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England (Counties as in 1851-1901) => London & Middlesex Lookup Requests => London and Middlesex => England => London & Middlesex Completed Lookup Requests => Topic started by: forthefamily on Friday 25 January 08 19:46 GMT (UK)
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I would like to get a copy of an obituary for a Herbert Charles O'Neill who died at the age of 74 on Sept 29, 1953 (Marylebone 5d 253).
He was a war historian and a journalist and I think/hope someone would have written an obit for him.
Can anyone suggest an on-line source for this information? or a service that I could use to investigate ?
Thank you
mab
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Hi Mab
Have found obit in Times Online PM me your email and I'll send it to you ;D
Sarah :)
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Thank you Sarah..... ;D
As you can see he was quite the character....When I told the family about him they thought I had finally lost it...now I have proof ;D
One relative found but many to go :P
mab
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Sem
Is there a website for Times archives? I've had a look on the Times online site but the arhives only seem to go back about 5 years.
I'm looking for obits on William Ephraim Snow died 1864 and his wife Emma who died in 1872 (I think) bth living in London
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Here's a link to one of many threads on how to get free access to The Times Digital Archive (see references to Bedfordshire Virtual Library - free to join and use online and you do not need any link with Bedfordshire in order to use it):
http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/topic,221273.0.html
Anna
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Do you have to be resident of the UK...I'm in Canada....... ???
mab
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Do you have to be resident of the UK...I'm in Canada....... ???
mab
No - it doesn't matter where you live; all you need is an internet connection :)
Anna
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That was easy ;D
Thank you everyone for your help.
mab
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Just thought this might be of interest
"Strategicus"
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Thanks Janice M.... ;D
Something very spooky......I joined the Bedfordshire on line library as suggested and decided to see if I could find his wife's obit in the Times. She was a writer as well.
Would you believe she died in Bedfordshire :o :o :o :o and may even be buried there. Talk about a coincidence :o :o :o Too weird.
mab
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I am trying to find an account of a coroner's inquest on a suicide in London,(St.Botolph's, near Tower Hill) in 1866
i saw the paper records of the coroner's court crumble before my eyes last week. Would anyone know which newspaper might have reported on that.
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Do you know what street it happened on, or possibly names? Even an approximate date would help. I have access to the London Times, and it may have something in there.,
Janice
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Thank you for your kind offer Janice. I have the death certificate.
Ann Elliot, age 33, died 1 Oct 1866, at 2 Circus Minories, St.Botolph, suicide by swallowing a large quantity of Laudanum, about 3 hours. Temporary Insanity. Information received from Wm. Payne, Coroner London and Southwark. Inquest held 3 October 1866.
That location is the junction of Aldgate and the north end of Minories, almost facing St Botolph's Church. The Victorian building is long gone. It is now an unfortunate office block (2 - 6).
Ann was not an eminent person: a Scots girl waiting the return of her Scots husband, a sea captain in the Merchant Service, so I was not expecting to find an obit in the Times. However, suicide and similar gory events were grist for some papers, like the scandal monger, Charles Dickens rag, the Daily News. I do not know enough about the content and coverage of the other papers to guess which might have made regular calls at the coroners courts.
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Here is the article about Ann Elliot. I do have the pdf format as well, which shows the entire page. If you would lke that, then please send a personal message with your email and I will send it through to you.
Janice
Ann Elliot - Death
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Janice you are a gem. I am most grateful to you for finding this obit. Ann was my great grandfather's first wife.
As you see from the newspaper report - she had three children, the youngest not yet a year old.
John married again three years later and his wife Eliza died in Shanghai two years later. He died the following year on the anniversary of her death. Overseas certificates do not give the cause of death. This left my grandfather an orphan also. You might want to read an extended version of this on Rootschat - Scotland - Dumfries - "Annan, an elusive seaman".
Thank you very much - though bearing bad news, you have resolved the nagging question.
E
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I am collecting material for a biography of H C O'Neill.
