The statuary declaration that states my grandfather's date of birth was signed by his mother, Maude Alice Ritchie, when David was 16 years old. We are now fairly sure that the given date of 31 March 1902 is incorrect, but the address is probably the one where Maude and her husband David Scott Ritchie Sr lived in that year. The address is 22 Albert Street, Paddington.
You may remember me saying in a previous blog post that I didn't find this address when I visited London recently with my husband and daughter. My sister had identified it on a satellite map as the first in a row of Victorian terrace houses which is now a national heritage site but there was some confusion when it came to locating it on a different map. I told myself it didn't matter. There would be time enough to visit Albert Street on another trip. Nevertheless, it was disappointing not to have a sense of the place, a physical context to which I could pin the information.
Than I received the report I had ordered from Judy Lester of Kerrywood Research. She had turned up the 1901 census record for the Albert Street house. This was a record I had tried hard to find when I was putting together a timeline for Maude's life. Where I had failed, Judy succeeded, and the image and transcript she provided confirmed that number 22 was a multi-family dwelling with rooms to rent.
I should mention that Maude and David were already living there on 20 February 1902 when they got married. This is known because both their addresses are written on their marriage certificate. To my mind, this reinforces the theory that David Scott Ritchie Jr had already been born, otherwise their given addresses on the marriage certificate would probably have been different. Be that as it may, my grandfather did live here for a time, and the 1901 census provides insight into his immediate environment.
The house could accommodate 2 families, presumably one upstairs and one downstairs. In 1901 there was a small family called ling [or Long] from Suffolk and a larger family called Dawkins from Kent. Frederick Ling was a contractor's clerk, and he lived with his wife Rachel and sister Mabel. They were all under 35. Valentine and Sarah Dawkins, on the other hand, were in their forties and had 5 children, comprising 4 boys and a girl. Valentine and his two older sons were farriers, his younger son and 10-year-old daughter were scholars, and his youngest son, Francis, was 5 years old.
I suppose, if I may be permitted some creative licence, that Maude and David, along with their infant son, took the place of the Ling family on the upper floor. Maude stayed home to care for the baby while David went to Chesterfield Street to continue working as a footman for the Viscount Francis Hood. Perhaps Sarah from downstairs took the baby from time to time, and perhaps her daughter Dorothy came upstairs to entertain him. But, overall, it would have been a tough time, with David working long hours and Maude feeling shunned by relatives and friends for having a child out of wedlock.
As other documents will show, the family did not survive the pressure. Everything would fall apart by the time David started school. But were the couple happy for a while, at least? Did David get taken to the park on weekends and to the beach for holidays? Or was his love of travel the result of an overly confined childhood, where he was kept out of sight in order to avoid public scrutiny? That's what makes this whole investigation so fascinating.
Image Description - Vintage Victorian style chair engraving. Original from the British Library. Digitally enhanced by
rawpixel.
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