A visit to Huntsworth Mews

Before i describe my visit to Huntsworth Mews, let me warn you that this is not an account which will satisfy the scientifically-minded reader. I can't read maps or street signs, nor can I describe with confidence what an edifice looks like. Visual impairment forces me to focus on what I pick up through my intuition and so I'll ask you to be content with that.

I had researched a little about Huntsworth Mews, as reported in a previous post, but that research didn't prepare me very well for what I found. i was expecting a quaint, cobbled street with Victorian row houses, complete with two steps leading up to a painted door. Instead, i found what appeared to me like a yard. If there had once been front doors at ground level — or even stables and carriage houses — they were now gone, replaced by garages for the residents who lived in the upstairs apartments.

This was disappointing because I couldn't see any pretty Victorian architecture on the house fronts at all. Perhaps this was because there never had been any, the houses having been accommodation for servants in days gone by. or perhaps renovations to the buildings had resulted in the loss of old-fashioned details, especially if those details had been too weathered or damaged to restore.

The old archway leading from the outer street into the mews is, however, still as it always was. Standing beside it, I had a sense of what the atmosphere must once have been like. I could imagine horses passing in and out of the gate, some carrying riders on errands for their masters,, others pulling carriages decked out with curtains and plush velvet seats. Inside the mews, boot makers, bucklers, dressmakers and spinners would be working in a patch of sheltered sunlight, keeping company with their neighbours. Mothers of small children would be busy with washing, cooking and cleaning the house, while the children themselves would be scooting round the edges, chasing the odd tabby cat or chanting rhymes as their grandmothers had taught them to do.

Summer time would probably have been hot in that closed, paved space, but winter would have been fairly cosy, especially if horses were stabled under the houses and hearth-fires were kept burning. Maude's family numbered 12 in all at the time, which would also have added to the feeling of warmth.

My overall impression of Huntsworth Mews was favourable. It was a solid place from which to embark on life's journey in the latter half of the 19th century. Not only were the buildings strong and protective, but the community they housed were knitted together in both work and leisure, producing a comfortable and nurturing environment.

Walking in my great-grandmother's footsteps

A recent trip to England to see our daughter gave my husband and I an opportunity to look up some addresses that feature in the narrative of my grandfather's mother, Maude Alice Parker nee Ritchie. I had collated the addresses into a list from census records and other documentation. Google then assisted in the plotting of the points on a map and coming up with a route to link them all. This post is about the route we took, while future posts will detail the events which took place at each location.

Our starting point was Piccadilly Circus where we were staying. We boarded a tube for Marylebone Station and rose to street level via a couple of very long escalators. I believe Marylebone Station is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, underground train station in London, although this would only apply to the upper platform since deep-level tunnelling came later. It's hard to imagine what the old station would have looked like in the late 1800's, given the crowds of sneakered tourists and suited businessmen, not to mention electric cars, vans and double-decker buses that populate the area today.

Following the satellite navigation, we made our way to Huntsworth Mews where Maude lived as a little girl. Not much of the facade remains now but the secluded, paved road is just the same as it was.

Next we walked to Broadley Street, formerly Earl Street, where Maude lived in her early teens. The street is now an attractive residential road, although I have a sense that it comprised much less salubrious accommodation at the end of the 19th century. It has nice wide pavements now and the houses are set back a little from the street, suggesting that the upgrading of the area may have included some demolition of small cottages.

Our walk took us through a busy and very noisy part of town to what used to be the Paddington Green Children's Hospital. It is now a care centre but the red brick gate-posts and facade are reminiscent of times past. This was where my grandfather was born. Directly opposite the gates of the old hospital is Paddington Green itself, a fenced park with very wintry-looking trees. No doubt Maude would have known it well.

Heading into Westminster, we found Brown Street, the address given by Maude on her statutory declaration of David's birth. That was in 1918 when my grandfather was 16. Standing on the corner, I caught a snatch of conversation between two young men in suits and gleaned from their discussion about finance that they were probably in the banking sector.

By this time, it was mid-afternoon. Catching a bus, we emerged at Knightsbridge where some of London's most expensive property is located. After admiring the beautiful facades of buildings occupied by property brokers, accountants and lawyers in Curzon Street, we reached Mayfair and Chesterfield Street. This is another very impressive road, much quieter than Curzon Street and thick with blue signs identifying the addresses of historical notaries such as author Somerset Maugham, prime minister Anthony Eden and fashion leader Beau Brummell. Right in the middle of all this fame and fortune lived the Viscount Hood at the residence which now houses the High Commission of the Bahamas. It was here that Maude worked in 1901 as a kitchen maid and met the man who was to become her husband.

Staying amongst the rich and famous, we made our way across Green Park to St James Square. Our route took us along the mall and the area where the Queen's horses are stabled. There was a convoy of motorcycles ahead of us which could have been escorting an important official but it wasn't likely to have been any of the royals as they are currently in Sandringham, to the best of our knowledge. Anyway, we finally reached St James Square and the address where Maude was working in 1911. It is now the London headquarters of the Rolex Watch Company.

With the sun sinking fast and the temperature dropping, we hurried through St James Park back to Piccadilly Circus. Two things stood out to me from the afternoon's long ramble: Firstly, that what was for us just a tiny part of the city was, in Maude's day, quite a substantial portion of it. And secondly, that the 1939-1945 war must have wrought extensive damage in the streets through which we'd passed although I detected nothing but neatness and order.

Beginning my genetic journey with 23andMe

When my daughters asked me what I would like for my birthday this year, I suggested that the whole family contribute towards getting me a DNA testing kit. I love gifts that are useful, and this one tied directly into my new interest in genealogy. Although the girls weren't aware of the current trend in family history that uses DNA to locate ancestors and living relatives, they readily agreed to my idea. Thus it was that, a week before my birthday, while my husband and I were visiting our daughter Tammy in the United Kingdom, I received my 23andMe testing kit, all neatly contained in a chocolate-box-sized package.