I don't pretend to be at all professional, but have a fair outline.
Here is a picture of him, with his seventeen colleagues in the Foreign Office in 1918. He is at the back sitting under the clock, sixth from the left.
I have another version with all their names, but it exceeds the 500MB limit for this site.
I think I have all his direct descendants, but are still a lot of gaps in the families of his brothers and sisters .
I would be very grateful for any help you care to give.
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Welcome to Rootschat Stoer.... ;D
How very interesting that you are writing a biography of H.C. O'Neill. What made you decide to pick him as a subject ?
mab
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mab:
I am not sure that it will get so far as a finished biography, but we certainly have a lot of data. Just tell me what you want to know.
We chose him because he was our father.
Best regards,
Stoer.
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That would be too bad if you don't publish as he seems like the most interesting person from the little I know of him.
All I know of him is what can be found on line and in census records. I was able to find him in 1891 at the age of about 12 with his family and then he disappears. Where was he in 1901? I thought he may have been in the Boer war but as yet I haven't found any record of that.
We had never heard of him before but that's not surprising as the only person who may have been aware of him has been dead for a number of years.
Maybe you can confirm for me his parents names so that we can see if we are talking about the same person.
mab
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They were Charles and Emily.
I don't know where he was in 1901 either. He read Physics at Manchester University at the beginning of the century, but I think it was a bit later than that.
After that, he worked at Shide observatory in the Isle of Wight for two or three years before getting a job on the Daily Mail.
Stoer.
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I'm not at home at the present so I don't have my records with me. I did find an H. O'Neill with I think it was the 5th Lancers but I discounted it as being him for some reason. Can't quite remember why ???
Lilian O'Neill was my husband's Great Grandmother.
mab
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You were quite right- Dad was never in the Army.
Lilian was his sister. I have her down as having three children: Elsie, 1901, Arthur, 1904, John, 1907 and Edgar, 1910. Have I got it right?
I met Edgar in 1945 when he was on his way back from Arnhem.
You will have heard about that disaster at the end of the war: "a bridge too far". He was one of the few to escape; he broke his ankle in a glider crash on landing, and was evacuated. It must have been frustrating, but better to be frustrated in the UK than in a German prison camp, or killed (as so many of them were).
Dad was (temporarily) famous and it was natural for Edgar to visit his cousin. I was a schoolboy, and very much overawed!
He stayed in the Army after the war, commanding Territorial units in Glasgow and Liverpool.
Stoer.
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I knew about Elsie and Arthur for sure and I knew Lilian had two other sons but no one could agree on their names. Obviously the families didn't keep in touch.
mab
Added: Elsie 1901-1949 Arthur 1904-1986
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That's a shame. We lost contact with Edgar in the 1950s. I tried to trace him when I was working in Glasgow University ten years later but the commander of their army unit was too new to remember him. I know nothing at all of the rest of the family.
Edgar was quite a lad- he was an engineer before the war and enlisted in the army in 1939 as a major in the REME: he rose to become Lt.Col. and was appointed Assistant Director of Mechanical Engineering.
Our grandfather had an even more dramatic career.
Charles was born in Armagh in 1844, so before he was one year old the famine had begun. He survived that, and managed to go to sea as a ship's boy when he was 16. In ten years he had qualified as a Master mariner, and in 1882 he and Emily had a family of five children.
Tragically, he set sail from New York as Master of the steamship Titania on the 24th January of that year and was never seen again.
It was thirty years before the radio so no one knows what happened: the Comissioner of Wrecks just listed icebergs, storm or collision. It is a great credit to Emily that she brought up her family on her own.
Stoer.
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I have a copy of the hearing about the Titania and a copy of a newspaper clipping about the ship and what they thought possibly happened. I also have a copy of the register page where his death was officially recorded on May 19, 1882. Reading between the lines, it seems that he was filling in for another captain that stayed behind in New York to get some further accreditation.
