Liverpool & South West Lancashire FHS - Forum

We have recently found old photographs and references to two people, both of whom are buried in Udine Cemetery near Venice.

The first is James William Lloyd (King's Own Regiment, died aged 19 on 11 November 1946), whose parents were William and Christina Lloyd, from Liverpool. Does anyone have any information on these names in their own family histories? I have linked James's father - who was a brother to my grandfather, Leonard Lloyd.

There is also an intriguing reference to a Major Clifford Ogden who served in the Intelligence Corps, army no 14094650, who died age 38 on 31 May 1945. He is also buried in Udine cemetery and his parents were Harold and Martha Ogden of Wallasey. I haven't come across any family link to him yet, nor to the surname, but again if anyone has information on him or his family I would be grateful to receive it.

Many thanks,

Peter Lloyd.

Hi Peter
Welcome to the forum who will be able to help a lot more than myself
I can tell you Christina's maiden name was Robinson.
Good luck

Tina

Hello Peter and welcome,
Not sure why you think there may be a link between Clifford Ogden and James Lloyd other than an Army service one and whether you want help in finding one, if it exists.

Clifford Norman Ogden was born Birkenhead - 8a - 591 - Jun qtr 1907. Not sure when his mother, Martha of Wallasey, became widowed but it was within 5/6 years of Clifford's birth. This could be it: Deaths Mar 1911> Ogden, Harold - 34 - Birkenhead - 8a - 363. His age fits with the Harold I found later, born 1876/7.

Couldn't find a marriage that fitted [if there was one] but there may be reason for that. Harold Ogden had a sister Gertrude. She and her brother are here in the 1881:
OGDEN, Henry - Head - Married - 44 - 1837 - Coachman - Hampshire.
OGDEN, Frances - Wife - 43 - 1838 - Shropshire.
OGDEN, Gertrude - Dtr 13 - 1868 - Liverpool.
OGDEN, Frank - Son - 11 - 1870 - Scholar - Liverpool.
OGDEN, Blanchard - Son - 9 - 1872 - Scholar - Liverpool.
OGDEN, Ada - Dtr - 6 - 1875 - Scholar - Liverpool.
OGDEN, Harold - Son - 3 - 1877 - Liverpool.
OGDEN, Percival - Son - 2 - 1879 - Liverpool.
OGDEN, Reginald - Son - 0 - 1881 - Liverpool.
Address: 90 Harrowby St, Toxteth Park, Liverpool.
RG11 / Piece:3648 / Folio:156 / Page:31

Young Reginald is missing from the 1891 and I think this is why: Deaths Mar 1884> OGDEN, Reginald Oswald - 3 - West Derby - 8b - 396.

In 1891 Harry/Harold is shown as Olgent H [certainly looks that on the census page]. That odd name may explain why I can't find a marriage and in 1891 Harold is a telegraph messenger which fits with Martha's later occupation. RG12 / Piece:2987 / Folio:93 / Page:29.

Dickiesam

Tina wrote:Hi Peter
Welcome to the forum who will be able to help a lot more than myself
I can tell you Christina's maiden name was Robinson.
Good luck

Tina

That's a great start. Thank you!

dickiesam wrote:Hello Peter and welcome,
Not sure why you think there may be a link between Clifford Ogden and James Lloyd other than an Army service one and whether you want help in finding one, if it exists.

Clifford Norman Ogden was born Birkenhead - 8a - 591 - Jun qtr 1907. Not sure when his mother, Martha of Wallasey, became widowed but it was within 5/6 years of Clifford's birth. This could be it: Deaths Mar 1911> Ogden, Harold - 34 - Birkenhead - 8a - 363. His age fits with the Harold I found later, born 1876/7.

