Do these signatures really suggest that my relative married twice in two months?
‘It’s likely that Elizabeth’s husband became an adventurer of renown’
QCan you please confirm whether the lady on these two marriage certificates is the same person? Elizabeth Susan Luscombe was born in Dawlish, Devon, on 2 June 1838 to William and Sophia Luscombe. Sophia drowned shortly afterwards and by the 1841 census, Elizabeth Susan is living in Dawlish with her aunt, Frances Cross. She married Lieutenant-Colonel John Charles Kirkham in Dawlish on 18 July 1867. However, there is a further marriage for an Elizabeth Susan Luscombe to a John Luscombe on 17 August 1867 in Brompton, Middlesex. Both certificates record a William Luscombe as the father, and the brides’ signatures look very similar.
Perhaps John Charles Kirkham deserted Elizabeth Susan shortly after their marriage? If so, her second marriage seems to have occurred with indecent haste! Linda Seabrook
AThe signatures of Elizabeth Susan Luscombe on these two marriage certificates, less than a month apart in 1867, do look similar. However, I suggest investigating the possibility that the two marriages, in fact, involved different brides who just happened to have the same name.
If this is the case, the likeness between the signatures might rest mainly on the fact that both exhibit the characteristically florid thick and thin shading and steep slant of ‘round hand’ – the most common form of English penmanship before the simpler Vere Foster ‘civil service’ handwriting style was introduced in the last two decades of the 19th century.
Let us suppose then that we are dealing with two different Elizabeth Susan Luscombes. The first married Lieutenant-Colonel John Charles Kirkham of the British Contingent in
China in Dawlish, Devon, in July 1867. Elizabeth’s specific age isn’t given on the marriage certificate (she is merely described as being “of full age” – ie, over 21), and her entry on the 1871 census tells us that she was 31 in 1871 suggesting a date of birth of 1840. It is possible, therefore, that this woman is not the Elizabeth Susan Luscombe born to William and Sophia Luscombe in Dawlish in 1838.
Using the 1841 census, we find that a three-year-old Elizabeth Luscombe (note: there is no middle name ‘Susan’ here) was living with her aunt and uncle, Frances and John Cross (an agricultural labourer) at Teignmouth Hill, Dawlish. These details seem to match up with the fact that on the 1871 census – three years after her marriage to John Charles Kirkham – Elizabeth (now Kirkham) was living with her aunt Frances Cross in
Dawlish. The two women are described as running a lodging house ‘Brunswick House’. An entry in the Devon Social and Institutional Records on findmy
past.co.uk suggests that (probably the same) Elizabeth
Kirkham was granted a licence to serve ale in a public house in Dawlish in 1872. It seems likely that Elizabeth’s husband is the same John Kirkham who became a military adventurer of national renown. If you can confirm this, then online biographies suggest that he was out of the country for much of the 1870s, dying in what is now Eritrea in 1876.
I believe that the second marriage certificate tells the story of a different Elizabeth Susan Luscombe – a spinster rather than a bigamist – who married a John Luscombe (possibly a relation) in Brompton, Middlesex, in August 1867. Bride and groom were both 29, giving an estimated date of birth for each of 1838. This Elizabeth is then more likely to be the child of the aforementioned William and Sophia Luscombe. I have been unable to find the newly married Luscombes on the 1871 census. However, a John Luscombe (aged 38 – as Elizabeth’s husband would have been) died in Shoreditch, London – only a few miles from Brompton – in 1877. There are several possibilities for the continuing life of his widow on the online genealogical sites.