I think Edgar may have used his second name and that's why no one could remember his name when I started doing the family tree.
mab
p.s. if you would like copies of the docs send me a personal message with your email address and I'll forward them to you. Just click on my user name and it will bring you to my profile.
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Okay...I think I have solved for myself the mystery about the misinformation I had about Lilian's other sons....I have some sketchy notes that my father in law gave my husband years ago. He said the other two sons were Leslie and James. Of course I couldn't find any record of them.
I did a search on the Birth Indexes tonight and I found a John Leslie born 1907 Birkenhead and an Edgar James born 1910 Birkenhead. I think that could be them.
In my husband's family the men frequently used their second name. I have no idea why :-\ :P
mab
p.s. My FIL was in the RAF ...he was a rear gunner who survived ;D OK he did crash twice but he walked away kinda :-X
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Stoer
If you are still around I found some records regarding the S.S. Titania under it's official number 81339 and Charles O'Neill.
All 1881
BT 99/1332/53
Ship: Titania; Official number: 81339.
Charles O'Neill; rank/rating, Master; age, 36; place of birth,Newry; previous ship, same.
BT 99/1332/54
Ship: Titania; Official number: 81339.
Charles O'Neill; rank/rating, Master; age, 37; place of birth, Newry; previous ship, same.
BT 99/1332/56
Ship: Titania; Official number: 81339.
Charles O'Neill; rank/rating, Master; age, 36; place of birth, Newry; previous ship, same.
Hope this helps you in your research ;D
mab
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Hi Mab
Have found obit in Times Online PM me your email and I'll send it to you ;D
Sarah :)
Elizabeth Speakman O'Neill was my cousin (2nd or 3rd), and I have been trying to find out more about her and her husband H C O'Neill. Would you be so good as to supply me, too, with the obituary(ies) you have found?
Many thanks.
Paul Allerton
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Hello Paul,
I can send you the obit but you need to post a few more times so I can send a personal message to you.
I also have an obit for Elizabeth Speakman O'Neill somewhere as well. I'll need to look for it :)
HC O'Neil is my husband's great grand uncle.
mab
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Hello Paul,
I can send you the obit but you need to post a few more times so I can send a personal message to you.
I also have an obit for Elizabeth Speakman O'Neill somewhere as well. I'll need to look for it :)
HC O'Neil is my husband's great grand uncle.
mab
Hello, Mary Ann.
I will just have to try to upload more posts. Perhaps this will count as one?
In fact I also have an obituary for Elizabeth, but I do not know what paper it is from.
It states that her funeral was in Northill, which (as you found out, it seems) is in Bedfordshire.
I also managed to get the Times Obituary of HC O'Neill, and a picture of him from the National Portrait Gallery, which I found by Googling his name.
Paul
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Hello Paul,
I can send you the obit but you need to post a few more times so I can send a personal message to you.
I also have an obit for Elizabeth Speakman O'Neill somewhere as well. I'll need to look for it :)
HC O'Neil is my husband's great grand uncle.
mab
Hello again, Mary Ann.
As I said in my personal message, I have an obit for Elizabeth Speakman O'Neill. It shows that her funeral was in Northill in Bedfordshire. Strangely HC O'Neill is not listed as one of the mourners. I wonder why?
Paul
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So you basically have everything I have for HC O'neill with regard to his obit. As I said in my PM I attached them to my tree on Ancestry for you to get.
Elizabeth's obit that I have is from The Times - Monday February 12, 1951. Elizabeth was a writer as well as her husband. If I'm not mistaken so was one of their daughters. It's been awhile since I looked at that part of the family.
As to why HC O'Neill is not at the funeral....I will send you a PM.
mab
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Oooh no!
This has been a riveting exchange and has certainly piqued my curiousity in this gentleman. :) It was lovely to see how one post has brought an extended and unknown family together. Do I really have to read the book to find out why he didnt attend the funeral? ;) Either way I'm off to 'google' the gentleman.
Best wishes to all
Debbie