The genealogical enigma continues

I saw my cousin last week and we had a chance to talk at length about my grandfather. She is very keen on the royal link which made for lots of outrageous speculation and laughter. When she left I found myself wanting to review the facts in order to check that we weren't fabricating a mystery. After all, I don't want to be putting a huge amount of effort into chasing what-ifs when a completely mundane explanation of Grandad's missing birth certificate is right under my nose.

For example, I took another look at my grandfather's name, David Scott Ritchie. My mother, his daughter, grew up with the surname "Scott-Ritchie". The double-barrel form of surname often happens when the surnames of spouses are joined together. Now, I know my grandmother's surname wasn't Scott, but what if my great-grandmother's surname was? In other words, what if Maude Scott married somebody Ritchie and they named their son David Scott Ritchie?

Well, I tried this theory out and turned up nothing useful.

So I went back to my notes to remind myself why I was so sure that David's mother Maude had married David Scott Ritchie Sr. Perhaps, I thought, I was placing too much weight on the fact that my grandfather's name was the same as the husband of Maude Alice Parker. None of the surviving members of my family actually remember what Granny Maude's maiden name was.

What I found though was undeniable evidence that David's mother was Maude Alice Parker. I had in my possession a statutory declaration which served as my grandfather's birth record, stating that Maude was living at 22 Albert Street when David was born in 1902. I also had a copy of Maude Parker's marriage certificate which shows that she was living at that same address. One document came directly from my grandfather and the other came from the Government Record Office. There is no doubt that Maude was born Parker and no doubt that the man she married is the man who spent the latter part of his life in the asylum at Hanwell.

So the enigma continues. My grandfather, senior businessman and world traveller, bearing the noble likeness of Henry Duke of Gloucester, was the son of a cook and a mentally-challenged butler. Perhaps it is no wonder Grandad never spoke about his childhood or teenage years. Yet there must be records relating to his scholastic achievements, if nothing else. I am determined to find these, and anything else besides, because a man with so much charisma and talent is a man whose story deserves to be told.

Photo credit: "Blowing questions" by Brian Yap.

His good education must have come from somewhere, surely

Among the many questions surrounding my grandfather's background is the one concerning his education.

How did the son of two domestic servants get appointed to head up the South African office of an important British company? What equipped him to travel around the world talking about computers when most firms were still using basic adding machines?

My grandfather, David Scott Ritchie, was born in London and probably attended a school in St John's Wood with his cousins from the age of seven. This was when his father, David Ritchie Sr, was dismissed from service as a butler and admitted to the London County Hospital's asylum as a pauper. His mother, Maud Alice Ritchie, was a cook who resided with the family that employed her at Cleveland House, St James Square. Up until that time, it is unclear where my grandfather lived, given that both his parents were in domestic service but it seems unlikely that he would have received much exposure to books or sophisticated adult company wherever he was.

Unless he was identified early on as a little boy with special intelligence and coached in reading, writing and arithmetic by a kind-hearted employer. Perhaps the lady of the house allowed him to sit in on lessons with her children's tutor. Whatever the case, my grandfather developed wide-ranging interests, a great conversational style and an impeccable dress sense that remained with him until his death in 1989.

Then again, maybe he only began to blossom into his full potential later on. Maybe he was identified as a promising young man when he was working at his first job and delivering chocolates to the royal palace. It is possible that someone took an interest in him there, especially because of his strong resemblance to Henry, son of George, the future king of England. It could be that this person suspected a connection to the royal family and gave him a leg-up by recommending him to be the beneficiary of a college education.

Then there is the other possibility, that David was the unacknowledged son of a gentleman, and that the gentleman paid for his education in return for his mother's silence. This theory is fun to think about but I am inclined to discount it. To my mind, any admission to a smart school or university would have been worth celebrating and we would have heard about it. After all, what grandparent can help themselves when it comes to sharing stories from their own childhood with their grandchildren?

No, I tend to think that my grandfather was exposed to gentry early on. Whatever happened to him after his father was committed to the asylum probably remained undisclosed because of the stigma attached to mental illness. I believe his early exposure to books and stories about travel created in him an appetite for learning and a desire to escape the confines of the working class. By the time he finished school, his good grades and ambition were enough to propel him into the kind of career he thirsted for, and the rest is documented history.

