What happened to my Anglo-Indian great uncle?
QMy father’s family went from Tipperary to Bombay with the British Army in 1842. Michael Condon and Mary Finn stayed until their deaths in the 1860s/1870s.
Their eldest son, Michael, was born in 1847 and married Charlotte Mary Meade in 1881. My grandfather, John, was born later that year, but the youngest child, Leo Charles Edgar, born in 1889, seems to have been a problem.
He married Portsmouth girl Ethel Melena Nichols in Bombay in 1918, but by that time they had already had four children, who were baptised in Bombay in 1916. My great grandfather had transferred to Nairobi, Kenya, in 1905, dying there in 1913. His wife returned to Bombay, remarrying in 1914.
Leo also was in Kenya, and had a daughter there in 1912. Leo and Ethel divorced in Bengal in 1922. Both remarried: Leo to Dulcie Mary Vera da Costa in 1922, and Ethel to Police Inspector Phil Baker in 1925. However, Phil died, and Leo remarried Ethel in 1933. She died in Bombay in 1945, and a newspaper described her as “Phil Baker’s widow”. Where was Leo, and what became of him?
Hilary Condon
ALeo was born on 11 July 1889 in Bombay, but his father, Michael, died in Kenya on 7 March 1913, aged 66. A memorial inscription and photos of Michael’s grave in Nairobi South Cemetery are on the East Africa Memorials website ( bit.ly/NairobiSouth).
In 1918 Leo married Ethel in Bombay, but you note that Leo, like his parents, was in Kenya. A 1911 passenger list states that Leo, a mechanic, embarked at Southampton, England, for Kilindini in Kenya, showing he travelled to both those countries. He went third class, so may not have been well off.
The date fits with Leo being recorded in Kenya in 1912. In 1922, and again in 1933, he was recorded marrying in India – but it is not known whether he remained there between those years, or afterwards. As Ethel was described as her second husband’s wife when she died in Bombay in 1945, this could suggest Leo was not close by.
It is not clear whether he was still alive in 1945, and there is no comprehensive source of deaths of Europeans in India during this period (I could not find him on bacsa.org.uk). Even if he died in India, it may not be possible to discover this using online records or those in UK archives. If Leo was buried in a church graveyard, it may be worth contacting the relevant parish secretary. Another option is to trace the descendants of Leo’s siblings, and see what they know. Emma Jolly