Knowledge base
Adoption and Directories
1. Occupations and Directories
Clergy List 1896
An increase in the regulation of many professions and bodies occurred in the 19th century and the Anglican Church was one such example. The first clerical directory to be published was The Clerical Guide for 1817 which listed incumbents but not curates and was arranged by ecclesiastical parish with a name index. The Clergy List was first published in 1842 then subsequently in 1845, 1848-50, and then annually from 1852-1917.
This contained both incumbents and curates and was arranged by both parish and name. From 1858 this publication was joined on the shelves by Crockford’s Clerical Directory which exists to this day, now also available as an online subscription listing. The Clergy List was absorbed by Crockford’s in 1917.
The List published online here provides details of each member of the Anglican clergy in England, Wales, Ireland and the Scottish Episcopal Church in 1896. The records contain dates of the appointment to their parish and allow you to search for your ancestors by name.
The Archbishop of Canterbury at the time was Edward White Benson and his entry looks like this:
As with most professional directories, abbreviations are heavily used for reasons of space.
Ranks of the clergy
The distinctions between the various lower ranks of Anglican professional are less clear to many a modern researcher in these more secular times. The following definitions may therefore help anyone with a clergyman in their family tree:
Incumbent:
An incumbent is normally the parish priest and is one with legal possession of the church and assets.
Rector:
A rector is a parish priest distinguished from vicars by receiving directly the monies of the church, as opposed to being paid a salary by a superior.
Parson:
A parson is an incumbent who usually lives in a rectory or parsonage owned by the church.
Curate:
A curate is literally one who has been invested with care/cure for souls but has come to mean an assistant priest or deacon.
Vicar:
Traditionally a vicar was a parish priest who received a salary and was the assistant to a rector. The term is derived from the word vicarious as a vicar was one who acted on their employer’s behalf.
Clerk in holy orders:
Clerk in holy orders is a generic description of any member of the Anglican clergy, indeed clergy is an abbreviation of the term. The term therefore can be applied to a Bishop and to a porter.
Further research
Many records pertaining to the Anglican Clergy are held at Lambeth Palace Library. A new resource for genealogists with ancestors who were clergymen can be found at http://www.theclergydatabase.org.uk/ - its aim is ‘to create a relational database documenting the careers of all Church of England clergymen between 1540 and 1835’.
Dental Surgeons Directory 1925
The beginnings of modern Dentistry
A registration system for dentists was established in 1878 with the first Dentist’s Act and subsequently a register recording the names, addresses and qualifications of those registered was published. This was an important step in the regulating of dentists – a discipline that had its roots in the Barber-Surgeons of the Middle Ages.
The Barber-Surgeons’ Company ultimately became The Royal College of Surgeons. The branching off of dentistry from other surgical subdivisions coincided with the recognition of the technicalities and demands required of its practitioners.
History
The first dedicated Dental School in England was established in 1858 in Soho Square, London. The school was sponsored by Samuel Cartwright and John Tomes, the men behind the first professional association The Odontological Society. Around the same time as the 1878 Act, The Royal College of Surgeons arranged for examinations to be put in place for the licensing of dental surgery.
Another important figure in early English Dentistry was Charles Wallis who began his career as a surgeon on RMS Garth Castle before focusing on paediatric dentistry and helping to set up ‘toothbrush clubs’ to encourage dental hygiene in children. His entry in the 1925 Directory is below:
Public health after The Boer War
‘Toothbrush Clubs’ were linked in to the wider drive following the Second Boer War to improve the health and vitality of the youth of Britain. The embarrassing events in South Africa, in which as many as 40% of recruits were unfit for service, led to a reappraisal of public health and, with regards to dental hygiene, the coining of the phrase ‘you can’t fight if you can’t bite’.
‘Waterloo Teeth’
Oral hygiene in Britain was an important issue particularly as the use of sugar in foodstuffs grew enormously from the 18th century onwards. As late as 1940 many working class brides and grooms to be had all of their teeth pulled as a wedding gift and replaced with dentures in order to avoid the future costs of dental treatment.
False teeth themselves had something of a chequered past; until the discovery of vulcanised rubber which allowed moulds to be made of the patient’s mouth they were no more reliable than natural teeth.
Aside from the difficulties in attaching false teeth another complexity was the problem of obtaining suitable material to work with. Following the Battle of Waterloo the teeth of those who perished were so highly sought after as to become a fashion must-have, known colloquially as ‘Waterloo Teeth’. A roll call for Waterloo can be found here.
