Hi, and thank you for the responses.
Yes, that is her birth record. Her birth certificate states:
She was born on the 2nd of January 1876 at 5 Court, Ben Johnson Street, Liverpool. Her name was Catherine and her mother was Winifred Carroll, domestic servant (who was illiterate and made her mark on the 25th of January 1876.)
Catherine seems to have been hidden for her first eight years. All I have been able to find is her birth certificate and sketchy information about her shipment to Canada. Through years of research I determined that Catherine was taken to the Liverpool (Nugent) Catholic Protective Society for Children and subsequently sent to Canada via the British Home Children program on the SS Circassian. The ship departed 7 September 1882 from Liverpool, calling at Londonderry on 8 September 1882 and arriving Quebec 18 Sep 1882.
She was placed in Ottawa with a hotel keeper and his wife but the wife died two years after her arrival. Catherine ran away from the drudgery of her place as a hotel servant after her foster father remarried a girl who was the same age as Catherine.
There was another child, Francis Blake, who was born around 1873 in Liverpool, but no birth record can be found (so obviously I wish I could find his information as well). He always said his father's name was Francis Blake as well.
Francis Blake's descendants (some of whom I've contacted) knew nothing about his sister. He married and worked as a dock labourer. His mother remained living with him until her death in 1919 of respiratory illness.
Her mother married Philip Clarke at St. Peters (not Francis Xavier--D'OH), on 4 November 1878, in Liverpool. Phillip was murdered in a bar fight in September 1882, two weeks after Catherine left for Canada.
As I have already been through the available RC baptisms on Ancestry, it's correct to say there is nothing there to be found for Catherine or her brother. My understanding is that some records of the RC churches, Francis Xavier included, are only available at the Liverpool records office. This is why I am hoping that when someone visits the library they might be able to look up Catherine (and her brother if possible).
She should be in the workhouse records, but she's not. In fact, there's NOTHING about her in any documentation at all in Liverpool. I have lots of information on her mother from workhouse records to her history as an "unfortunate girl" of the streets, but nothing on Catherine or her brother.
Thanks again for any help you might be able to give to me.
Norah Dennis
