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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