November 2001

On 9 November 2001 I received a completely unanticipated e-mail from Jane Tombe of the Surrey History Centre. Below is an edited transcription:

Stunned and over-emotional I called Mum and read out the contents of the e-mail to her. I cannot express our mixed feelings about this new information. Not only did we have evidence that Maggie spent time in the workhouse but we also had information about her elder sister.

I now had another birth date for Maggie, 10 October 1907, which nearly matched the birth date on her death certificate of 9 October 1907, even though I had family information that she was born on the 10 October 1908. I also had a birth date for Millie (Amelia) of 20 August 1904. Although it was Maggie’s birth details I desperately needed to find there was some solace in that I might at least find her sister Millie.

Frustratingly the pages I had paid for and ordered from the Central Library in Liverpool were now useless because I needed the earlier years of Walker births. In desperation I then contacted my team leader from FreeBMD asking him if he knew how or where other than from the Central Library Liverpool I could purchase the pages I required. He said he would investigate for me. What a star!

Following Jane Tombe’s advice I contacted the Methodist Church in Epsom and although they responded quickly they were unable to find any records of Maggie, Millie (Amelia) or George.

To keep my spirits up I ordered three certificates that I had found on the FreeBMD site for the Reynolds family in the hope of a bit of success from somewhere but sadly they were incorrect. Naturally there was nothing related to the Walkers that could help me on this site as it only held records up until the end of the nineteenth century.

That Saturday I thought there was only one thing to do so I headed back to the FRC looking for Maggie and Millie (Amelia) and George. All I found was the birth certificate for a Maggie Walker of Salop. Naturally this was not my Maggie but again I had to order the certificate if only to rule it out.

The only other certificate I found that day was another marriage of a George Walker to an Annie. These were the parents of children I had already found so it was conceivable that they had other children but perhaps elsewhere in the country, as I could find no other children in Epsom. There was nothing indexed for an Amelia, Millie or similar for the birth date of August 1904.

I e-mailed Jane at the Surrey History Centre again on 14 November 2001, reporting that although I had returned to the FRC I still could find nothing relating to Maggie or her family and also that the Epsom Methodist Church had drawn a blank. I asked her if the records supplied the names of the parents who put their children into the workhouse or if she could point me in the right direction. Actually I think I pleaded with Jane and I also phoned to ask if I could go through the records myself. Sadly I could not.

Highly charged emotionally, I phoned the SoG (Society of Genealogists) and explained my plight, in detail and somewhat irrationally, to a charming gentleman who suggested that Maggie’s birth had not been registered and it was a sad story he had heard often. I was distraught. This could not be the end, and I could not give up. He then suggested that now that I had a birth date of 10 October 1907 from the workhouse records, my only option would be to search for all the Maggies or derivatives of that name under every surname in that quarter.

At least then I could decide whether it was financially viable to order all the certificates I might find during my search. However, this could prove not only futile, but also expensive. What if Maggie was born in Reigate or Redhill or Banstead or Kingston? How could I be sure she was born in Epsom? Just because she spent time in the Epsom workhouse it did not prove she was born in Epsom. He also explained I could view births on microfiche at the SoG and would at least be sitting down in relative calm. It was not what I wanted to hear. I wanted a miracle, an answer to my problem – it was all getting too much. I decided to think about the suggested option, but not for long.

The following Saturday I found myself sitting in the SoG doggedly looking at microfiche for the final quarter of 1907, even though Maggie could still have been born in 1908. I decided to go with the year on Maggie’s death certificate and the workhouse records that both recorded the birth year as 1907. I arrived at opening time and worked solidly for over five hours reading every index on every page, noting down every female born in the Epsom area for that quarter and by late afternoon I had only reached the end of the Cs. I felt crushed by the thought of what lay ahead.

I was tired mentally before I started searching without reading the tiny lettering of microfiche for such a long time, plus I knew in my heart I had not done a thorough job for the last two hours because I was so tired. My eyes fogged with tears. I had to get out of there, it was all becoming too much. I grabbed a taxi fighting my emotions all the way to Waterloo only to embarrassingly start crying while waiting for my train. I called Brian from the train but could not speak. It was a dreadful moment for me because I was beginning to confront failure, something that I am not very good at, and I had failed Mum and Uncle Harry.

On 20 November – Bert’s birthday coincidentally – I received another incredible e-mail from Jane at the Surrey History Centre. The edited transcription is as follows:

My goodness, just when I was about to give up another amazing lead. Jane might have felt this information was disappointing but I certainly did not. What a wonderful thing she had done for us! I replied telling her just that.

The William Taylor above had to be the second husband of Maggie’s mother. Strange that William the stepfather should turn up to take Millie from the Workhouse, not the mother, but how could he leave Maggie there? Perhaps Millie was beginning to get ill, as rumour had it she died young. Even so, why take one child and not the other?

With my head spinning I booked another day off work to visit the FRC to look for William Taylor’s marriage in the Epsom area. (Luckily where I work is a family-run company who are also friends and they knew what I was going through. In fact they are now researching their family.) My thinking was that if I could find the second marriage of Maggie’s mother to a William Taylor it might provide a clue to her identity and her children. The only sensible way I could think of to search for this marriage was to look under the name William Taylor, as I still had no confirmation that Maggie’s mother was a Walker. I searched from 1906 to 1922 and out of the thousands of Taylor marriages ordered four more certificates.