Tammy let me take it out of its bag and unwrap it. Then she read the instructions. The first step was to create an online account with 23andMe and register my kit. That was straightforward enough. An email in my inbox confirmed that my account had been created and my kit successfully registered.

The second step was to work out how to use the saliva collection tube. Tammy made a big deal of this for my benefit, calling it "the medical stuff". Actually, It wasn't complicated, but being visually impaired, I needed someone sighted to ensure I did everything right. For one thing, I had to wait at least half an hour after eating dessert before I could take the test. Then I had to be sure the tube was full without putting my finger into it to feel the level. Finally, when the tube was full, it had to be properly sealed according to the directions in order to reach the laboratory without contamination or leakage.

The third step was an online health survey in several parts. Although optional, I was keen to participate in the full experience so I made a start. The questions ranged from naming the medical conditions I had suffered from to stating my general outlook on life. Some sections could be skipped if they were irrelevant but it was certainly a very detailed and thorough questionnaire. I expect many people would find it tedious. For my part, I saw how the answers to the questions could significantly advance research in the field of gene therapy. Since my own blindness is caused by a genetic mutation, and because there's such potential for treating it with stem cell therapy, I support the ethical collection of research data.

There was a cheerful red postbox outside Tammy's flat where I posted the resealed, self-addressed 23andMe package. As I write this, my saliva test kit is somewhere in transit between England and the Netherlands. There is still a lot for me to learn about the process but I firmly believe in learning by doing. This is an experience which will teach me much, not just about my relatives, but about the whole field of identifying and/or treating inherited diseases, conditions and traits.

A possible narrative for Maude Alice Parker nee Ritchie

As a student of English literature, I am unabashedly influenced by novels. Historical novels, in particular, can throw valuable light on the customs of the past. Family history research is, i believe, enriched by such reading, and has given me insight into what my great-grandmother, Maude Alice Parker, may have had to go through as a young woman in Marylebone, London at the start of the 20th century.

For the sake of full disclosure, the book that gave me an appreciation of her circumstances and a possible narrative for her life story is Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell. I can heartily recommend it to any genealogist looking for a close view into English country life. But back to Maude. here is what may have occurred:

Maude wasn’t raised in a God-fearing family. By the time she came along, the ninth of 10 children, her parents had wearied of raising young girls. She was more or less raised by her sisters, with the result that her knowledge of men focused more on the potential for romance than on caution and restraint.

When she was about 20, Maude obtained work in the residence of the Viscount Hood at 10 Chesterfield Street. The Hoods entertained hundreds of guests, nearly all of them titled. The servants numbered about 15 and were largely chosen for their attractive appearance and good manners. Maude herself was pretty and eager. She attracted the attention of one of the visitors to the house and was charmed by his interest in her. Without realising that there was any shame involved, she fell in love with the gentleman and allowed him to have his way with her.

Discovering that she was pregnant, Maude felt a mixture of shock and wonder at the thought that she was carrying her beloved's child. However, reality quickly sobered her up as instructions came for her to leave her job. The gentleman, fearing exposure, urged her to say that the child was that of a fellow servant, David Scott Ritchie. In return for this subterfuge, the gentleman gave the couple a handsome endowment which they could spend as they wished.

The young couple moved together into Albert Street, occupying rooms they could never previously have afforded. However, they soon had to face the fact that they were totally unsuited to each other. Maude was only interested in her child, whereas David, who had no time for another man’s son, wanted to invest in business like his father and brothers. It was agreed that they would move out of Albert Street into separate lodgings. In Maude’s case, she moved in with her younger sister, Gertrude. Her estranged husband, for his part, took his share of the money and went south to Devon where he bought property.

As soon as she could, Maude sent young David to boarding school and returned to full-time work. However, she bore the shame of wantonness because everyone knew she had been pregnant when she got married. Unable to find work as a dressmaker along with Louisa, Ellen and Mabel, she sought work as a cook once again.

At some point in his young life, David was told that he was illegitimate. This knowledge burdened him with shame because he was well aware of the disgrace associated with so-called “loose women”. Even though Maude assured him the shame was hers, not his, his sunny disposition was darkened by the ostracism his mother suffered. Moreover, he had to bear the weight of his secret knowledge at school among the other boys, with all their fantasies about pretty, innocent girls. This had the effect of turning him into a more thoughtful and compassionate scholar than many of his peers.

As young David grew and began to excel in academics and sport, Maude struggled with her wish to hold him close. He was her only son and she was inexpressively proud of him. Yet, for his own sake, she needed to let him go so that he could pursue his ambitions and dreams. Thus, when he finished school, she encouraged him to find a job that would take him far from home, far from the orbit of her influence and the stain that was apparently forever on her character.

The tragedy of Maude’s early infatuation [or love, as it may well have been] with the high-born gentleman in Chesterfield Street left its mark on both Maude and her unfortunate husband. She remained in lowly service all her life, seldom seeing her son and his South African family. As for David Scott Ritchie senior, he lost all his money when his tenants were called up to fight in the First World War. Disappointed and humiliated at having to go back into service as a butler, he eventually succumbed to depression and fits of rage, which lost him his job and sent him into a mental hospital for the poor.

A 9-year-old boy seems to be missing

I've talked about my grandfather's birth in Paddington in 1902. His mother was Maude and his father was David. They lived in Albert Street and may well have been working there too, since they were a cook and a footman respectively.

