Was my great grandmother sent to an asylum?
QI’m trying to find my granddad’s mother, whose maiden name was Mabel Elsie Merritt, and was from Barnet in Middlesex. Her mother’s maiden name was Calder.
Mabel may have been born in 1918; she married my great grandfather, John Laird, from Scotland, in 1937, and they had a son, James Laird, on 23 May 1938. Mabel may have left John when James was little. I don’t know any more about her – just a rumour that she went to the Friern Barnet lunatic asylum.
Lauren Norris
A There are five possibilities. Firstly, Mabel died, but I can’t find a record of her death. Secondly, she remarried. I found the marriage of a Mabel A Laird in January 1984 to David J Holmes in Basingstoke, with the death of a Mabel Holmes (born 4 February 1918) in Liverpool in 1992. But according to the 1939 Register on findmypast. co.uk, Mabel’s date of birth was 4 May 1918. Thirdly, she may have emigrated: Mabel appears in the October 1945 electoral register for Potters Bar, but there’s no sign of her in the passenger lists on Findmypast or ancestry.co.uk, which go up to 1960. Fourthly, Mabel may still be alive, and 100 years old! But she’s not in the 2002 electoral register on Findmypast (2002 is the last year in which there was no opting out of the ‘open register’). Finally, she may have lived with a new man, and taken his surname without marrying him. If she died after April 1969, when the full date of birth is given in the civil registration death indexes, then she could be Mabel Collins (died August 1995, Pontypridd), born on 4 May 1918.
Mabel Laird was living in Friern Barnet in 1939, according to the electoral register on Ancestry. This may be what the family rumour refers to, but if Mabel was a patient in the Friern Hospital, which closed in 1993, then there will be a record for her at London Metropolitan Archives (LMA). To see someone’s record, you need to prove that they are dead, but now that a century has passed since her birth, LMA may accept that Mabel Laird has almost certainly died, and let you see any record for her.
Alan Stewart