Searching for your ancestors
A full list of abbreviations used in the Directory is below
Kelly’s Handbook to the Titled, Landed and Official Classes 1901
The history of Kelly’s Directories and Handbooks
The roots of Kelly’s Directories and Handbooks can be found in the publication, in 1799, of the first edition of The Post Office London Directory. In 1835, Frederic Festus Kelly was appointed His Majesty’s Inspector of Inland Letter Carriers and took over the production of the London Directory, which took his name. Kelly began producing provincial Directories soon after, ultimately covering every city, town, village and parish.
The company’s name changed accordingly to Kelly & Co Ltd in 1882, later becoming Kelly’s Directories Ltd in 1897.
Kelly was also the curate of St Giles Camberwell from 1880-1915 and was the father of Rose Edith Kelly, who later married the occult writer and poet Aleister Crowley. The Kelly family can be seen living at The Vicarage in Camberwell in the 1891 and the 1901 census.
Kelly’s Handbooks
The first incarnation of Kelly’s Handbook called The Upper Ten Thousand: an alphabetical list of all members of noble families was published in 1875 and, as its name suggests, was a rather exclusive publication. From 1878 this became Kelly's Handbook of the Upper Ten Thousand. The final name-change to Kelly's Handbook to the Titled, Landed and Official Classes came in 1880, made even more explicit the emphasis on the upper crust and endured until 1973.There were rival publications such as Debrett’s Peerage (first published 1769), Burke’s Peerage (first published 1826) and Who’s Who (first published 1849). Debrett’s Peerage, like Burke’s Peerage is a genealogical guide to the aristocracy – Burke’s was an in-depth guide whilst Debrett’s included a brief history of each titled family. Debrett’s now also produce etiquette guides whilst the Burke name has been bought by investors and will continue only in an online capacity.
Who’s Who began by listing just the names of MP’s and Bishops but soon began to include biographies, widening its reach to include lawyers, judges and eminent figures from the world of the arts. Entries in Who’s Who, unlike the other Directories, are made from questionnaires filled in by the subjects themselves. Once a person is included they remain so for life meaning something of a reluctance to include figures from popular culture for fear of their relatively short spells in the public eye. Who’s Who is now also available online.
Unlike the Directories, the Handbooks weren’t specific to regions but covered the good and great of the entire country. The Handbooks contained biographical information for the notable people listed therein. An example from our online 1901 Handbook is the entry for Cecil John Rhodes:
The Handbook includes key events in the lives of the featured individuals, as well as basic genealogical details. The entries are arranged alphabetically by surname and then by forename, and give a fascinating snapshot of each person’s life as at 1901; notably a census year.
As you can see, for reasons of space, the entries use many abbreviations. Some (such as b for born) are self-explanatory but others are less obvious for the modern reader.
Here are the abbreviations used in the 1901 Directory, taken from the opening pages of the book:
Kelly’s Directories
The Kelly’s Directory was used much like the modern day Yellow Pages and was published annually. As such, each edition quickly became dated and was usually summarily discarded as a piece of ephemera, just like a modern telephone directory, when the new edition appeared, meaning that surviving directories are now a rarity.
As well as listing businesses, the Directory contained topographical and historical information on the villages and sometimes colour maps. Some Directories covered smaller areas and these non-county-wide versions contained excellent residential street indexes listing the heads of households.
Using Kelly’s today
The popularity of the directories declined throughout the 20th Century and Kelly’s has now moved into a different publishing medium – it now takes the form of an online business search website.
The Directories and Handbooks themselves are a thoroughly useful aid for family historians looking to trace ancestors in the nobility or titled classes or indeed those in trade and industry.
The rarity of early Directories has meant that they now fetch high prices on the rare book market. In recent years, Directories have started appearing on CD, giving genealogists access to the information without having to visit the local libraries that hold the books.
The Medical Register 1913
The Medical Act of 1858
The Medical Register was first published in 1859 as a direct result of the Medical Act of 1858. The Act sought to abolish ‘quacks’ and charlatans: unlicensed practitioners of medicine who had not gained the requisite qualifications befitting their position. The other chief purpose behind the Act was that it would end disputes that had raged between Edinburgh, London and Glasgow regarding the qualifications that should be required and recognised.