Photo credit: "Aske's Boys School, New Cross, London" by Matt Martin.

Who in the world was Ivy Francis Smith?

I wrote in my previous post about the surprise discovery that Ivy Francis Smith, child of Emily and William Smith, was actually a girl, not a boy. ivy was, of course, the contemporary of my grandfather, David Scott Ritchie Jr. She is one of the siblings whose lives I am currently investigating in order to locate contemporaries of mine who might function as second cousins by virtue of shared adoptive great-grandparents.

Grandad was obviously not Ivy's biological brother because he was the son of Maude and David Ritchie. Maude, you will remember, was in full-time service as a live-in cook, while David was in the London County Asylum being treated for insanity. Ivy, on the other hand, appears to have been fostered. When she lists herself on the 1939 Register along with two other members of the Smith family, she gives her surname as "Batchelor [Fordham[".

Now, it would make sense if Ivy was born Fordham and married somebody called Batchelor before 1939. However, things weren't that simple. I found a marriage record stating that Ivy F Fordham married James L Batchelor in Wandsworth, but the marriage date is 1945. Could it be that Ivy and James became engaged or unofficially married before he went to war and only registered the event after he returned?

There were no children, which is not surprising, considering that Ivy would have been 37 at the start of the Second World War and 43 when the war ended. She lived till the age of 76 and died in Wandsworth in 1978.

Am I disappointed with these findings? Yes, in a way, because ivy and James' children would have been contemporaries of my mother and aunt, and it would have been interesting to learn about where they lived and what kind of careers they followed. Their children, in turn, would have been accessible online to me today, and I could have contacted them via Facebook or some other social media network to compare notes about Emily and William Smith. Yet I have no other connection to the Fordham family besides the fact that ivy, like Grandad, spent many years living with Maude's sister Emily. I might just be wasting my time if I work on taking this line of inquiry further.

At this point, I feel rather stuck with regard to the members of the Smith household. If all of the Smith children were fostered or adopted as I suspect, I should rather focus my attention on something else. Admittedly, I could be missing some important clues by not consulting newspaper archives, and perhaps I will seek help at some stage in this regard. At present, I'm only able to consult records which have been transcribed and are accessible to my screen-reader.

Photo credit: "1941 Soda Ad, Royal Crown Soda with British Actress Anna Neagle" by Classic Film.

The strange case of the Smith family of St John's Wood

This post is a continuation of my previous post about finding second cousins on my mother's side. In that post, I reached the conclusion that I should examine the children of Emily and William Smith, the couple who cared for my grandfather David Scott Ritchie from about 1909 onwards. This led to some frustrating research, a surprising finding and an illuminating dream.

Emily and William had 5 children of their own, as far as I can tell from census records, plus Grandad, their "adopted" son who was living with them in St John's Wood in 1911. Here is what I managed to find by trawling through hints on Findmypast.co.uk:

LS Smith, a daughter born in 1892 in Marylebone, could be one of several people in the military records, death records and 1939 Register. There seems to be no birth or baptism record . Perhaps the date of birth on the census is incorrect, except that Emily and William only married in 1891, making it unlikely that she was born before 1892.

Frank E Smith, a son born in 1893 in Marylebone, is slightly less mysterious, although I still had to make some big assumptions based on the year of his birth. I believe he was born on 20 July 1893, served in the Queen's Royal West Surrey Regiment in 1914, and married Ella B [maiden name unknown]. Together they had a son named Vernon F Smith, who was born on 28 August 1929. At the time of the 1939 Register, Frank, Ella and Vernon were living in Dorchester Way in what appears now to be a 5-bedroom semi-detached house. Frank was a post office sorter. He died in Marylebone in 1960. Note that no birth or baptism record turned up for him either.

Alice M Smith, a daughter born in 1899 in Marylebone, is once again a very mysterious individual. She may have served as a nurse in a volunteer unit but another record of a nurse with a similar name gives the wrong birth date. An Elsie M Smith crops up in Marylebone married to Ernest Smith, but they would have had to share the same name before marriage if she had remained a Smith after marriage, which seems unlikely. Again, no birth certificate turned up in the hints and no marriage certificate.