One would expect, then, to find him living with his parents 9 years later in the 1911 census. But things have changed significantly. Neither Davids are listed in the same household as Maude. This presents another genealogical puzzle.

Let's look first at Maude. She is listed with her full name, Maude Alice Ritchie, and birth location, London, Marylebone. As expected, she states that she is married, aged 33 and a Cook/Domestic. The household she is working in is grand, being located in St James Square in the neighbourhood of St James, not far from the royal palace of St James and St James' Park. The head of the household, George Shepperd Murray, is a retired bank manager from Ceylon, and besides his high-born wife and son there are 2 other female servants in residence.

It is possible that my grandfather was living somewhere else with his father, the footman/butler. Then again, I haven't been able to trace either of them in England. Could it be that David Scott Ritchie senior took his son to the United States or Canada, just as his older brother William took his son, David Scott of Lambeth? This is an attractive theory but it goes against what my grandfather wrote in his memoir about making his first trip abroad in 1926 when he cycled through Belgium with his friends.

Another theory is that he was away at boarding-school. This is a more likely possibility, I think, except that I don't know how the couple would have afforded it on their small joint income.

A third possibility is that someone else funded David's education. The subsequent successful career of my grandfather in the world of Hollerith lends credibility to this idea. But who could the mystery sponsor be? Maude's father, James Parker, had died more than 10 years earlier, leaving his wife Jane to live off her own means. David Scott Ritchie senior's father, William Ritchie, was 20 years in the grave, so his wife, Emma Eliza, was similarly unable to offer charity. Perhaps, and this is where my nose for scandal begins to twitch, the individual was someone else entirely. Perhaps it was my grandfather's true father or his aristocratic family who made a bargain to ensure her silence.

After all, Maude had been working for Viscount Hood in Chesterfield Street at the time of the 1901 census. Everyone who visited there must have been noble by birth. Who can say what went on in a household with three times the number of servants employed by the Murrays of St James Square?

Sketch by James Hobbs

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Why my grandmother reminds me of bells

Bells are usually associated with weddings, aren't they? I wish I could devote the whole of this post to my grandmother's wedding 90 years ago but sadly I have very little information to share. The marriage took place on 18 may 1929 at St Paul's Church in Haggerston in the parish of Shoreditch in the East End of London. The witnesses to the marriage were Hilda Mary Charlotte Wright and Archibald William Wright. The vicar was Wilfred H. Abbot if I have read it correctly. I'm afraid I don't even have a photo of the wedding to share. I wanted to look up the weather on the day [sometimes mentioned in forecasts or reports in old newspapers] but researching in newspapers is a whole other skill which I haven't yet mastered. So I'm going to ask you to join me in a little exercise instead. My grandmother, known to everyone as Sandy, used to say that she grew up in range of the 6 famous bells featured in the nursery rhyme, "Oranges and Lemons". They are, of course, the bells of St Clement's, St Martin's, Old Bailey, Shoreditch, Stepney and Bow. You can hear a lovely rendering of the song here, and as you do, imagine the peal of all these bells ringing out over the Thames dockyards, East End streets and wedding guests on Grandma's special day. Bells continued to be part of her life right into her golden years. She and my grandfather retired to a house at the beach in the late 1960's and decorated it with many of the treasures they had gathered in their round-the-world travels. Among these was a sturdy brass bell in a bell-rest which they used at the dinner table to summon their "house-boy", Charlie. Thinking back to that dignified old gentleman in his white tunic and trousers, smartly trimmed with red, I cringe, but that was the way my ancestors lived. Come to think of it, I wonder where Charlie's people are now?

A truly fortuitous find in the 1901 census

Census records are a rich source of information for the family historian. If you are lucky, you can find the names, birth dates and birth locations of a whole family, plus the occasional brother-in-law, elderly parent or future marriage partner. Especially useful are the details you discover about where a family lived over the course of time and how their occupations developed or changed.

But sometimes you hit a brick wall and are unable to locate a person on a census record at all. This happened for me in both Maude Alice Parker and David Scott Ritchie senior's cases. Knowing that gaps on the census can indicate travel, military service or institutionalisation, I tried broadening my search to include locations outside of London and even the United Kingdom, but with no luck.

What puzzled me was that I had evidence to suggest that Maude and David were right there in Paddington. For one thing, the pair were married in Paddington in the first quarter of 1902. For another, Maude's statutory declaration citing the date of my grandfather's birth also gave the address where they were living, which was 22 Albert Street in the same neighbourhood. Surely they could not have been out of the country in 1901?

In desperation, I began searching for anyone named Parker who was born around 1879 in Marylebone who appeared on the 1901 census. There were a few hits that came up for women named Maude or Alice, so I checked those out first. Sure enough, there was an Alice Parker working as a kitchen maid at a house in Chesterfield Street, Mayfair. The age was slightly out but everything else looked promising.

The transcription on Ancestry made it look as if the house was full of foreigners, so muddled were some of the names. But a few searches on Google soon solved that mystery. What I had in front of me was the household of the Viscount Francis Hood. The status of the family is born out by the number of servants they employed, as well as the fact that their home on Chesterfield Street is now the premises of the High Commission of the Bahamas.

An even bigger surprise came when I scrutinised the names of the other servants living in the house. A footman from Tottenham was among them and his name was Daria Ritchie. Now, it's not rocket science to realise that "David" can appear as "Daria" if the entry was scribbled, and, indeed, another genealogist had noted the error in transcription of this name as well as several others.

So, I've found my missing lovers! It is quite likely that Maude met David through her job, although perhaps they met beforehand and enlisted together. The main thing is, i have an address for them before they married. Slowly but surely, i am building a timeline for them and, by extension, for my grandfather's early life.