In tandem with the publishing of the register, The General Medical Council was established. The General Medical Council or GMC is the regulatory body of the medical profession and The Medical Register is its official annual list of licensed doctors. The GMC has the ability to revoke licenses at any time if it believes that one of its professionals is unfit to perform their duties, or have been doing so in an inappropriate fashion. Being struck from the Medical Register prevents a doctor from practicing.
The roots of the NHS
In 1913, the year of the Register available to search here, the medical profession was in something of a state of flux. Following the 1911 National Insurance Act set out by David Lloyd George, the beginnings of what was later to become the National Health Service were set out, albeit in a deficient state.
Until this there had been no provision made for medical care by the government, and any costs for treatment and remedies incurred had to be met by the patients, who often could not afford to do so. Before the advent of state contributions, the only way for the poorest of the population to obtain treatment for maladies was through the charity of institutions such as The Royal Free Hospital, set up by William Marsden to provide free care to the most destitute.
Following the devastations of the Second World War, the newly installed Labour government set about a policy of social reform and with The National Health Service Act of 1946 instituted free medical provisions for all.
The medical profession had a number of concerns regarding this new state intervention and many were wary of the implications of the reforms. Thomas Jeeves Horder (Lord Horder of Ashford), a physician at St Bartholomew’s and “the man who brought the laboratory to the bedside”, was opposed to the idea entirely. His entry in the 1913 Medical Register can be seen here and shows that at the time he was practicing in the renowned Harley Street.
Searching for your ancestors in the Directory
As can be seen from the entry above, the Medical Register contains the address and date of registration for each doctor, as well as a list of their qualifications. The ‘E’ in the Date and Place of Registration column stands for England. Below is an explanatory page from the Directory:
The Great War
As well as the changes to the health service, the Directory also provides a snapshot of the medical profession just before the outbreak of The Great War. A great number of the General Practitioners (GPs) listed in the Directory volunteered for the Royal Army Medical Corps at the outbreak of war and number amongst the fallen.
By 1918 close to 13,000 doctors had been enlisted into the armed forces: this represented half of all the civilian doctors in the UK at the time. One such GP was Noel Godfrey Chavasse, who is listed in the Medical Register of 1913 as practicing in Liverpool:
Chavasse is one of only three people since its inception in 1856 to receive the Victoria Cross twice (Victoria Cross with Bar) for his bravery. He died in 1917, near Ypres in Belgium, as shown in Soldiers Died In The Great War database:
Medical Directory For Ireland 1858
The Act of Union
From The Act of Union in 1801 until 1921’s Anglo-Irish Treaty, which created the Irish Free State in the south, all Ireland was part of the United Kingdom. The formal name The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was still used until 1927, however, when it was changed by the Royal and Parliamentary Titles Act.
History of medicine in Ireland
The Medical Directory for Ireland was first published in 1852, detailing the locations and publications of medical practitioners who held qualifications as either apothecaries (pharmacists) or doctors in Ireland. The Medical Act of 1858 set to regulate the medical profession and abolish unlicensed practitioners.
The 1858 Directory published online here captures the Irish medical world at the point of this movement towards stricter regulation through the General Medical Council. The first Medical Register was published in 1859, in conjunction with the Act.
Searching for your ancestors in the Directory
One eminent doctor listed in the Medical Directory is William Stokes. Of his published works, ‘The Diagnosis and Treatment of Diseases of the Chest’ was especially noteworthy, gaining him manifold plaudits. Stokes was also responsible for treating James Clarence Mangan on his death-bed (and with instructing Sir Frederic Burton to draw a sketch of Mangan’s face, immediately following his death, which is now held at the National Gallery in London).
In addition to listing practicing professionals, the Directory contains Obituaries:
The entries in the Directory were sent to the medics to whom they related, for verification purposes. A passage in the preface to the Directory indicates that many doctors didn’t return this circular to confirm their details:
It is important to note that as much as the editors of the Directory strove for completeness, there was no compulsion on the part of the doctors to be included, prior to the 1858 Medical Act. As such, it is inevitable that some practitioners will have been missed. Some are noted in the supplemental list, with fairly limited details. An example of the supplemental list is below:
The Poor Law
The 1851 Medical Charities Act was the first movement towards a state medical health service in Ireland. It provided dispensaries in each of the 160 Poor Law Unions of Ireland. The Poor Law of England and Wales was introduced to Ireland in 1838, as a way of coping with the widespread problems of poverty, highlighted in the Whatley Commission’s report in 1833.
