Can you shed any light on my Scottish great great grandparents?
‘Asylum records may offer clues to James’ background’
QMy great great grandparents James Begg and Agnes Munroe were both born in Scotland, according to the 1841–1881 censuses. They don’t say where, so I can’t find their birth records. James (born 1807) was a tailor. He lived at 13 Turner Square, Shoreditch, London, where he died in 1875. He married Agnes on 22 May 1832 at St John’s, Wapping, London. Agnes died on 25 September 1885 at the Shoreditch Infirmary. Can you tell me any more about James and Agnes, including where they came from?
Joan Ames
AThis is a tricky one, because James and Agnes moved to England and married prior to the advent of civil registration.
I have managed to determine a little more about the couple in an undated application record for Agnes in the collection ‘London, England, Selected Poor Law Removal and Settlement Records, 1698–1930’ on ancestry.co.uk.
Agnes reported to the authorities that she had been hired as a housemaid in 1826 by a Mr Maffrey of Wapping when she was unmarried and without children, and worked for him for the next five years. Her marriage date to James is confirmed as being 22 May 1832 at St John’s in Wapping, with James’ name given as James Grant Begg. This may indicate a fuller baptismal name for James, or perhaps indicate his mother’s maiden name, adopted by him later in life.
It should be noted in the couple’s wedding entry in 1832, also on Ancestry, that one of the witnesses’ surnames appears to be Grant (William Grant perhaps), which may lend further weight to this. The other witness was an Elizabeth Moncour.
The Poor Law record further notes that, as with Agnes, James had never sought a right of settlement in England or Wales, and that he was now a “Lunatic in the Lunatic Asylum of the County of Middlesex at Hanwell”. A James Grant Begg is noted as having been an inmate at Hanwell from 18 December 1856 until discharge on 27 November 1861 in Ancestry’s dataset ‘UK, Lunacy Patients Admission Registers, 1846–1912’; no further information is given. The asylum records, if they survive, may offer clues to James’ background, as might any surviving hospital records for Agnes.
Chris Paton