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Sorry, thought I explained....

Yesterday I got Sidney and Alexander; today I got 'Male'.

All have the same parents -
William Shorten and Alice Louise Shorten (Birbeck)
Williams occupation changes during the years as you would expect -

Male (1917) he is a Private in the 32nd Royal Fusiliers; for Sidney (1919) and Alexander (1920) he is a Brewers Drayman (ex Rifleman).

The residence is the same for all three occasions - 7 Wyvill Road, South Lambeth, London.

So now I am looking for certificates for the wedding of William and Alice, birth certificate for Ralph and the two 'females', and the census records for the family to see if there are other brothers/sisters.

Thank you both for your help; I've progressed more in the last week than in the last three months.

FYI, I'm in the UK, about 10 mile south of London.

Regards

Brian

You did say, it was just a little cryptic and we wanted to make sure we were reading the "it"s right. ;)


You have Ralph's birth, from my post up above:

Births Jun 1904
Hancock Ralph Herbert Pancras 1b 87

Oh - you mean you have to order and pay for it. ;)

As you say, I know dates for Ralph.

I guess the certificate I really wanted to have was my Dads, but it is nice to have the certificate for the others also.

My tree in GR is filling out nicely now!

What do you rate as the best site for searching?

I have tried about 6 - I'm sure there are more - without much success, but you two found lots of information for me in about an hour, so any recommendations?

Regards

Brian

FreeBMD and Ancestry are what I use. Can't afford multiples, so I stick with the tried and true. ;)

Of course the 1911 is only available at FMP, and I use the free function there, with all the tricks to make it divulge its secrets without me paying.

There's also familysearch.org which is free to search for older rellies. I don't mean older as in age ...I mean 1900 backwards.......oh for heaven's sake Cynthia, get your act together!! Hope you know what I mean! (It's been a long day!)

Keep an eye on the boards too because quite often, kind folk are offering lookups of many kinds.

Joneseys tips on using the 1911 are brilliant and there are lots of useful tips to look at all over the place on the boards. Wish people used them more.

Have fun.

Hello Cynthia, Janey and Astra

Thought I’d give you an update.

I’ve had a chat with my cousin; she is the daughter of my dad’s sister.
In fact they were twins and registered on the same day as Male and Female.
(although not registered with names, they became known as Jack and Jill)

My cousin told me of a visit she and her mother took to Canada some years ago to visit relations.
They met an old lady who apparently was sent to Canada as a child because she was unwanted.
She was very bitter about this as her life in Canada had been very hard, and kept asking my cousin ‘why was I sent away, why didn’t they want me?’
Apparently our grandfather didn’t want two children, although he and grandmother did have children later.

Following on Janey’s idea -

Alice Birbeck married William Henry Hancock in 1900. They are together in the 1901 census.

Alice and William Hancock became estranged. By 1911, she is living with William Shorten as a couple (she is using his surname).

William Hancock dies, possibly in WWI.

Alice Birbeck Hancock and William Shorten marry, now that she is a widow. She marries under her first married name, Hancock.

Their children are Shorten, with the mother's surname Birbeck, Alice's birth surname.


So far all checks out, however, the eldest brother - RALPH HERBERT SHORTEN – who died in 1944 aged 39 must have been born in 1905.

Whatever name Ralph was using his father may well have been William Hancock, depending on what year Alice left him.

If she already had one child when she met and lived with William Shorten, why not two?

Maybe he said he would ‘take on’ one child but not two, and the second child was sent to relations in Canada.

Then William and Alice married in 1917, shortly before my father and his twin sister were born, and they went on to have more children.

I kind of think that Ralph was kept mainly because he was a boy, and maybe the oldest child, I’m going to look for other shorten and hancock births between 1905 and 1917.

Any other pointers would be appreciated, but I’ll let you know what I find.

Can't think of anything to add at the moment but hope you find what you are looking for. Regards. C.

So to get the discussion back where it belongs and off the duplicate thread on the Chat board, what exactly are we looking for here now?