Ivy Smith is a really difficult case. A son born in 1902 in Marylebone, he was Grandad's contemporary and would likely have been in the same class at school. I will come back to him.

Richard William Smith, a son born in 1904 in Marylebone, is thankfully a little less complicated. However, as in the case of Frank E Smith, I had to guess his identity based on his birth year, there being several other Richard Smiths in the mix. I believe he was born on 16 January 1904 and became a general clerk. He married, although his wife was not present with him in Wandsworth on the 1939 Register, nor any children. He died in Wandsworth in 1981.

Now to the surprising finding. Although Richard William Smith's household in the 1939 Register didn't include his wife or children, it does include his widowed mother, Emily Eliza Smith. It also, interestingly enough, includes an Ivy Francis Smith, born on 2 January 1902. You will remember that Ivy was previously listed as a son of Emily and William, but now she is listed as female, working as a saleslady in a drapery shop. Clearly, the earlier census record was incorrect on this point. But there is something else which is troubling. Instead of giving her surname as Smith, she gives it as "Batchelor [Fordham]". If the name "Batchelor" is not confusing enough, harking back to the question of her gender, then surely the name in brackets, her maiden name, should be Smith, not Fordham?

I went to bed pondering this issue, then had a dream which brought clarity. In the dream, I was questioning a little girl about her parents' names, trying to solve a mystery about where Ivy fitted in. I awoke with the conviction that she must have been adopted. Fordham was the name of her biological mother. Hmmm. Interesting....

What if Emily and William could not have children of their own? What if all their children were adopted? It would certainly explain the absence, as far as I can presently tell, of birth records for them under the Smith name. It would also fit in with their informal adoption of my grandfather. This is all a matter of speculation for now as I'm still very much in the middle of my research into this family, but it does point a way forward. I believe that, by further investigating Ivy Batchelor [Fordham[, I will discover more about the rest of the family, even if it doesn't lead to second cousins who are actual DNA relatives!

Photo credit: "Frost fairies" by Plum leaves.

The long-awaited photographs of David Ritchie Sr

The medical casebook from hanwell includes 2 photographs of the man who was ostensibly my great-grandfather. i say "ostensibly" because this post will show why there is doubt in that regard. It took me a while to get permission to publish the pictures as they are owned by West London Mental Health Trust, but once I had provided all the information they needed, they kindly said I could go ahead.

Being visually impaired and unable to see and comment on the photos myself, I include here the comments of a few family members:

well Lee, the face has absolutely no resemblance to Grandad, not even a slight bit. The plot thickens me thinks. #Fakefather Lee I have had a look at the picture and it does not resemble Grandad in any way. The whole make-up of the face and ears are so different. The nose and the ears and face more elongated. He is very different to Grandad. Seems like a small man with much slighter features, dark eyes and sloping shoulders, dark hair which could even be a redhead. Also the nose. The nose is not strong, and to me that royal looking nose is quite important. Looking at photos of a younger Grandad, his nose is quite recognisable and has been passed down through to us.

This brings me back to wondering whether this David Scott Ritchie was my grandfather's biological father. From the comments of my family members, it is obvious that they have serious doubts. I've tended to be more cautious because the alternative [that he was the illegitimate son of a gentleman] is too complicated to deal with on a number of levels. Yet I can't ignore the fact that this man married my great-grandmother Maude 6 weeks before Grandad was born. That's why I'm going the DNA route, hoping that the nature of the connection can be established once and for all.

Photo credit: London Metropolitan Archives, City of London. Hanwell Asylum [later Saint Bernard's Hospital] Collection. Item number: H11/HLL/B/20/037,

How I found photographs of David Scott Ritchie Sr

The record relating to my great-grandfather's admission to the London County Asylum provided much more information than I had hoped to gather as a beginner genealogist. It also confirmed the fact that this was indeed my relative, as it referenced a 7-year-old son and a sister-in-law whom I already knew to be a member of my great-grandmother's family. The question that still troubled me, though, was whether David Ritchie Sr was my Grandad's biological father. Since my mother always joked about her father having royal blood, and since I love a good mystery, the next obvious step was to find a photograph that would settle the matter once and for all.

