Did my great aunt leave her husband and run off with a lodger?
QMy great aunt Maud Ethel Timperley (born 1879) married John Smith in 1897 at St John’s, Cheetham, Manchester. She was with her family in 1901 in Salford, but then seems to disappear. I can’t find her in the 1911 census and death records. A Bernard Boyle from Glasgow, who was lodging with the family in 1901, is also missing in 1911. Could they have gone off together?
Maureen Morgan
AYou don’t say whether Maud’s children, Dorothy and Beatrice E (aged three and nought on the 1901 census), disappeared at the same time as their mother. There is a death record for a two-year-old infant named Beatrice Ethel Smith in the same locality in 1902. Perhaps the child’s death was a catalyst for Maud to leave her husband?
A John Smith (36) and his daughter Dorothy (13) were boarders at 11 Belmont Grove in Hulme, Manchester, on the 1911 census. If this is Maud’s husband, he has changed his occupation from “general labourer” (1901 census) to “billiard table maker’s porter”. This man described himself as “married”, as well he might have done, because Maud and John would not have been able to divorce at this time. If Maud did run off with Bernard Boyle, she would have had to live with him as his common-law wife, or marry him bigamously. However, I have found no record on the 1911 census of them living together anywhere in Britain, nor have I been able to find a record of a marriage.
If the couple were together, perhaps they moved elsewhere? A 30-year-old joiner, Bernard Boyle, left Glasgow for New York on 21 April 1906 on the steamship Caledonia , according to a passenger list on findmypast. co.uk. Bernard travelled with a “wife” whose name is not given (aged 29, as Maud would have been), and a boy and girl aged seven and five. Emigration could well explain their disappearance. Perhaps US census records might be able to take you further?
Ruth Symes