Leaving no Trace


My mum's grandmother, Christine Winifred Cambridge, didn't have a birth certificate. It was the law that births should be registered and there was a large fine to pay if you didn't, but I can't find any record for Christine. She didn't acquire her surname until later, but no Christine Winifreds were registered as having been born on the date she claimed as her birthday, the 20th of November 1881. None were registered that year, in fact, or five years on either side of it, not anywhere in the United Kingdom.

Christine might have been mistaken about her date of birth, but could she have been more than five years out? When her age was estimated as 9, could she actually have been younger than 4 or older than 14? Unlikely.

If Christine had been abandoned as a baby, whoever gave her the name Christine would have registered her as a foundling with that name. 

So, either Christine's birth wasn't registered at all, or it was registered in another name. If I found Christine's mother (shown here cowering by the staircase), I might find a birth record for her daughter, but I couldn't do it the other way round. As far as my research went, this was a dead end. 

By 1891 Christine had been adopted by Daniel Rann, a printer's compositor living in Birmingham. We'd always assumed Christine was related to the family in some way, and of their various relations, Daniel's sister Annie and his daughter Caroline seemed the most likely possible mothers.

Annie Sophia Jones and Caroline Eliza Rann were together when the 1881 census was taken, at 54 Church Street in the All Saints area of Birmingham. Although Annie's husband, Thomas Jones, had died three years earlier, she had reverted to her maiden name and was claiming to be unmarried. Her two surviving children, Walter Tom (aged 9) and Anne Rebecca (aged 7) weren't with her. Although no occupation was listed for Annie, she could afford a servant, 16-year-old Mary Ann Gibbs.

Now I don't know how Annie was supporting herself and her children (who re-joined her later), but in 1883 when she married a brewer called Charles Davis, Annie was still claiming to be a spinster.

Either 14-year-old Caroline or 40-year-old Annie could have had Christine out of wedlock in 1881. If they had, they both had good reason not to acknowledge her as their own.

By the census of 1891, Caroline was the 'proprietress' of the Waverley Hotel on New Meeting Street in Birmingham. Annie was helping to manage the hotel and her children were living there too. One of Christine's stories was about shining shoes in a hotel. How could this be a coincidence?

On the 4th of April 1891, a day before the census was taken, the chambermaid of the Waverley Hotel, one Florence Cull, had a terrible shock. Next time, I'll tell you all about Alfred John Lewell, Professor of Mesmerism.


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Comments

  1. Julie Coleman27 April 2024 at 06:15

    The next instalment is a bit of a siding, but you can read it here:

    https://mysteriousgrandmother.blogspot.com/2023/04/two-maybe-mothers-and-professor-of.html

    If you want to skip straight on with the investigation, this is where to go:

    https://mysteriousgrandmother.blogspot.com/2023/05/how-do-you-find-clues-when-you-dont.html

    ReplyDelete

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