A Hancock girl born between 1900 and 1911 - who may or many not have existed? ;)

One possibility, if she was sent to Canada, is that she was sent as a Home Child, not to relations. There were many cases of children being placed in care facilities like Barnardo's for what the parent(s) thought was a temporary stay because they were unable to look after them, and then when the parents returned for them, they were ... gone. The children might have been told their parents were dead, and they were sent to Canada or Australia as what we now call child migrants because someone like Dr. Barnardo decided they would have a better life. Many, in fact, had miserable lives.

Rather than being adopted into loving homes, boys often became farm labourers and girls domestic servants. My grandmother's sister married a Home Child; Uncle Charlie appears on the 1911 Canadian census as a farm labourer, aged 17, having arrived in Canada in 1905 at age 11 (he was genuinely an orphan).

Something like this could have happened to a daughter, if there was one.

http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/databases/home-children/001015-100.01-e.php

The search facility for immigration records of Home Children to Canada. There are 45 Hancocks. The records are not complete, but it could be a place to start. It would mean picking out the likely candidates -- girls who seem to be about the right age, immigrating in the early 1900s, and trying to compare the names to possible births and find matches.

There is also the 1911 Canadian census, which is free at

http://www.automatedgenealogy.com/census11/index.jsp

A majority of the children were settled in Ontario. The 1911 has 59 female Hancocks born 1901-1911, for instance.

Some children were actually recorded in the census as "home child". Even without subscribing, you can do a quick preliminary search of the 1911 at Ancestry also:

http://search.ancestry.ca/iexec/?htx=List&dbid=8947

Some things we can think about ...

I don't think we ever placed Ralph in the 1911?

SHORTEN ALICE 1882 29 Lambeth London
SHORTEN WILLIAM 1879 32 Lambeth London

Could this be Ralph ... was there a child William?

INSTITUTION HANCOCK RALPH 1906 5 Croydon Surrey
INSTITUTION HANCOCK WILLIAM 1901 10 Croydon Surrey

They are in the same institution.

It would make sense for a first child to be named for the father, William Hancock.

Brian

I think you will find that she said Sept 1916 as in Sept qtr 1916, you only get the qtrs Mar, June, Sept & Dec.

Irene

would be a good idea if you deleted yoiur duplicate posting on Chat

Is this another sister?

Births Jun 1922
Shorten Marjorie Hancock Lambeth 1d 609

Rose

Could this be the sister?


London, England, Births and Baptisms, 1813-1906
about May Doris Hancock
Name: May Doris Hancock
Record Type: Baptism
Date: 20 Sep 1905
Father's Name: William Hancock
Mother's Name: Alice Louise Hancock
Parish: All Saints, Battle Bridge
Borough: Islington
County: Middlesex

Rose

The 1922 birth no, I would think, because the mother's birth surname was Birbeck. (Although there's no other obvious marraige to account for it, and people did mess up registrations that way.)

Marjorie Shorten likely married in 1941 in Lambeth, to McRae, in case we decide she's ours.

Btw, it's lucky we weren't relying on Ancestry:

William Shorten *Hamcesk* Apr-May-Jun 1917 Lambeth Surrey


But the 1904 birth, hurray, I think so!


So that makes:

Births Jun 1904
Hancock Ralph Herbert Pancras 1b 87

Births Dec 1905
Hancock May Doris Islington 1b 250


Any sign of a William born to those parents, Rose? (I haven't decided to shell out for the deluxe UK package yet at Ancestry.)


Ther's no May/Doris Hancock to match in the Home Children database.

At FindMyPast there is a May Hancock born c1909 travelling to Canada with a bunch of other Hancocks - I had already spotted them in Ontario in the 1911 census (several little girls with parents) so that wouldn't be her, unless she actually was sent with relations.

Mother travelling with is Sarah c1862. Father Frederick must have been in Canada already. May on the passenger list appears as Mary A in the 1911 census.

All

First, duplicate thread deleted. I stand corrected, thank you. :-}}}}

Second, I too wondered where Ralph was in 1911
The census shows William and Alice, but no children.

