The Marriage Certificate (18 page)

When Carol returned from Vestry House later in the afternoon,
she had some good news for Nick Bastion.

‘You were right! During the 1940s and 1950s, there was
another voter registered at Harry Williams’ address. Her name was Louisa
Matilda Williams. I’ve checked the 1911 Census for Leyton and found Harry and
Louisa Matilda living in Moses Street, West Ham. On the census, Louisa was
Harry’s mother and her husband, John Williams, was head of the household.
They’d been married eleven years. There were no other family members living
with them.

‘Excellent,’ said Nick. ‘Have you tried looking for Louisa
Matilda’s death, as she has an unusual middle name?’

‘Yes. I’ve just run a search for it and found one in the
right area for 1962. The age given is ninety-two. I’ve also checked the probate
records, but she didn’t leave a will, so no clues from there.’

‘What about the marriage? Have you found that too?’

‘Already have … 1900 in Leyton … Louisa Matilda Crockford
married John Williams.’

‘Well done, Carol … well done.’

Carol was beaming. ‘I’ll order the death and marriage
certificates first thing tomorrow if that’s OK, or do you want to send Tom
Furniss to the local register office to pick them up?’

‘No, this case is old. Order them by post, but pay extra for
the twenty-four hour service.

Peter Sefton moved forward ten
years in his research on the marriage certificate, to the census of 1911, the
most recent one available. He looked again for Frank Williams, born on the Isle
of Wight, but once more drew a blank as far as definite identification. There
were some possibilities but nothing more. He had calculated that by 1911, Frank
would have been thirty-four and could have established himself anywhere in the
world, so Peter’s chances of finding him were quite low.

Rosetta Price had disappeared too. She’d probably married
during the intervening years and unless he really wanted to go off on what
could be a costly certificate-buying tangent, Peter decided it was probably as
well to call off any more investigation of her for the moment.

He ran a search for
46 Apsley Street
and discovered
that John and Louisa were no longer the occupants. He then searched, using
their names, and found that they had moved to Moses Street in West Ham.

Peter chewed over the census information for a while. John
was there, and for whatever reason, by 1911 he was no longer working for the
prestigious Castle Line. He was employed as an engineer on a dredger. That
seemed a bit of a comedown and they’d moved as well, closer to the docks.
Perhaps, he’d changed jobs to avoid spending long periods at sea and away from
home? As a dredger man, Peter reasoned, he would have been able to return home
to his family each evening.

Peter also noticed that Henry, as he was named in the 1901
Census, was now referred to as Harry. He was aware that Harry was often used as
a more familiar name for someone called Henry. He saw too that Louisa gave her
occupation as ‘dressmaker’ and he wondered whether she did any work connected
with her father’s drapery business.

A novel feature of the 1911 Census was that householders
were asked to fill in the census form themselves and to provide marriage
particulars, as well as details of children, alive and dead. Peter looked to
see if Harry had any siblings.

Obviously, no brothers or sisters, Peter thought, although
it was strange not to find more children in the household. The couple had been
married for eleven years and generally, families of that era were large. Perhaps,
Peter considered, Louisa had miscarried, which would not have been recorded,
but there was no way of finding out.

There was a possibility that although aged forty, Louisa may
have had another child after the 1911 Census. Fortunately, this was easy to
check, because from September 1911, the birth indexes showed the married and
maiden name of mothers.

Peter ran a search on all Williams’ births between 1911 and
1925 with the maiden name of Crockford. His search returned no results.
Technically, there was a gap in his search period of five months, between the
census in early April and the extra information given from September 1911, but
he felt able to conclude with reasonable certainty that Harry was an only
child.

Everything was just as Carol had hoped
when she received the death and marriage certificates of Louisa Matilda
Williams. The death certificate showed that Louisa was Harry’s mother and that
her husband John had died before her.

From the details on the marriage certificate, Carol knew she
had the correct marriage and saw that it had taken place in Leyton.
Unfortunately, she’d already ordered ten possible birth certificates for Harry
– or Harold – Williams. She’d had a feeling that searching all of Essex had
been too wide. She went back to examine the birth indexes and realised that of
the ten certificates she’d ordered, only six applied to the West Ham district
covering Leyton. In 1900, the birth indexes did not show the mother’s maiden
name, so she hoped that one of the six certificates would be the right one.

When the certificates arrived a few days later, they were
all wrong. None of the births was to a Louisa Crockford. Carol sat back after
studying the certificates and groaned with disappointment and frustration.

Carol looked again at her notes. Although she'd checked the
1911 census, she realised that she hadn't looked on the 1901 census too. She
searched the index for ‘Louisa Williams’, and found an entry in the
registration district of Leyton. Looking at the image of the census return, she
noticed that this Louisa lived with her son ‘Henry’, not ‘Harry’. She then
checked the address: Apsley Street. It matched the groom’s address on the
marriage certificate. This had to be the correct Louisa, but who was Henry and
where was Harry? Carol was confused.

She took the problem back to her boss. They discussed the
progress so far and the problem that she appeared to have encountered. Nick
came up with the answer and Carol inwardly kicked herself for her ignorance.

‘Carol, I’m pretty sure that Harry and Henry are one and the
same. Harry is a name often used as a more familiar form of Henry. Try a birth
search for a Henry Williams.’

Carol left Nick’s office. On her way downstairs she felt
disappointed with her performance. She played back the conversation she’d had
with Nick, trying to put her finger on something that had been nagging at the
back of her mind during the meeting. She sat down at her workstation and was
just about to search the last quarter of 1900 again when she realised what it was
that didn’t add up. Maybe she could redeem herself?

