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18 or 19 seems quite old to be evacuated- could they have been with family?

Yes it does.  I think some bright girls joined Bletchley Park at about that age to work the Bombe and help decrypting German messages ?

Quote from: Andrew Tarr on Tuesday 30 December 25 09:40 GMT (UK)

Strange.  Maybe I am lucky in having no known nasties in my tree.  But I can't imagine feeling detestation for anyone enough to make me want to erase that person from history.  T

A lot depends on how far back in history they are, and whether one personally knows the victims or not.

No doubt - but we are told this person died 98 years ago ?

Following a sideline on my wife's tree led me to the question implied in the title.  One of her great-aunts married in 1893 aged 32, and that marriage must have been bigamous as she was married as a Smith, although born a McKay.  Her first marriage was on Tyneside just after the 1881 census, and 10 years later she was living with her parents again.  Meanwhile her husband was in Cardiff with two of his sisters.  For twenty years he claimed a variety of trades and appeared regularly before the magistrates for being drunk and disorderly, while fathering 5 children with another Elizabeth, who he seems not to have married.  By 1911 his family is in dire straits; the 'wife' died in 1914 of a cerebral haemorrhage, and he is missing from the 1921 census.

However he was still in Cardiff, finally meeting his end in 1923 after being hit by a taxi while walking along the road, drunk.  Being known to the police, he was identified and recorded as of no fixed abode; otherwise he might have been an unknown death.  So I started wondering how the census records people 'sleeping rough' - where are the forms delivered ? 

There's nothing with that spelling in my 1935 gazetteer, but there is a Courtland near Exmouth.  But as a Scot I suspect that is of no interest ? 

I highly doubt they had to show proof of baptism when they married back then. Some ages were falsified, and other times it was people just guessing their ages as they were not 100% sure how old they were.

Many marriage licenses just say "21 and over" which means they could have been any age between 21 and 101.

Seeing exact ages on a marriage certificate is actually rather unusual.  Some registers merely give 'minor' or 'of full age' as that was the only factor requiring consent of a parent or guardian.  Even then errors occurred - I took a long time pinning down my Irish gt-grandmother's birth because she was shown as a minor in 1870.  Her baptism was finally identified in 1845 when she was 10 weeks old.  Must have been an unthinking clerical error - I can't see any reason why she might have claimed that.