Illustration from "Directions to Servants in general; and in particular to the Butler, Cook, Footman, Coachman, Groom, House-Steward and Land-Steward, Porter, Dairy-Maid, Chamber-Maid, Nurse, Laundress, House-Keeper, Tutoress or Governess, etc", "Miscellaneous Single Works"

Author: Swift, Jonathan Shelfmark: "British Library HMNTS 1077.i.45."

Travelling first class from England to South Africa

Grandad had been working for BTM for a couple of years. One day, he was summoned to head office and told he'd been chosen to head up the Cape Town branch, which was an amazing opportunity for a young man of 26. His task was to bring up the staff compliment to 12 and build a solid base for the Hollerith brand in South Africa. I'm guessing he had met his sweetheart by then because he and Sandy [Florence Sanderson] married a year later.

He must have been excited about the prospect of starting a new life with his bride in a faraway land. I imagine he knew something about South Africa as it was a member of the Commonwealth, the location of the Anglo-Boer War and an envisaged growth region for BTM. Yet I wonder what his imagination dreamt up when he thought of living there? Lions and elephants on the streets? Or smart colonial cocktail parties?

The company gave David a first-class ticket to sail on a Union Castle ocean liner to Cape Town. That was when he bumped into Henry, Duke of Gloucester. Apparently, the Duke was stunned into silence by the sight of his double, and Grandad had to scramble to think of what to say in the presence of such an esteemed royal personage. After all, this was the son of King George V, no less. With a polite half-smile and a respectful “How do you do”, my grandfather got past the awkward moment, but as he says in his memoir, “I swear he gave me a wink!”

This is a fascinating anecdote but it’s hard to correlate with the facts. Grandad’s memoir states that the Duke was on route to Lobito Bay on the Atlantic coast to open the Benguela Bay railway. The Benguela Railway was completed in February 1929, sure enough, but there is no record of the Duke of Gloucester being amongst the officials at the opening. What is certain is that Henry and his brother were in Africa in September 1928 on an expedition to shoot big game. It was while in Nairobi that Henry was entertained by Mansfield Markham and his wife Beryl, and where his affair with Beryl is purported to have begun.

Finding passenger lists for people travelling to and from the United Kingdom isn't generally complicated, but for some reason, I haven't been able to track down that first trip of David's in 1928. All his subsequent trips are there [1939 being the most eventful because the family's time in England happened to coincide with the outbreak of war] but then he was sailing as a second-class passenger along with his wife and daughters. So, that first voyage remains something of a mystery. Another one to add to the mounting pile!

Photo by Royal Australian Historical Society

From Lowly engineer to globe-trotting agent for Hollerith computers

My grandfather, Dave Ritchie, was recruited as a service engineer by the British Tabulating Machine Company sometime around 1927. I don't know on what basis they hired him because I don't think he went to university. Perhaps it was a combination of a good school-leaving certificate, a good track record in his previous job and a recommendation by someone connected to BTM management.

The British Tabulating Machine Company was the firm that imported Hollerith punch-card machines from America. Herman Hollerith had invented the tabulating machine for the purpose of processing information for the 1890 American census. Success in that area led to its adaptation for accounting purposes, and this caught the attention of visionary businessmen. In the early 1900's, BTM secured contracts with the Lancashire and North Yorkshire Railway, the Great Western Railway, theCalico Printers Association, the British Western Electrical Company and the English Census of 1911, to name just a few.

By the late 1920's, the field of early computing was offering good job opportunities. Boys who left school at fourteen were hired as

punch-card operators to enter data on the punch-card machines. Those with higher qualifications were trained in accounting, as much of the processing was for billing and payroll. For example, a company would use the tabulator to record the number of hours worked, the hourly wage of each employee, and the deductions made by the employer for various staff benefits.

A new recruit to BTM in the 1950’s described how he was interviewed and trained: A graduate from Cambridge, e applied to work for BTM as a consultant. He was sent first to Moor Hall in Cookham for a 13-week training programme. There was a week of induction followed by 2 weeks’ of lectures in cost accounting and business paperwork. The rest of the course comprised classes on all of the machines available to customers. After this 13-week course, the trainee spent 3 months at a district service office. Typically, a group of four service technicians would drive to the customer where they would meet up with the Hollerith supervisor, the person who oversaw the machine on site. Occasionally, there were sales demonstrations at a prospective customer’s office, which involved going in a van loaded with various types of punch-card machines and working alongside a female demonstrator chosen for her moderate machine skills and attractive appearance. Once the trainee had gained this initial exposure in the field, he returned to Moor Hall for a final 3-month batch of classes.

This, then, was probably how my grandfather started off his career. But he went much further. Some of the other roles he fulfilled as an agent for Hollerith were Railway Liaison Officer, Manager Surveys and Plans, Public Relations Officer, Manager Head Office Controlled Territories, and Director of the subsidiary company Allied Steel Equipment Company Limited.

As a child, I was frankly ignorant of my grandfather's involvement in the marketing of computer technology to businesses. Today, however, I stand in awe of his pioneering spirit.

Photo by: Dave Ross

What I know about my grandfather's early life

There is a strange dearth of information surviving about my grandfather, David Scott Ritchie's early life. I've tried, as described in recent posts, to find clues by researching the lives of his parents, David Scott Ritchie senior and Maude Alice Parker, but nothing has come up so far. No 1911 census, no school admissions records, and no articles from old newspapers.

All I know is that he was born in Paddington and lived for a time in Albert Street. The next evidence I have of his whereabouts comes from his memoir about his travels around the world, in which he tells of his first job out of school. I guess he must have been about 16. He worked as an office boy for Cadbury and Pratt, which had offices in New Bond Street. His job included polishing the great brass door knocker and delivering goods to Buckingham Palace.

