Last year, this was fine and gave me all I really needed for a score or so of families I was working on, Since upgrading my Findmypast account when I renewed my subscription last month, I've been working through those results and adding the previously hidden data. One result has underlined to me the ultimate folly of relying too heavily on this sneaky technique. I feel it my shameful duty to tell you the whole story here.
Jobes is a fairly uncommon surname, found principally in County Durham and the area around Newcastle-on-Tyne. I had discovered the family of Mark Jobes, born in 1859, and Sarah, née Bruce some 6 or 7 years his junior. They were married in the June quarter of 1886 and I had followed them through the censuses of 1891 and 1901 as their family grew: George (whose birth was registered as Joshua in 1887) was followed by Sarah Jane in 1889, Mary Hannah (1892), Mark (1893), Jane Isabel (1896), Ethel (1898) and Edith Mary in 1901. All was going well although, in a typical coal miner's terrace home in Annfield Plain, things were probably getting quite tucked up space-wise ... especially when twins Jonathan and Robert arrived in 1904.
Mark died in 1906 at the age of 47 and into this crowded house came a younger miner looking for board and lodging. Thomas Palmer, born in 1882 on the outskirts of Durham, lost no time in making himself at home.
In the census entry for 1911, he was listed next after Sarah Jobes, although described as a boarder, before all the children. Although only 28, his age was shown as 32, while Sarah was shown as 39, when she was actually 45. (Mary Hannah had left home but was lodging nearby in another large household, where she was described as married, although retaining the name Jobes.) Sarah said that she had been married 24 years and had borne 9 children all of whom were still alive. Since she was a widow, she wasn't required to provide this information; the nine children were correctly recorded, and she was indeed married 24 years before the census, although taken with her supposed age of 39 that would imply marriage at 15!
The family also boasted a granddaughter, Ada, born in the June quarter of 1907 and correctly entered as 3 years old. As can be seen here, the sons were listed first after Sarah and Thomas, and then all the daughters. It would appear that Sarah's thoughts as she entered the name of her eldest daughter were on her granddaughter, because the age 20 for Sarah Jane was superimposed on the 3 for Ada, suggesting, perhaps, that Sarah Jane rather than her absent sister Mary Hannah, by then aged 19, was Ada's mother.
So we come to 1921. I adopted the strategem outlined above and found the names Edith Mary (my prime concern), Thomas, Jennie Isabella, Robert, Jonathan and Ada out of a total of 7 individuals. Given that I had already found the death of Sarah in the March quarter of 1918 (with a recorded age of 48 ... closer to her real age of 52 than had been the case in 1911), These were close enough for me to construct the family as Thomas Palmer, 42 and the remainder all unmarried Jobes at varying ages based on the 1911 census. So far as I was concerned the seventh person could have been either a lodger or a younger child fathered by Thomas on either Jane (now calling herself Jennie) or the now-missing Sarah Jane.
Now I'm in a position to review, with the support of civil registration, the true story as revealed by the 1921 Census. Firstly (another thing not revealed in advance of subscribing), the precise address. Apart from a change of name from Edward Street to Edward Terrace, it was the same house as their home in 1911. Another assumption I'd got right was that Jane had married Thomas Palmer. This was perhaps under a degree of duress; it took place in the June quarter of 1914 when she was just 18, and he was 31, but purporting to be some years older than that. More significantly, she was on the brink of delivering his child, who was named Edith Mary, after her aunt, the original cause of my interest in the family. This was in fact the Edith Mary I had unknowingly found - ages are another element not revealed without payment. Two years later came another daughter, Ethel May, who lived only a few weeks and died later in 1916.
When Thomas Palmer died towards the end of 1920, at the (now corrected) age of 37, we might imagine a sigh of relief pervading the house. Within weeks - certainly within that same December quarter - Jane had re-branded herself Jennie Isabella and had married Thomas Bailey, a hewer at East Pontop colliery, who was just five months her senior. The 1921 Census therefore shows Thomas and Jennie Bailey as head and wife, supported by Edith Mary Palmer, stepdaughter, aged 7, entered with the description 'Father dead'. Next are listed Robert and Jonathan, the 17-year-old twins, both described as 'miner (driver)' at South Derwent colliery. Ada was described as niece and her condition is stated 'NK', where the choices were 'both (parents) alive', both dead', 'father dead' or 'mother dead'.
The seventh person of the household was the Edith Mary Jobes of my original search. Now aged 20, she was listed as a visitor. She had left the family home, perhaps glad to get away, and was engaged as a waiting maid at 'Stray Lea', 20 Victoria Avenue, Harrogate (now known as Osborne House). She later moved to Farnham, Surrey where, in 1928, she married Arthur Herbert Farley, a nephew of my cousin's husband's grandmother.
Readers may be curious about Thomas and Jennie. Apart from Jane's first-born Edith Mary Palmer, they had four children of their own: Gwendoline (born 1923), Jessie (1925), Minnie (1928) and Norman George (1931). By 1939, Jennie had reverted to plain Jane I, Thomas was still a hewer, Jessie, Minnie and Norman were still at home, and they lived with Thomas's widowed father at 100 Lily Gardens, Dipton, which was the part of Stanley where Jane had been born.
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