The Commission suggested that the Poor Laws as they were in England and Wales were wholly inappropriate for Ireland, but their findings were essentially ignored. Prior to the 1851 Act, medical care for the poor had been provided by charities and free hospitals. The first charitable hospital in Ireland was The Charitable Infirmary in Jervis Street, Dublin, established in 1718.
The Poor Law, thought harsh in England, was ever harsher when applied to Ireland. This was largely due to the scarcity of workhouses available to provide indoor relief and the lack of monies available to the Unions.
The Great Hunger
The shortcomings of the Poor Law were fatally highlighted by the Famine, or Great Hunger (An Gorta Mór), of 1845-1849. The failures of the British Government to provide necessary relief to the starving population meant that during the Famine an estimated 1 million people died, whilst at least as many again emigrated to America, Australia and Britain.
The Irish population at the time of the 1841 census was recorded as 8.2 million, a number to which it has never since returned. By the 1851 census, the population was recorded as 6.5 million. A large proportion of deaths during the Great Hunger were as a result of infectious diseases such as typhoid, cholera and dysentery; many doctors were themselves infected and died in their attempts to tend to the sick.
2. Miscellaneous
The adoption indexes can be found at The National Archives in Kew, London
Adoption registers are indexed by the surname of the adopting parents. There is no cross-reference to the birth surname (although of course on occasion it may be the same - where, for instance, adoption takes place within the same family).This means that it is necessary to know the adopted surname if a meaningful search is to be made of the indexes.
Searching for adoptions
Please note that only the adoptee is allowed to apply to see their original birth records and to go on the Adoption Contact Register. Unfortunately for family historians, this might mean that you will not be able to trace your genetic line, if you discover that a parent or grandparent was adopted.
If you were adopted through a court in England or Wales, you are entitled to find out information relating to your birth and, if it still exists, have access to your adoption file. For more information see the General Register Office (GRO) adoption pages
If you were adopted before 12 November 1975, you must attend a disclosure interview with an approved adoptions worker (in Scotland this is not a requirement).
On your original birth certificate you should find out exactly when and where you were born, the name you were given at birth, your mother's name, your father's name (if it was given) and the name and possibly relationship to you of the person who registered your birth. For more information about Adoption in England & Wales you can contact:
The National Archives
Kew,
Richmond,
Surrey,
TW9 4DU
E-mail: certificate.services@ons.gov.uk
Deed poll
Officially registered deed polls in England & Wales may be found by searching online at London Gazette. These tend to be indexed in natural name order (forename then surname) under both the new and the old names. See:
http://www.gazettes-online.co.uk/
You can also try TNA’s website for court-registered changes of name by deed poll. See:
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/familyhistory/name/default.htm
However, only 5% to 10% of name changes are thought to be among these records.
Foundling registration
Foundlings are indexed without surname as "Unknown" after Z in the A-Z sequence for each quarter. See the attached jpg of image from 1837online (I assume that the customer needs to search for the three letters ZZZ to get to the right page) and also a paragraph of info from GRO.
Finding orphanage records - orphans
Not all orphanage records will have survived, and not all of those which have survived will be accessible to the public.
We would recommend four courses of action:
- Try searching on Access To Archives
- Try the relevant County Record Office (or London Metropolitan Archives if for London)
- Try TNA online catalogue and search using the terms “orphanage” in the field Word or Phrase and“ED” in the field Department or Series Code
- Try Barnardo’s
Dr. Barnardo children/Barnardo’s children – Canada records
The following links may be of use to customers enquiring about children given into the care of Dr Bernardo.
http://www.collectionscanada.ca/archivianet/020110_e.html - Canadian Home Children database.
http://www.barnardos.org.uk/what_we_do/work_with_former_barnardos_children.htm - Barnardo’s “after care” department where the records are kept.
Background information about relatives, environment, schools, housing, maps, etc.
One website which might be of some interest is http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/index.jsp.
Also, for old maps, you could try http://www.old-maps.co.uk (digital) and http://www.alangodfreymaps.co.uk (paper copies).
The London Metropolitan Archives (LMA) could be of use if your family were based in Greater London: www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/lma
Otherwise, it would be best to contact your local County Record Office.
Poor law and workhouses
The website www.workhouses.org.uk is an excellent resource for researching workhouses.
The Poor Law was a bureaucratic system, and created a large paper trail. Records of admissions and discharges exist, and are often available to search at the local Register Office of the relevant county. Local newspapers can also provide clues.