In June 1926, he and 3 friends went on holiday abroad. Among them were Dick, from London, and Pat, from Wales. As he described in his memoir, they caught a ferry from Dover to Ostend, Belgium with their bicycles and explored as much as they could on their meagre budget. It was this holiday abroad, he says, that first infected him with the travel bug.

At the time of his Belgium trip, he was working as a "lowly engineer" with an unnamed company. Perhaps he was in training for what was to come, because February 1927 saw him start work with the British Tabulating Machine Company Limited as a service engineer, based in Letchworth in Hertfordshire. He noted in his memoir that the Company had branches in all the dominions except Canada, and including Hong Kong.

Clearly, he was set up for a career full of interesting travel, just as he wished. And his memoir bears this out. Yet I still wonder, what, besides that initial bicycle tour through Belgium, inspired such a thirst for exploration and new experiences? Surely, there must have been someone in his youth, a particular relative or special teacher, who introduced him to the idea of visiting far-off lands?

Image from "Bicycles and supplies" Year: 1918 (1910s) Authors: Boyd, T.W. & Son, Montreal Publisher: Montreal, Desbarats

Great-great-uncles can be a valuable source of information

I wrote yesterday about how I located my great-grandfather David Scott Ritchie of Tottenham by identifying first my grandfather's cousin and then his uncle. This is such a rich and interesting part of the story that I want to share it.

To recap, my grandfather's uncle is one of 3 boys, William, David Scott and Thomas Scott. Picture them in Lambeth in 1881, aged 9, 7 and 1. Their father, William Ritchie, states on the census that he was born in 1849 in Scotland. Right now, he is working as a commercial clerk for an oil merchant. Their mother, Emma Eliza Ritchie, has her family roots in Ipswich, Suffolk, where her father was a coach maker. All in all, they sound like a fairly well-off family, don't they?

The eldest son, William, certainly seems to have done all right. Thirty years later, when the 1911 census is taken in Wandsworth, he is 40, the father of 3 sons and a furniture dealer by trade. his rather large household includes his 66-year-old mother, Emma Eliza, and her second husband, James lavell, who works as a cab driver. Such are his means that he is also able to offer a home to his wife's sister and her infant son, plus his 24-year-old unemployed brother-in-law.

Thomas Scott Ritchie is likewise doing well for himself in 1911. Aged 31 and married to Ethel Louise, he is the proud dad of two little boys, Eric Scott and Donald. He has a good job as chief clerk at an advertising agency, which allows him and his young family to live comfortably in Brixton Hill.

But where was my great-grandfather, David Scott Ritchie senior, all this time? I was struggling to find any trace of him after he married my great-grandmother Maude.

Then a shocking record turned up. A David Ritchie with the birth date of 1874 and occupation of butler was listed as an inmate of the St Bernard's Hospital, Southhall, Middlesex on the night of the 1939 register. This hospital, also called Hanwell Mental Hospital, was established for the care of paupers. It appears that David was a patient with no-one willing or able to afford his medical care.

Such things turn up in genealogy from time to time. Of course, this may not be the same David Ritchie who married Maude and gave birth to my grandfather but it seems highly likely that it is, given the sheer dearth of information about the middle son of William and Emma Eliza. I shall have to keep looking for evidence. And I shall have to learn all I can about the treatment of inmates of psychiatric hospitals in the first half of the 20th century.

How I located my grandfather's missing father

Finding David Scott Ritchie's father was a real challenge. For a start, no-one in the family had ever spoken about him. He seemed to have been completely absent, yet surely, if he had died young, Grandad would have talked about it? The whole matter seemed to pulsate with dark intrigue.

Conspiracy theories abounded on our family WhatsApp group but I was the stick-in-the-mud who thought there must be a simple explanation. I began with what I had: First, a marriage record for Maude Alice Parker and David Scott Ritchie dated 1902. Second, the statutory declaration about my grandfather's birth which said his father was a butler. While this occupation sounded pretty grand, especially given the rumour that one or other of them had worked in a palace, it did seem odd that his actual name hadn't been included on the declaration. Clearly, he wasn't part of their lives anymore. Something dire must have happened between 1902 when he married Maude and 1918 when the statutory declaration was signed.

Searching online for David Scott Ritchie, husband of Maude, I soon realised how complicated the process was going to be. Ritchie is a name that crops up all over England and many of the Davids who appear on the census came from Scotland. I didn't think my great-grandfather had been born in Scotland as there'd been no trace of a Scottish accent in Grandad. Still, he did have a very Scots-sounding middle name. I could be wrong.

Meanwhile, another David Scott Ritchie kept cropping up in every search I ran. This was David Scott Ritchie born 1903 in Lambeth. Not my grandfather, obviously, as he had been born in 1902 in Paddington. Yet their identical names suggested a family relationship. It occurred to me then that they could be cousins, sons of brothers who held strongly to the tradition of family names. And sure enough, when I examined David Scott Ritchie of Lambeth's family tree, I found several useful leads.

David of Lambeth's father was William Ritchie, born 1872 in Stratford, Essex. His mother was Ada Sarah Ann Ritchie, born in 1871 in Blackfriars. The 1911 census taken at 105 Upper Tooting Road Tooting S W, Wandsworth Borough, London also included William's mother, Emma Eliza Lavell, and his step-father, James Lavell. From this I deduced that Emma Eliza had once been married to William's father, which allowed me to trace the family back one more generation.

It was fairly easy to find Emma Eliza Ritchie. Aside from there being lots of primary source records online, her name cropped up in the public family trees of people whose ancestors had emigrated from England to the United States and Canada. In fact, David Scott of Lambeth was among them. But back to my tree. I discovered that William Ritchie, son of Emma Eliza, had been the eldest of 3 boys. The youngest brother was named Thomas Scott Ritchie and the other...wait for it...was David Scott Ritchie born in Tottenham in 1873.

