Who was Richard Barnard?
QMy great grandparents, Alfred Southgate Barnard and Jane Emma (née Dowling), married on 10 February 1895 in Poplar, East London.
They had seven children including my grandmother Harriet Elizabeth. I thought I had accounted for all seven.
However, a distant relative knew of an eighth, a Richard Barnard. The black sheep s of the family, he died in Karachi.
Another relative had a photograph of Richard in uniform. How can I find out what happened to him? Carole Legg
AThe photograph offers few clues except that Richard was a soldier, probably Royal Engineers or Royal Artillery (with the telltale fusils – old-fashioned grenades – on his collar). The large cuff visible suggests it’s very early in the Second World War or the decade before. The shorts suggest somewhere hot, which could include Karachi, site of a naval base, a huge RAF Depot and an army garrison.
I searched the Royal Artillery tracer ccards on Ancestry ( ancestry.co.uk), but Richard isn’t there. Curiously, there’s a
Royal Artillery enlistment note for a Richard Barnard, army number 1659008, in the Royal Artillery attestation book on Findmypast ( findmypast.co.uk), but there are three others with middle names and an Alexander Richard Barnard. As far as I can see, all survived the war. These might be worth examining.
If Richard died during the Second World War then he should be on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s website ( cwgc. org). Searching under ‘Richard’ and ‘Barnard’ produces three men – two sailors and a Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME) craftsman who died in France. Curiously, searching just on ‘Barnard’ with the initial ‘R’, I get two more sailors, a soldier killed in Italy plus a civilian barmaid! No Richard.
Searching Findmypast’s collection ‘British Armed Forces and Overseas Deaths and Burials’, simply using ‘Karachi’, produces 1,009 results recording many soldiers who died between the wars, but nobody obvious. Using ‘Barnard’ and ‘India’ produces a John KR Barnard who died in Delhi in 1946, who might be worth examining. As a ‘black sheep’, Richard may have enlisted with a false name – but then how did the family find out? Phil Tomaselli