Who was Mame Ann Marshall?
QI have hit a brick wall while researching a friend’s great grandmother. Mame Ann Marshall married François (or Francis) Raphael Jules Petrzywalski on 12 September 1888. According to the marriage certificate, her father was “Frederick Marshall, gentleman, deceased”. The certificate states that Mame was 21 and her husband was 22, suggesting that they were born in 1867 and 1866 respectively.
On the 1891 census, Mame is living in St Pancras, London, with her husband and two children. She gives her birthplace as Clapham and is said to be 24, while her husband is only 23. Also in the household is Mame’s sister Alice, aged 16 and born in Paddington.
Despite this information, we don’t know anything about Mame’s early life. We can’t find a matching birth record or a suitable Frederick Marshall who could be her father. Andrew Tebbutt
AMame has certainly proved a problem! I have spent a long time working through this query systematically but I have not found a proper match.
First, the name ‘Mame’ is very uncommon and often appears as an Irish corruption of Mary Ann. As you know, there is no trace of Mame or her sister Alice prior to the 1891 census despite searching every possible variant name and all of the Marshal(l) possibilities in the General Register Office indexes.
Using ancestry.co.uk, I searched for Marshall baptisms in Clapham and Paddington where the father is named as Frederick, but to no avail. I also found several marriage and death records for men named Frederick Marshall, but further investigation appears to rule out any connection.
There is a marriage record for an Alice Maude Mary Marshall, age 22 in 1896, with father Frederick Morgan Marshall, deceased, but again I cannot make a connection to Mame.
However, I have found something else that, while probably a long shot, may be worth further investigation.
A search of The National Archives’ Discovery catalogue( discovery. national
archives.gov.uk) reveals details of a divorce case that began in 1866 between Katherine Louisa Hervet Marshall and Frederick Marshall. The case papers, which are available to view on ancestry.co.uk, show that Katherine alleged that Frederick had committed adultery with numerous ladies – some named, some not. Frederick was a solicitor practising in Cheltenham with connections both to London and the Midlands, but denied the allegations.
Oddly, the couple were still living together on the 1871 census. Frederick claimed to be close to bankruptcy, and subsequently died in Barnwood Asylum in 1893. The couple had one daughter, also named Katherine or Kate. Unfortunately Frederick does not seem to have left a will, presumably on account of his insolvency or his mental state.
I spent a little while tracking down the ladies named in the case, and I am fairly sure that at least one of them had a child by Frederick (a boy who is also named Frederick, who was born in Ireland). They nearly all left Cheltenham, probably as a result of being named in the divorce papers, and reappear in Brighton, London and other locations.
Obviously this is all merely speculation, but a DNA test may well throw up matches bearing fruit. You can find a detailed guide to DNA testing on the magazine’s website at bit.ly/ WDYTYADNA. Helen Whittle