The online records and public family trees gave surprisingly little information about this middle son of Emma Eliza but it was enough to satisfy me. David Scott Ritchie of Tottenham was the most likely candidate I had found for the father of my grandfather. There would be time enough to delve into the facts further.

In pursuit of the elusive Ritchie birth certificate

Birth records can be found online at one of several commercial genealogy websites, such as Findmypast, Ancestry and MyHaritage. Alternatively, they can be sourced free of charge from FamilySearch, run by the Church of Jesus Christ of latter Day Saints. But when an internet search yields no results, you have to look elsewhere.

When it became clear that the only birth record for my grandfather, David Scott Ritchie, was a statutory declaration signed by his mother Maude 16 years after the event, and that a proper birth certificate was necessary for my application for UK citizenship, I resolved to track down any and every form of proof relating to his birth that I could. No stone would be left unturned, I told myself. Puzzles have always appealed to my problem-solving nature, which stood me in good stead to be successful. Added to that, I have a sense that everything in life is connected and that my parents and grandparents would want me to uncover the secrets of the past. Perhaps, by setting my intention to find the missing birth certificate, I would assist things to miraculously come together.

My approach was to take a step back and tackle the problem indirectly. One idea was to track down David's British passport in the hope that it would prove him to be English by birth, but that attempt failed. I then tried to trace his father's family of origin, but there were too many Ritchies and too few links in the genealogical chain to rely on. I wondered if i could track down a living cousin from another branch of the family tree who might know of a story that had been handed down through the generations. Although I found some good leads, however, this approach would clearly take time. I browsed for out-of-print books, old documents, diaries and family history blogs, but all to no avail. In desperation, I grilled my 85-year-old aunt to discover if there were any scraps of information languishing in her memory from long ago, but of course, she had told us all she knew.

It was time, I decided, to call in professional help. I've listened to enough genealogy podcasts and visited enough official archival websites to know that such help is readily available. You can either appeal to the genealogy community at large, asking those on the ground in a particular location to perform a "random act of genealogical kindness", or you can enlist a full-time researcher to work on your behalf. Feeling that it would be worth the cost if I could find a birth certificate, I decided to go the paid route.

At this point, I have sent off my details and transferred a sum of 30 pounds to a registered London family historian. I now await the outcome of her investigation. She has warned me that it is a long shot, that the existence of a statutory declaration probably indicates that the birth was not registered at all, either because the child was illegitimate or because the parents neglected to comply with standard procedure. Yet Maude herself came from a family where every one of the children's births were registered, suggesting that she wasn't likely to flout the rules. We shall just have to wait and see.

Changes evident in1891 Marylebone

Sometime between 1881 and 1891, the Parker family moved from Huntsworth Mews to Earl Street. Perhaps this was because the family had shrunk with the older children leaving home and Ann Watson no longer staying with them. The 1891 census records just 5 people in the household, as opposed to the 12 listed ten years earlier.

Actually, I struggled to find Earl Street in the pages cataloguing London streets. Unlike Hunstworth Mews, it didn't pop up on property websites offering centrally-located residential accommodation. I wondered whether it had been bombed in the war and had to be cleared, but that wasn't the case. It turns out that the name of the street was changed in the early 19th century to Broadley Street, and that it is, in fact, very close to huntsworth Mews. The only difference is that Huntsworth Mews comprises terrace houses while Broadley Street consists mostly of flats.

As before, while researching the history of the area, I was astonished at what I found. What is today a bustling area of London, alive with night life and exhibitions, was once overrun with rats and rampant with disease. Just down the road in Lisson Grove, a veritable rabbit warren of hovels was built on ground poisoned by cess-pits, and thieves and murderers were said to be lurking in the shadows, ready to pounce on anyone who could relieve their grinding poverty and hunger. Maude would have been familiar with the nearby Marylebone Workhouse and the foundlings who ended up there. I doubt she could have harboured any sentimentality amidst such deprivation. On the contrary, I wouldn't be surprised if, at age 11, she was a tough pre-teen herself.

It isn't clear how many times Jane Parker, her mother, gave birth after Maude arrived in the world. What the 1891 census tells us is that young Alfred Parker was born in 1884, bringing the number of children in the family up to ten. Perhaps there was another child between him and Maude, say in 1882, who succumbed to illness, but I will have to search for a birth record to check that. At any rate, Maude must have been exposed to some pretty gruesome sights, smells and sounds in her formative years.

Maude Parker's first home in Marylebone

Not being a resident of London, I had to be taught how to pronounce Marylebone. One apparently has to say "Marly-bin", or something to that effect. Anyway, for those interested in where names come from, this part of London takes its name from the 900-year-old parish that was originally called St Mary the Virgin, or St Mary of the Born.

Maude's first home was in Huntsworth Mews, which is described on Wikipedia as a "through road with a cul-de-sac section, approached through an entrance under a building on Gloucester Place in Westminster, leading onto Taunton Mews". Note that I have to rely on other people's word pictures because I can't read maps or view photographs myself. Apparently both Huntsworth Mews and Taunton Mews are within the Westminster City Council’s Dorset Square Conservation Area, meaning that the large red brick and terracotta buildings still retain their original late Victorian style. The mews is said to have been named after Huntsworth in Somerset because the estate that originally owned the land, the Portman Estate, also owned land there.

Back in 1881 when Maude was an infant, Huntsworth Mews provided stable/ coach house accommodation to the main houses on Gloucester Place. As such, it represented the "back quarters" to the fancy houses near Regent's Park. In fact, when Charles Booth drew up his famous Poverty Maps for the city of Westminster in 1898, less than two decades later, the inhabitants of the mews were classified as very poor. But by that time, the Parkers had moved out, as we shall see later.

