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General => The Common Room => Topic started by: Davidxmas on Friday 22 December 23 15:09 GMT (UK)
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I'm wondering if anyone can throw any light on an issue with my wife's great grandfather.
Basically, he was born in Sheerness, Kent in a very troubled family, and while he was present on the 1911 Census in Sheerness with his family, he disappears from the 1921 record. I eventually found him, along with his younger brother, on the 1921 Census in Shropshire, which is where my wife's family come from, so that makes sense. The thing is, though, that he is residing with a farming couple and he and his brother are recorded as being their foster sons.
How does this work?
I can understand why these lads might have been fostered, though I know nothing about how common fostering was in those days. What I don't understand is why they were fostered so far away from their mother (their father was dead), who went on to marry again and seems to have stabilised her life. As far as I'm aware, she never saw her sons again.
Can anybody help with any suggestions?
David Christmas (Yes, I know! It's a very festive name.)
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How old were the boys in 1921?
It could be they were sent to the farming couple to work for them.
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Hi
They were 12 and 10, but I think they would have been younger when they were sent - and Shropshire is a heck of a long way from Sheerness!
I think from knowledge of what was going on around then ( aunt convicted of manslaughter of her youngest child) that they may well have been taken away for their own safety.
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I had to check out that a Christmas did not marry a Carroll. Have a good one .
Ss
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My great uncle (by marriage) was born in Whitby in 1901. When he was 5 his father died. In 1911, we found him in Theydon Bois, Essex, with another boy, labelled "Home Child", with a bricklayer and his wife and their 4 children. That family later moved to Canada, and would have been glad to take him with them, but his mother declined the offer.
His younger sister was in a Home in Alverstoke, Hampshire, and his next older sister in Princess Alice Orphanage in Sutton Coldfield. We were able to get the admission documents from their successor, Action for Children. Their youngest sister was still with their mother, who couldn't afford to keep them all.
Workhouses also fostered children out, having woken up to the fact that a workhouse wasn't necessarily the best environment for children, but these are more likely to be with local people, and short term. Longer term orphans seemed to be sent anywhere, to any Children's Home that would take them.
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I made a paid pf shoes for a David Christmas a couple of weeks ago!
Merry David.
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Thanks to all for the festive comments! Looks like I may have to remain in ignorance about what happened to the boys. (And actually, it was a close run thing about my marriage. My wife's mother was a Carroll.
Must go now - the reindeer near mucking out.
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The most likely place to find info, if it survives, would be in the appropriate Board of Guardians. It looks like for Sheerness this would have been Sheppey and records do survive at Kent History and Library Centre:
https://www.kentworkhouses.uk/kent-unions/sheppey-union/
https://www.workhouses.org.uk/Sheppey/
The Board of Guardians at this time would have looked after the workhouse, but also movement of people to other institutions, into foster care/adoption, and into programs such as the Home Children or similar.
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Thank you. That's exactly what I was looking for.
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I had to check out that a Christmas did not marry a Carroll. Have a good one .
I don't want to divert this serious thread, but it is Yuletide after all ... :D
When I had access to my (large) employer's personnel records 40 years ago I used to trip over unusual surnames, which could lead to office games. We also had a Christmas, and there was one Kitchen to go with a pair of Barthrams, and a Riding to pair with some Stables. Hypothetical marriages could be amusing too - for example an Allwright with a Jack, hyphenated of course. Others escape me now, sadly.