Third, does ‘INSTITUTION’ for William Hancock in 1901 and Ralph Hancock in 1906 mean that was the name they were registered under?.

Fourth, I believe “Uncle Bill” went to Canada, and the sister I am looking for was sent to him.
William Hancock (born 1901) must be too young for this.

(Brainwave - “Uncle Bill” is what MY cousin called him, so he could have been this William. The ages are tight – William born 1901, May Doris born 1905. Perhaps they were both sent to Canada but not to the same place.)

So we potentially have three ‘Hancock' children – William born in 1901, Ralph born in 1904 and May Doris born in 1905.

I wonder why William and May were sent to Canada. What a decision to have to make.

Fourth, Marjorie makes sense as I had an Aunt Marge.


Janey, thanks for the links to Canada; I didn’t know they existed.

I’ll talk again to my cousin to see what else she remembers. She is older than me and has suffered three mini-strokes so her short-term memory is not good. But we shall see.

Regards to all

No sign of a William to those parents but Ralph isn't on the baptisms either.

Very late registration for May Doris. She was actually born June 6th.

Rose

INSTITUTION means their residence was an institution. For instance, an orphanage.

We need somebody with paid access to the 1911 to tell us what the details are. I'll give someone a shout if no one reading this has access and has checked it out in a little while.

If the William in the institution was ours, he wouldn't be this one, for instance:

Surname: HANCOCK
Given Name: William
Age: 8
Sex: M
Ship: Tunisian
Year of Arrival: 1910
Departure Port: Liverpool
Departure Date: 10 March 1910
Arrival Port: Halifax
Arrival Date: 18 March 1910
Party: Dr Barnardo's
Destination: See Comments
Comments: To Toronto & Peterborough, Ont.
Source: Library and Archives Canada
Reference: RG76 C 1 b
Microfilm: T-4736
Type of Record: Passenger Lists - Group of Children Traveling Together

But it could be that if there was an Uncle Bill, he was the one sent out as a Home Child.

There was a house in Peterborough, Ontario, that served as the staging area for Barnardo's children. A group there operating out of a local church has made a project out of collecting and preserving the history of the place. I don't think they're able to access individual records. Once we've done what we can to firm up who we're looking for, we can consider options for tracing.

Oh, and -- if they did come to Canada as children and actually were taken in by a family, and were here by 1911, they might appear in the census under that family's surname. Making life very difficult indeed.

Not sure about that death on CWGC for William because this is on Ancestry:


UK, Soldiers Died in the Great War, 1914-1919
about William Henry Hancock
Name: William Henry Hancock
Birth Place: Oldbury, Worcester
Residence: Worcester
Death Date: 15 Mar 1917
Enlistment Location: Birmingham
Rank: Private
Regiment: Royal Army Service Corps
Number: S/295376
Type of Casualty: Died
Theatre of War: Brough - Sic


Rose

Rose, can you explain what the difficulty is?

Place of birth? Do we know? Place of enlistment? We don't actually know where our William went/was when he and Alice separated ...

Theatre of war? Ancestry has that wrong every single time. It assigns some place in England for some reason.

-- Right, 1901 census says born Kensington. Since they were living in Kensington, that could have been a birthplace of convenience ...

Brian, do you have the Hancock+Birbeck marriage certificate for William's age and father's name? I forget ........


There's a WHH in the 1911 who could be the one killed in WWI (forgive me, I botched this first time around and am editing):

MILITARY HANCOCK WILLIAM HENRY 1887 24 Overseas Military


1891 - looks like the one killed in WWI:

Name: William H Hancock
Age: 5
Estimated birth year: abt 1886
Relation: Son
Father's Name: Thomas
Mother's Name: Elizabeth
> Where born: Oldbury, Worcestershire, England

Civil parish: Beoley
County/Island: Worcestershire

Thomas Hancock 36
Elizabeth Hancock 36
William H Hancock 5
Alice M Hancock 3
Walter J Hancock 1

Brian, big question - can your cousin say where she went in Canada on the trip with her mum?

Even just generally - the east coast or Ontario or western Canada, that sort of thing.