Where is John Boyes on the 1871 and 1881 censuses – and when did he die?
Q My great great grandad, John Boyes, married Mary Jane Rosser in November 1874 in Bradford and had four children. However, he isn’t recorded with his family on the 1881 census in Bradford, nor can I find him before his marriage. On the 1891 census for Colne, Mary Jane is listed as widowed, but I can’t find a death record for John. Where is he on the censuses? Was he perhaps working away/in prison/ abroad? And when did he die? Lauren Potts
A This is a real challenge – not only are some of the basic facts inconsistent (for example, ages and birthplaces), but the spelling of the surname varies greatly between and within the sources (and that is even before possible transcription errors!). You’ve done an excellent job in trying to disentangle all this, but I don’t think your main question – when and where did John Boyle die – has any easy solution.
If we begin with the marriage in 1874, John’s deceased father is named as Philip, and his occupation is given as “groom”. That was a very rare first name in England in the early 19th century, and it’s a distinctive occupation, so I have no doubt that the baptism of John Boyne that you found in Liverpool in 1847 is the right one. The 1851 census for 110 Queen Street, Horton, Bradford, gives Philip Boyne, aged 25 and born in Ireland, as a “groom horses”, and his son John, aged four, was born in Liverpool. The 1861 census has Philip Boyle aged
32, a groom born in Ireland, and his son John (13, born Liverpool, a worsted weaver). There were four other children
– Mary (16, born Ireland), Philip (nine, born Bradford), Percy
(six) and Lavinia (three). Lavinia Boyle died in 1863.
So far so good, but the ages are very unreliable, and the spelling of the name is erratic. Philip, the father, died in 1870 (Philip Boyes, born about 1828, is registered in Bradford), and the family then broke up. Ann Boyce aged 40, widow, was a servant in 1871 at an inn at 49 and 51 Westgate, Bradford. Her birthplace is given as Milestown (probably – it’s not clearly written), King’s County, Ireland (now County Offaly). The 1871 census also shows a younger son, Percy Boyds, aged 17, a dyer, living in a lodging house nearby. I am reasonably sure that the John Boyle aged 21, labourer, born in Ireland, living in Bradford is the right person. True, the birthplace is incorrect, but my feeling is that this is a relatively minor error, especially as we know that the enumerator was careless (he gives the address as 35 Gaynor Street, but it was actually 13).
As far as John’s death is concerned, you only have his wife’s word that he died between 1889 and 1891. It’s quite possible that in 1891 she wasn’t actually a widow – you note that the couple might have separated – and your research shows that none of the more obvious possibilities from the death indexes really matches. John could have been almost anywhere by this time, if he had abandoned his family, and tracking him down is probably an insuperable challenge. With three potential surnames (Boyle, Boyce and Boyne) and their variant spellings, and the commonest of all first names, I doubt that this puzzle can be readily resolved.
In 1881, Mary Jane Boyes and her two children were in the Bradford Union Workhouse, and I fear that there’s no certainty about her either. She was born in about 1857, and her birthplace in 1881 and 1891 is given as Bradford… but no Mary Jane Rosser was registered in Bradford in the mid-1850s.
Alan Crosby
Philip was a very rare first name in England in the early 19th century