I asked professional genealogist Judy Lester to help me with this. She replied, saying, "The best chance of a photograph for David Scott Ritchie senior would be the Patient Casebook for Hanwell. This is closed to public access under the 100-year privacy rule. Although the required information is older than that, the volume contains other entries written within the last 100 years. So I cannot access it for you."

She added, however, that the London Metropolitan Archives staff will sometimes access "closed" files and will extract and send a transcript or copy of any data found. This is a "discretionary" service. Nevertheless, she wrote to ask them what their policy would be in this case, and whether they would charge their standard research fee.

To our mutual surprise, the LMA said the casebook for David Ritchie had been wrongly catalogued as Closed to Access, and it should be open for inspection. Judy said she would try to order it up and see if there was a photograph or any medical case-notes that might be of interest.

Feeling hopeful, I asked Judy to go ahead and report on what the casebook contained. Her fee for this work was worth every cent. As previously mentioned, I am visually impaired and cannot read text from images. Judy very kindly describes what she finds and, in the case of documents, transcribes them for me. Her next email read as follows:

"Two photographs of David Scott Ritchie are attached. They are both head-and-shoulders, pasted into the case-book side-by-side. One was taken on 12 June 1909, a week after he was admitted. The other (better quality) was taken on 16 February 1911. The dates are written underneath.

"You will obviously want a family member to describe these to you and compare them with photos that you will have of your grandfather. To my eye, he looks young, timid and nervous in 1909, perhaps not surprisingly in view of the circumstances. By 1911 he looks noticeably older, perhaps more settled and more confident. He has a moustache and beard in both photos, much thicker in 1911.

"The medical notes in the case-book are extensive. They are a treasure-trove of information about his state of health and mind. I haven't done much more than glance at them, but I see that he was discharged to the care of his wife for a trial month, early in 1911. But he wasn't happy, felt that he needed to return to Hanwell, and did so before the month was out. The second photo will have been taken at that time."

No doubt, dear reader, you are itching to see the pictures, but you will have to wait. They are copyright protected and I need to obtain permission before I can publish them here. You will also have to wait to hear what my family thought of them. Was this man my blood relative or was he not? Be sure to read the next exciting instalment!

Photo credit: "London Metropolitan Archives. A day well spent here." by Andrea Vail.

Revisiting the mystery of Maude's missing son

As mentioned before, there is a census record that places Maude Alice Ritchie, my great-grandmother, at Cleveland House in London's prestigious St James Square in 1911. Maude was a cook in domestic service at the time. The household was a small one, comprising George and Lucy Murray, their 18-year-old son Eric and 3 female servants. But there was no sign of David, her 9-year-old son, my grandfather.

This wasn't exactly surprising since servants who lived in a household did not generally have their children living with them. So, where was he? You may recall that I speculated about David possibly being at boarding-school, sponsored by some rich benefactor. But the mystery was solved when Judy Lester, the professional genealogist I hired to find Grandad's birth certificate, discovered David living with Maude's sister Emily and her husband William in St John's Wood.

This made perfect sense in light of the fact that Maude's husband, David Scott Ritchie Sr, had been admitted to the London County Asylum 2 years earlier. Obviously, Maude had needed to work to earn a living. Emily, who was 8 years older than Maude with children of her own, was in a position to take David in and give him a normal childhood. William, for his part, was a taxi driver which presumably meant he could afford to have his nephew staying for an extended period.

We can assume, I think, that the new living arrangement began in 1909 when David's father was admitted to the asylum. David himself would have been 7 at the time. William and Emily had 5 children, although only Alice, Ivy and Richard were still living at home. David and Ivey were the same age and could attend the same school. Interestingly, David's surname is given as "Ritche" in the census yet his relationship to the head of the house is shown as "son".

Whether this was some sort of adoption arrangement or not, it allowed Maude to earn a living and gave David a secure and stable home life. Emily and William Smith surely deserve some recognition for what they did. Why, then, didn't Grandad ever talk about it? Surely the experience of living with an aunt and uncle for several years was worth sharing, if only to honour the people who took him in? Was he so ashamed of the circumstances that made it necessary that he blotted out the memory? Were that the case, it would make the whole story very sad.