From the 1901 Census, taken on 31 March 1901, Harry’s age,
or Henry as he was called at the time, was shown as six months. If he had been
born on the date shown on his death certificate of 8 October 1900, his age
would only have been five months. Was it possible that the Coroner’s Department
had entered the date of birth incorrectly on the death certificate? What if he
had been born before October? October is in the fourth quarter, whereas
September falls within the third quarter. Following this train of thought,
Carol bravely decided, on her own initiative, to search only the third quarter
and identified five possibilities; three ‘Henrys’, a ‘Harry’ and a ‘Harold’.
She ordered five certificates and this time took it upon herself to use the
express service. She almost counted the hours until they arrived the following
day, praying and fretting that her theory would prove correct.

She opened each envelope with trepidation. When she read the
entries on the third Henry, she let a loud whoop of joy and everyone in the
office knew that she had found her missing birth.

Nick was in the main office at the time and came over to
congratulate Carol.

‘Well done, that’s a real step forward,’ he said. ‘You’re
making progress. I think we’ll move this case up one level and put it onto a
higher priority. We’ll get Fred Howard over to the deceased’s neighbourhood in
Leyton to see if he can discover anything by knocking on a few doors.’

Carol was already thinking ahead. She had found Henry’s
birth and had identified his parents. The next move would be to look for full
blood or half-blood siblings and failing that, move back a generation to uncles
and aunts, or their offspring, who would be cousins. Carol was anxious to prove
herself and to make up for her earlier lack of inspiration and ideas.

By coincidence, the copy of Henry Williams’ birth certificate,
which Peter had ordered, also arrived at the cottage during that same week in
January 2011. He sat in the kitchen sipping coffee as he studied the entries.
It was mid-morning and he’d needed a break from tracking his shares on the
London market.

Henry, or Harry, as he seemed to have become known was born
on 8 September 1900 at home, in the West Ham registration district. The gap
between the wedding and the birth was around thirty-four weeks. It confirmed
Peter’s suspicions. Harry’s birth may have been premature, but somehow Peter
didn’t think so. The likelihood was that Louisa was pregnant when she walked up
the aisle.

Peter had been pondering the extremely unlikely possibility
that Harry’s mother could have produced a brother or sister between April and
September 1911. If Harry had married, his marriage certificate might name a
sibling as a witness. The death certificates of his parents, John and Louisa
Williams, could also contain a lot of useful information and might show a
daughter or another son as informant and thus reveal the existence of a sibling
for Harry.

Peter decided to follow that route and to look for the death
of one of Harry’s parents. He first chose his mother, Louisa Matilda Williams,
because her middle name was uncommon. He went back upstairs to his computer and
started the search.

Almost straight away, he found Louisa’s death, during the
last quarter of 1962, in the registration district of Essex South Western. Did
that mean that the district covering Leyton had changed from West Ham to Essex
South Western or had she died in a different area to the one in which she’d
previously lived? A minute later, he had the answer: the registration district
had
changed in 1935. He ordered her death certificate immediately.

He then turned his attention to finding the death of
Louisa’s husband, John. As expected, the number of possible deaths that his
search query returned was too high and he had to abandon it. John Williams may
have died in the Leyton area, but Peter couldn’t be sure. All he knew for sure
was that John Williams was alive in 1911. He hoped that Louisa’s death
certificate would show whether John was still alive in 1962. He’d have to wait
and see.

When Louisa’s death certificate arrived in the post, it was,
like Harry’s birth certificate, a piece of physical evidence with a direct
connection to the individuals on the marriage certificate from the antiques
centre.

It was proof that in 1962 Louisa was a widow and her son,
Harry, was the informant, and not any other son or daughter. Peter decided to
accept that Harry was an only child. His address was the same as the one at
which she’d died and he saw that it was in Leyton. It looked as if the family
had continued to live in the Leyton area.

However, for Peter, there were still many unanswered
questions. What had happened to her husband, John? How long before Louisa did
he die? What happened to Harry after his mother died? Was Harry married? Did
Harry have any children? These thoughts swirled around inside Peter’s head as
he wondered where to go next. Finally, he decided to concentrate on Harry,
because if he could find his death, then his death certificate might answer the
last two of his questions.

He subscribed to a website, which made it possible to trace
living relatives, as well as those who were deceased. The website’s resources
included scanned copies of telephone directories. The directory covering Leyton
was searchable for the period 1960 to 1984. He had a name and he had an
address, so he tried it.

‘Bingo!’ he exclaimed. He had found a phone number listed
alongside the name of
H Williams, Stephenson Street, Leyton
. Harry
Williams was alive in 1984 and by Peter’s reckoning would have been at least
eighty-three.

Peter then searched the death indexes and looked for a Harry
Williams, aged eighty-three or older, who had died in the Registration District
of West Ham, after 1983. Peter was feeling exhilarated and definitely on a
roll. He waited patiently for the page to load, expecting when it did so, to
scroll down a column of names … disaster, no match. He looked again – no match.
What a disappointment!

He paused and checked the information he had entered. It
seemed correct. Then he realised his error. The registration district for
Leyton had changed from West Ham to Essex South Western. He tried again, this
time searching the correct district and to his delight, found the entry for the
death of Harry Williams, aged ninety-five, in the third quarter of 1996. Peter
ordered the death certificate. Now all he had to do was wait as patiently as he
could for a few days. He really felt that he was starting to get somewhere.