Nowadays, of course, Huntsworth Mews is situated in one of the most fashionable parts of London. Property websites emphasise that it is located a 3-minute walk from Marylebone Tube Station on one side and a 3-minute walk from Baker Street Tube Station on the other. The prestigious Landmark London Hotel, originally the Great Central Hotel, is just four minutes away, while Madame Tussaud's and St Marylebone's Church can be reached in just six minutes. If you are looking to buy a one-bedroom terrace house measuring 75 square metres, you are looking at 1.1 million pounds.

The thought of being able to visit the place where my great-grandmother lived in the centre of London is rather thrilling. Many other old buildings have been demolished to make way for new properties in the scramble for urban office space. I did read that Huntsworth Mews was damaged by a high-explosive bomb during World War II but the buildings were thankfully repaired. At least for the time being, our family can visit the site of Maude's early childhood and get a sense of how close she lived to many of the most famous Victorian landmarks.

Illustration from "Metropolitan Improvements ... From original drawings by T. H. Shepherd, etc" Author: ELMES, James. Contributor: SHEPHERD, Thomas Hosmer. Shelfmark: "British Library HMNTS 010349.s.3."

Maude Alice Parker in the 1881 census

One of the earliest searches I did online was on the website findmypast.co.uk. Utilising their free 14-day trial, I looked for Maude Alice Parker, mother of my grandfather David Scott Ritchie. The search produced a long list of search results in table form, showing date of birth and location at the time of the census. I didn't know Maude's exact date of birth but I could make a pretty educated guess. As for location, I confined myself to the areas of London close to Paddington where Maude had said David was born.

When the right record popped up it was chock-full of valuable information. For a start, it provided the exact address where the family was living. More about that in another post. It also provided the names of Maude's parents, James and Jane Parker, plus eight other siblings and a resident called Anne Watson, who was listed as the sister of Jane. From this I was able to ascertain that Watson was probably Jane's maiden name, which gave me a useful clue for tracing her line back another generation.

The 1881 census also gave me the age of each person, their estimated year of birth, birth location and occupation. The latter is especially interesting because it gives insight into the possible income level of each individual. For example, James Parker is described as a boot maker, not a very illustrious profession but certainly a means to earn steady wages. The two eldest daughters, Louisa and Ellen, are dressmakers, while the eldest sons, Harry and Frederick, are errand boys. The four middle daughters, Emily, Gertrude, Florence and Mabel, are all listed as scholars. Maude is listed as an infant.

Neither Anne Watson nor Jane Parker thought to record an occupation on the census but, with so many children in the house, one can only assume that their hands were full with cooking, cleaning, washing laundry, mending clothes and visiting the market. Life was very different in those days from what it is today.

At this point, I confess that my present level of knowledge is sadly lacking. But no worries, I love going down rabbit holes and learning new things, especially when the facts have value for other people too. And that's the beauty of writing a blog. What a great reason to do research this blogging project is going to be!

In search of a maiden name for Maude

In genealogy, one always works backwards from death to life to birth.. We have a rough idea of when a grandparent died, for example, plus his or her married name and number of children. From there, we can trace the children's births and the couple's marriage certificate. In the case of a woman, either her child's birth certificate or her marriage certificate will state her maiden name, and this name, in turn, lets us trace her family of origin.

In the case of Maude Alice Ritchie, my great-grandmother, however, I had neither a birth certificate for her son, my grandfather, nor her marriage certificate. I didn't even know who her husband was. On the surface of things, I was stumped, unable to get beyond her married surname to her surname at birth.

Except that families have traditions, and one tradition that expresses itself repeatedly in English and Scottish ancestry is the passing on of family names. I had noticed, and my sister confirmed this from her research, that the name David Ritchie was prolific, especially in Scotland and the north of England. There was a good chance, therefore, that my grandfather, David Scott Ritchie, was named after his father. In other words, I could try searching online for a marriage that took place shortly before 1902 [the year my grandfather was born] using the names Maude Alice and David Scott Ritchie.

Would you believe it, this actually worked! i found a Maude Alice Parker together with a David Scott Ritchie, an Ann Bell and a John Vale on the same marriage record for 1902 in Paddington. Well, the location was right, since Paddington was where my grandfather was born. But how could the marriage have taken place in 1902 if Grandad had been born on 31 March of that year?

Unless...

There was also the question of the two extra people, Ann Bell and John Vale, on the marriage register. perhaps Maude had married John, with Ann and David standing as witnesses, or vice versa. Or perhaps the date signalled a wrong match altogether. But finding Maude and David together on a marriage record with a familiar location couldn't be a random coincidence. There are times when you simply have to proceed in faith, and this was one of those times!

How the internet facilitates family history research

It's incredible how available historical vital records are today thanks to the internet. If you have a name and a rough idea of date or location, you can often turn up birth, marriage and death certificates for a person in a matter of minutes, not to mention their address, occupation and parents/siblings on censuses taken every ten years from 1841 onwards.

Well, at least, this is the theory. It's not quite so easy in practice. But more of that later.

I was first introduced to online genealogy sites by my husband. At the time, his interest in his family tree didn't feel relevant to me because, as I told myself, it was the future that counted, not the past. I suppose I was also a bit afraid of venturing into the world of archival records, folio numbers and old photographs which I couldn't see anyway. Little did I know that these websites are extremely easy to navigate, even with screen-reading software for the blind.