Photo credit: "Pre-war kitchen" by EllenM1

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A census record that conveys the promise of a good career

Another document that Judy Lester of Kerrywood Research turned up for me was an 1891 census record for David Scott Ritchie, my great-grandfather. It shows him living in St Ann's Chambers in Blackfriars, City of London with his widowed mother and 9-year-old sister, Susan Elizabeth Ritchie. David Scott is 17 years old and working as a junior clerk.

This makes sense but is also surprising. His being a junior clerk is in keeping with his father William's occupation as a commercial clerk for an oil merchant. Evidently, David showed some acumen in mathematics and record-keeping which allowed him to find an entry-level office job. On the other hand, it is surprising because the following census, taken in 1901, lists him as a footman in Mayfair. His occupation on his marriage certificate a year later confirms the footman position. What brought about this change in fortune? Here is a riddle to puzzle over!

For today, though, I want to concentrate on circumstances as they were for David in 1891.

With his father gone and his older brother William chasing his own career, David and his mother must have found it hard to make ends meet. The census shows that Emma Eliza Ritchie worked as a tie maker. Between her earnings and the money David made from his bookkeeping job, there could hardly have been enough to pay the rent on their rooms and meet their basic needs.

As if struggling financially wasn't enough, David had another problem. His 9-year-old sister Susan wasn't well. She had, according to the census, suffered from epilepsy since birth. In those days, this would have been a serious and worrying complaint. Seizures were untreatable by medication and would have put young Susan in constant danger of hitting her head against a hard corner or falling into the fire.

Nevertheless, the City of London was where everything happened. Even if "junior clerk" only meant sitting at a desk and writing down names and addresses of job-seekers in a book, David was on his way to becoming a respectable office worker. Perhaps he dreamed, as he strode across Blackfriars Bridge, of one day owning a newspaper or running a transport business. Perhaps he gazed at beautiful women in passing carriages and pictured himself marrying into an aristocratic family. Despite the hardships at home, he was almost certainly ambitious and impatient to follow in his successful older brother's footsteps.

Photo credit: "A writer's friends" by Caseywest

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Assistance from a professional genealogical researcher

On returning to South Africa after our family holiday in the UK, I was thrilled to receive an email from Judy Lester, the researcher I enlisted to help me find a birth registration for my grandfather, David Scott Ritchie. Judy is a member of the Association of Genealogists and Researchers in Archives [AGRA]. Her company, Kerrywood Research,, is based in London.

The brief was straightforward; to find documented proof of Grandad's birth to support my application for UK citizenship. I had a certificate for his parents' marriage in 1902 and a timeline for their early lives but there were big gaps in the story. For example, I wanted to know why my great-grandmother Maude was shown to be living apart from her husband and son at the time of the 1911 census. The biggest question, though, was why it had been necessary for Maude to sign a statutory declaration of David's birth when he was 16 years old.

Judy had said she was requesting two separate searches to be done, one at the General Register Office [GRO] and the other at the Westminster Register Office. The second request was initially rejected because pre-1909 records for Paddington are held off-site. Since this fact was not stated on the website, however, Judy took the matter up with the records officer. He eventually agreed to search in Westminster's "deep store" off-site repository but even this extensive search yielded no results.

The report I received convinced me that what we were looking for simply does not exist. As Judy said, it's highly likely that David was born before the date given by Maude on the statutory declaration. Back then, it was very uncommon for a marriage ceremony to be conducted when the bride was seven or eight months pregnant. The date of 31 March 1902 was chosen because it legitimised David's birth.

While I felt disappointed that Judy's investigation hadn't unearthed the missing birth registration for my grandfather, I was nevertheless excited by the conclusion she reached. My sister and I had already speculated at length about the possibility of Grandad being born earlier than Maude claimed. It also lent credence to our conviction that David was the son of someone other than Maude's husband. He had probably been registered under a completely different name. That most certainly deepened the mystery.

Judy Lester's report contained a lot more information besides, which I will share in future blog posts. For now, let me just say that I was more than happy with her services. If you too would like professional help in finding your English ancestors, visit Kerrywood Research and drop Judy Lester a line.

Photo credit: Westminster Walk by Catherine Poh Huay Tan.

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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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

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.

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!

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.