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."
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