What happened to my wife’s grandfather?
Q
My wife’s maternal grandfather, James Batup, was born in Lewes, East Sussex, in 1889.
His father (also James Batup) was a horse and cattle dealer, with James junior taking over the business after his death in 1939. Newspaper adverts show that they imported horses from Ireland between 1935 and 1939 (and possibly beyond).
Despite this information, James junior remains an enigma within the family. Little is known of him beyond 1939, and he seems to have been largely absent when my mother-in-law was growing up with her four siblings in Wokingham, Berkshire.
Throughout his life James gave incorrect ages in census returns and other documents, while searching for his death date has always produced a blank.
In desperation, I ordered a death certificate from the General Register Office for a James Batup who died in Southampton in 1972 for the purposes of eliminating it from my search.
Curiously, his birth date is given as 5 July (consistent with ‘my’ James’s entry in the 1939 Register), but the year is 1900 rather than 1889. His birthplace is also described as “Eire” (not Lewes), but his profession is given as “retired groom”, which sounds correct. The informant was not a relative.
Could they be the same man? Michael Lester
A
The Batup surname is quite rare, and although there are numerous variants (‘Bateup,’ ‘Baitup’, ‘Baytup’ etc), this family seems to have stuck to ‘Batup’ throughout, apart from the birth registration for James senior where it is shown as “Batop”. I did not find any instances at all in the Irish records available on ancestry.co.uk.
I am pretty sure that the Southampton death registration must be the correct one, despite the discrepancies. As you have said, the person registering the death was not a relative. If James died in a hospital or a similar institution, then there may be further documentation available that might help.
James and his wife Annie appear to have had five children: one born in the Guildford registration district (her parents’ locality), one in Lewes where the Batups lived, and three in Easthampstead (local to Wokingham) between the marriage in 1915 and 1925.
I found Annie in the 1930 electoral register for Berkshire, living in Winnersh, but James is not listed. I also found a long account about James Batup senior’s funeral in October 1939, which refers to James junior as “now managing the business” in Lewes. This suggests to me that James and Annie were living apart at least as early as 1930 and possibly for some years prior to that, with Annie in Berkshire and James in Lewes. Annie appears to have died in Ashford in 1958.
I then spotted a marriage entry for a James Batup to an Ellen R O’Connor in Croydon in 1951, but I can find no further trace of an Ellen R Batup. I looked to see if I could find any earlier reference to Ellen R O’Connor and there is an Ellen Rebecca O’Connor born 1900, daughter of Cornelius O’Connor, a fruit porter/packer.
As James senior was a fruit dealer in 1891, the families may have known each other. Perhaps his son married Ellen, despite his first wife apparently still being alive in 1951. I suggest you get the marriage certificate.
O’Connor is of course an Irish surname, and it may be that the couple moved to Ireland after 1951, with James returning to the UK before 1972 and Ellen remaining in Ireland. She may already have died there pre-1972. Helen Whittle