Baptisms

[Sas2010]

Hi

I read the Pall Mall article about Robert James Padwick and Margaret,if what the articles says is true about attempted murder I can understand Robert dropping the Joseph Bown and having Edmund instead.

In the 1841 I found a Robert Bowen not Bown living in Tothill Street,but there was also a Jo/Jos and a Jas Bowen,I dont think this is my Robert somehow,also I cant find him in the 1851 census,1861,1871 or any other census,I gather you saw the baptism record for Robert Joseph Bown Padwick,what i did find interesting was his parents are Padwick and Padwick,how come there first names were not noted/or who was the person who brought  Robert to be baptised?Could be his new adoptive parents possibly?Family relative,Robert would not have gone by himself he was only 8,bless him!!

What is interesting too is that both Margaret and Robert Jr call their father Robert Edmund/Edwin on their marriage certificates as well.

[nigelp]

........what i did find interesting was his parents are Padwick and Padwick,.........

If you look at the original baptism record you will note that his parents are not named as Padwick and Padwick. There is only a single entry of Padwick so that the surname could, for example, be that of married parents or a single mother. In the absence of any entry in the Christian name column for parents we don't know.

Nigel

[Valda]

Hi

I don't think you really have the evidence to dismiss the Robert Bowen entry in Tothill Street because of the spelling of the surname. This is the information taken from the help guide at the top of the Rootschat London and Middlesex boards on censuses.

'In the days leading up to a census night an enumerator delivered individually numbered household schedules to each household in his district. On the morning after census night, the enumerator went round to each house and collected the forms. He had a duty to ensure that all the forms were completed properly and collected, even if this meant going back to some houses many times. In the London area with many accents, dialects and languages spoken, illiteracy and even just a lack of teeth, reading and writing the information onto the household schedules was a mammoth task for the census enumerator. Spellings can be very ‘flexible’. Once all the forms were gathered in what could then be a tired enumerator working in candlelight copied the information from them onto large sheets which were bound into volumes with a folio number stamped on the top corner of each right hand page. These volumes were then delivered to government statisticians whose job it was to extract important data about the population as a whole. In the course of this process, they often made marks and notes on the pages which can cause confusion when we try to decipher the information. The original household schedules were destroyed.'

As the Robert Bowen on the 1841 census was one of several people in that household he may not have been the person who filled in the household schedule if anyone did in the household, or the one on the doorstep going through it with the census enumerator. Based on the process one e in the surname or not isn't really relevant.

There is a James and Mary Bows,  Bowe or Bown and their son James in Tothill Street. They might or might not be connected.

The Pall Mall Gazette isn't evidence that your Robert was a criminal, though in our eyes he had committed a serious crime. There is evidence that Margaret did not wish to pursue the case. If so it would have been dismissed. To be a criminal you need to be convicted of a crime. This was a period in history when violence against wives was not taken so seriously (indeed it is only a relatively recent change of view). Wives were seen pretty much as the property of their husbands. In the eyes of the establishment Robert's real crime was deserting his family and leaving them chargeable to the local ratepayers. Hence why the parish authorities were asked to attend when the case came up again.

If there was a conviction or a later or earlier conviction (though petty crime would appear in the petty sessions - the magistrates courts) then it might be worth trying to track Robert through criminal records

The National Archives help guide

Tracing 19th and 20th Century Criminals

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catalogue/RdLeaflet.asp?sLeafletID=120&j=1


Children as young as 8 were in employment, so by 1837 if Robert was chargeable to the local ratepayers he would have been apprenticed out and working.


Regards

Valda