Bristol “House Through Time” series)

Stuart Kerr ● 2059d

I used to do this years ago before the internet (or we had the internet or a computer) when you had to go up to St Catherine's House and struggle to take those very large register books out and off the shelf to read and only write your finds in a notebook with a pencil.When searching for an unusual name you could also just list all entries and then try and organise them into families by area - the same with the census entries - and then decide which certificates if any to get.  Now that you have to pay to join everything you can't just go off on a whim and a fancy chasing down alleys after ancestors.  I do love the way in the census you can see who the neighbours all are - it was more significant in days gone by when people moved around far less.I remember going to look up my Great Grandfather's family on the census at the Records Office in Kew and discovering my Great Great Grandfather was on it as well. It took too long and was too much of a performance to get a copy though.  Don't know what it is like now.Always important to write things down!  Life happens when you are doing something else.  Suddenly there's no-one to confirm who it is there in the photo.Another thing that we often don't realise is how many children families had in the past because many were not known about or remembered and spoken about because they died very young.I also enjoyed David Olusoga's House Through Time - and also love Who Do You Think You Are.

Philippa Bond ● 2059d

Fascinating Stuart.No skeletons in my family cupboard sadly but my wife's family history is a virtual boneyard with fascinating characters. Fortunes made and lost, playboy racing drivers, pioneering ice cream sellers who owned large swathes of central London way back to a man "too stupid to have plotted against the king". The last of these was the youngest son of a prominent parliamentarian who, when the monarchy was restored after the Civil War, was homeless and landless so, as recompense, he was made Lord Mayor of Oxford to "give you a home and a living".

N V Brooks ● 2059d

I found out that my grandparents on the paternal side had four children prior to getting married, I don't think my Dad ever knew that. I do know that it wasn't a very happy marriage though, took them eleven kids to work that out! So far on both sides all Londoners born and bred as far as I can tell.

Vanessa Smith ● 2059d

Think years ago couples stay together even if they never got along very well.

Janice Evans ● 2059d

Like the sound of your wife's tree NVB.  Especially the playboy racing drivers and the ice cream pioneers.  We have a murder on the books, a tragic suicide, quite a few deportations to Tasmania, the odd knighthood including an immigrant theatre impresario in Australia, a bloke who developed Lakewood in Los Angeles with a theatre named after his wife, an aunt who took a carving knife to the “other woman” after her husband left her, a grandad struck dead by lightning, a mining disaster, a whole flock of close relatives who didn't make it home from WW1, a hansom cab proprietor, Eastend fishmongers with Leigh-on-Sea fishermen, meat porters from Smithfield, poverty stricken silk weavers from Bethnal Green, a gay uncle with three kids and secret lovers in Florida and on and on..Yes Philippa, I really can't imagine how you guys did Ancestry pre the internet.  Am full of admiration.  I suppose you realise that as an Ancestry.co.uk member, I've got immediate access to all the census records and millions and millions of other records.. school, crime, electoral rolls, probate, church records, birth, death, baptism.. millions.  Far easier...And yes Vanessa, they had so many babies because infant mortality was rife, especially amongst the poor.  My maternal great grandad had 13 kids which was nothing special.  (his lovely worn-out wife died on the operating table age about 55 with an infected foot/black toe - which I can easily see from 2021 was clearly  undiagnosed diabetes) …  Anyway  re multiple babies - maybe also, with no TV and radio, there wasn't much easy entertainment to be had on a cold winter evening when the fire had gone out  :-)

Stuart Kerr ● 2059d