What an addictive experience searching for records can be! I know this now that I have subscribed to a couple of commercial sites and begun to enter my data on WikiTree, the free and collaborative online family tree. One find leads to another, and before you know it, you've frittered away hours and become immersed in a world entirely separate from your own. Not that this is a bad thing. As a hobby, genealogy is both educational and productive, building, as it does, a legacy for future generations to benefit from.

I must say, too, that so much is happening in the world of digitisation that I feel as if I'm on the cutting edge of this whole movement. Admittedly, family history centres in the United States and England have been serving family historians for years, and popular television series like "Who Do You Think You Are?" have lately been stirring up enormous interest in the general population of those countries. But, then again, it's all relative. Certainly, in South Africa, genealogy isn't a big thing yet. I hope that my blog will inspire other South Africans to take advantage of what the internet is making available and begin to research their own family trees.

Starting with a single historical document

In the beginning of our family history journey, it was my sister who took the lead. She had all the documents that had been in my mother's home when she passed away. My sister said she would collate the documents needed for the UK citizenship application if I would take care of the forms, so I willingly left the matter in her hands.

That was when we realised there was no actual birth certificate to be found. What we had instead was a statutory declaration made at the Police Court in Marylebone within the Metropolitan District. The declaration, signed by Maude Alice Ritchie, stated that she was the mother of David Scott Ritchie who had been born on 31 March 1902 in the Paddington Green Children's Hospital in London. The statement, dated 1918, also gave the addresses at which she had been living at the time of his birth and her present address.

It was this all-important piece of paper, then, that gave us a starting-point. I dread to think what we would have done if it had not been in my mother's file. With Mom gone and my aunt in her late eighties with a sketchy memory for details, we might have been sitting with a first name for David's mother and nothing else. As it was, the information given to us was thin, but it was enough to go on.

Caring for old family records is vitally important, although it is not something that is taught at school or even modelled much in our society. Here in South Africa, we have such a short history of record-keeping that everything, if lost, can be reapplied for from the Department of Home Affairs, bank, hospital or school, or so it seems. Then again, I've never had to apply for a 100-year-old document before. Chances are it would be even harder here than in Britain. Whatever the case, though, the moral of the story is that family documents are valuable and should be treated as such. One never knows when a descendant will need a vital record to open doors of opportunity or research a hitherto-unsuspected hereditary trait.

A good family mystery doesn't hurt anyone

If anyone had asked me what I knew about my grandfather while I was growing up, it would have fitted into a couple of brief paragraphs. Yet he was an extraordinary man. Dave Ritchie, as he was fondly known by all his friends, was a fisherman and a doer of crosswords. He had a big atlas on the table next to his chair in the lounge and he rested his sandalled feet on a footstool that was, i believe, a camel's saddle. He had been to Egypt, Greece, Italy, Hong

Kong, Zanzibar and Brazil, to name just a few of his travel destinations.

he was also an engineer of sort. His career, I was told, had something to do with early computers, but that didn't mean much to me as a child. of far more interest was the driveway he laid out of bricks in swirling patterns, the huge Greek-urn-style garden pots he decorated with colourful mosaics for the fireplace, and the intricate miniature coffee pots and irons he fashioned out of copper and brass. He was forever applying himself to new skills, which made him an inspiring role model for us cousins as we grew up.

But perhaps the most exciting thing about Grandad was that he looked just like Henry, Duke of Gloucester. Sharing the same birthday, he was just two years younger than the son of King George V and Queen Mary, and had once even been chased by a bunch of newspapermen who mistook him and my grandmother for royalty at a hunt. On top of this, his father was never spoken about. Neither of his daughters [my mother and my aunt] knew a thing about his early life. In the absence of facts, therefore, it was inevitable that conspiracy theories would abound, and I have to admit to some twinges of trepidation as I began the process of trying to find the birth certificate i so badly needed. I didn't, after all, want to jeopardise my chances of success with the British Home Office by claiming royal lineage!

Happily, my research led me in a different direction, but it still proved to be full of surprises. There is nothing quite like a family mystery to get the imagination ticking. I swear, I've dreamed up a hundred possible scenarios for my grandfather's entry into the world, many of which would make great premises for novels, but I've come to the conclusion that fact is stranger than fiction. As gripping as novels are, they can never quite match the thrill of discovering something about an ancestor whose life story actually made all the difference to who you are today.

Family history and milestones

People often turn to family history when they reach big moments in their lives. The birth of a grandchild, for example, can trigger the urge to compile a record of the past for the new arrival. It's about being aware of the passing of time and the desire to find one's place in its endless stream.

As it happens, this blog is being launched at the start of a new year, which is also a milestone. I've been building my family tree in private, but now that I have some material to share, people are asking about what I know. I could have gone with a newsletter to my immediate family members but i decided on a blog so I could reach out further. It would be great to connect with second and third cousins whom I've never heard of and exchange information about our respective branches of the family.

I should also add that I've reached a sort of milestone in my own life, which was what got me interested in family history in the first place. With both my daughters living overseas and the prospect of spending more and more time there myself, I decided to take advantage of a window of opportunity provided by the British government, whereby I can apply for UK citizenship through my mother's line. My daughters were excited at the news, and so were my cousins who can also make use of the opportunity. All we needed was to fill in the forms, provide the necessary personal information, and produce a copy of my grandfather's original birth certificate.

But that wasn't as easy as it sounded.

So began a hunt against the clock for the missing article. There's lots to tell, so I'll tell it in bite-sized entries. Just to say that the challenge has truly inspired me and introduced me to a field of amateur research that I never knew existed before!

Finally, I want this blog to be a collaborative family effort, so please send me any stories, questions or photos that you think may be of interest to other readers. All I ask is that you label any images clearly and with as much detail as you can so i can upload them easily. let's make this space as representative of our grandfather's rich legacy as we can!