Prison
The series of criminal registers HO27, is held at The National Archives in Kew. These records are arranged by county and year and are not name-indexed, so research is necessarily labour-intensive. The objective of this research would be to establish the date and place of conviction and the sentence. In turn, this might lead you to either court records or to local newspaper reports.
Another archive which might hold interesting material is the London Metropolitan Archive (LMA). Good online catalogues are available at A2A and Familia. Local newspapers can be found at the British Library's Newspaper Reading Rooms in Colindale.
The Calendar of Prisoners, held at The National Archives, will provide information on the date and nature of the offence, and where the trial was heard. As the Calendar is arranged by county, you can establish quite quickly where to then look for the trial records. If they were tried at the Assizes, then indictments, gaol books and even depositions can also be found at The National Archives; quarter session records are usually held locally.
Inquests
Records of coroners inquests are usually held at the relevant County Record Office, so in this case the best archives are likely to be the Corporation of London Record Office or the London Metropolitan Archives. However, by the 20th century many records no longer survive so you would indeed have to rely upon newspaper records. Given that this was London, there are going to be a large number of newspapers to choose from, so you might want to start by contacting the British Newspaper Library, Colindale.
Huguenots
There are a number of sources for Huguenot ancestry. The Huguenot Library is the best place to start your research, though you can always see if there was a local French Protestant church established in the area where they may have worshipped or registered baptisms and marriages. The best way to check would be to contact the Huguenot Society Library, University College, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT.
House history
By Nick Barratt
Most people who research their family history naturally gravitate towards the main sources that provide information on relationships - birth, marriage and death certificates, or census returns. However, these documents also contain additional data that tells you how and where your ancestors lived, helping you to understand more about their lifestyles. For instance, by investigating the history of the house they lived in, you can start to imagine the ways they might have contributed to the daily routines in their community, as well as compiling a list of possible friends and neighbours in order to build up a picture of the type of people who lived in similar houses in the street.
The movement from family to local history is an important part of your work, although you should already be looking to use a wide range of additional sources at the relevant local studies centre or county record office, to put flesh on the bones of your family tree. House history is simply a logical extension of your work.
The easiest way to identify an ancestral property is via an address on a certificate or census return. This can then form the basis of a search for other records specific to properties, such as maps, title deeds, manorial and estate archives and local tax returns. However, it is important to remember that in areas that were affected less by the Industrial Revolution, a home often doubled up as a place of trade or manufacture, so check for commercial records as well. In these instances, it is possible that your ancestors stayed in the same house for many generations, which means you can use the property itself as the means of tracing your family further back in time.
Property descent through a family can sometimes be hard to trace. However, you can look in wills and probate documents to see if a property is specifically mentioned in a bequest. Likewise, certain types of property could only be passed according to the rules and regulations of the local manorial court. These were known as copyhold properties and were held by the lord of the manor according to custom. The property could therefore only be transferred from one tenant to the next in the manorial court, and the new holder would receive a 'copy' of the court roll compiled during this process. Court rolls are a fantastic source for house historians, as they can provide a trail of previous tenants that stretches back centuries - some of these are likely to be your ancestors. These can then be compared to other local sources such as parish registers.
If you are lucky, one of your ancestral houses will still be standing - providing you with a physical link to the past. This can be an evocative way of gaining a proximity to your forebears that documents alone cannot provide, as you can retrace their daily movements along the street or in the house.
Many houses from the nineteenth century are no longer standing, as terraced houses erected during the Industrial Revolution to provide cheap accommodation for workers, have long since been demolished - a process of clearance that the Blitz completed during the Second World War in many cities. In these instances you should arm yourself with a range of historic maps to try to locate the site on which the house once stood. These can then be linked to the decennial census returns to show how your family moved around within a community or local area.
Research is not simply restricted to locating a property; you can also gain an idea of how your family would have furnished their houses to turn them into homes. Strange alcoves or multi-level floors can be explained by the absence of long-removed machinery or lapsed domestic functions, such as butter making or hand washing. These days it is possible to get an idea of period furnishings through websites such as www.periodproperty.co.uk. The National Archives also has designs and representations of Victorian domestic appliances and wallpaper. Other sites, such as www.house-detectives.co.uk, introduce you to the main document sources and show you how to get started on the history of a house.
The next time you look at a census return for information on your family, think what the document is also telling you about the house, street and community in which they lived, and take some time to investigate further. You will be amazed at how much you can uncover, and how it will enrich your knowledge of your family's past.
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