Couldn't find a marriage that fitted [if there was one] but there may be reason for that. Harold Ogden had a sister Gertrude. She and her brother are here in the 1881:
OGDEN, Henry - Head - Married - 44 - 1837 - Coachman - Hampshire.
OGDEN, Frances - Wife - 43 - 1838 - Shropshire.
OGDEN, Gertrude - Dtr 13 - 1868 - Liverpool.
OGDEN, Frank - Son - 11 - 1870 - Scholar - Liverpool.
OGDEN, Blanchard - Son - 9 - 1872 - Scholar - Liverpool.
OGDEN, Ada - Dtr - 6 - 1875 - Scholar - Liverpool.
OGDEN, Harold - Son - 3 - 1877 - Liverpool.
OGDEN, Percival - Son - 2 - 1879 - Liverpool.
OGDEN, Reginald - Son - 0 - 1881 - Liverpool.
Address: 90 Harrowby St, Toxteth Park, Liverpool.
RG11 / Piece:3648 / Folio:156 / Page:31

Young Reginald is missing from the 1891 and I think this is why: Deaths Mar 1884> OGDEN, Reginald Oswald - 3 - West Derby - 8b - 396.

In 1891 Harry/Harold is shown as Olgent H [certainly looks that on the census page]. That odd name may explain why I can't find a marriage and in 1891 Harold is a telegraph messenger which fits with Martha's later occupation. RG12 / Piece:2987 / Folio:93 / Page:29.

Dickiesam

Wow. Thanks for that. I had tracked down his birth quarter today but a check of the 1911 census has revelaed nothing which I find unusual, given he was born 3 years earlier.

You ask: "Not sure why you think there may be a link between Clifford Ogden and James Lloyd other than an Army service one and whether you want help in finding one, if it exists. "

The reason I think one exists is that when my uncle died, and we took possession of his effects, we were surprised to see both James Lloyd and Clifford Ogden's grave details were written down, and there was a photo of James's grave in his possessions.

We didn't even know about James, and the Clifford Ogden note clearly meant something to my uncle, otherwise he wouldn't have made it and kept it when he was there, so I am trying to track down if he was a half-uncle or half-brother or something to my uncle, if you get my drift!

Many thanks for all that info, which I will now get my teeth into.

Best wishes,

Peter [/i]

Hello Peter,
Was your late uncle a serving soldier in WW2 and immediately after? The link could be related to comrade rather than kinship or an event which was shared in some way. What relationship would the young James Lloyd have been to your uncle?

From Answers.com:

German forces surrendered in Italy on April 29 1945, and in Western Europe on May 7, 1945. On the Eastern Front, Germany surrendered to the Soviets on May 8, 1945. A German Army Group Centre resisted in Prague until May 11, 1945.

James died in November 1946, nearly 18 months after the end of hostilities in Europe. Major Clifford Ogden died 13th of May 1945, a couple of days after the end. Would be worth trying to find out where and how they died. If James is related to your family you might be able to get hold of his Army service records. I very much doubt that James died of wounds received during WW2 service 18 months later. He would surely have been repatriated to a UK hospital for treatment.

It is possible the answer to the riddle of Udine cemetery is a simple one. If your uncle was related to James, did he go to visit the grave and while there take a photo of Clifford Ogden's grave as a favour to someone back home? If he wasn't related to James were both photos done as favours? It's a frequent favour that's still current today.

I couldn't find an England/Wales marriage for Clifford Norman Ogden on FreeBMD. A consular or military search might bear fruit.
Edited to add note: However, since only his parents are shown on the Commonwealth War Graves site, they would have been his immediate next-of-kin in military records I presume. If he had married, and was still married at death, his n-o-k would have been his wife.

Dickiesam

Hi
It's a puzzle why James was buried in Udine Nov 1946.
Google says troops entered the cemetery on 1st May 1945 and soldiers from the nearby Brit. Hospital who died, were being buried there "for some months later".
James birth is 4th qtr 1927 Lpool making him exactly 19 as stated.
I was hoping 1946 was incorrect.
Also born Lloyd in Lpool with maiden Robinson were (guessing)
Rose 1929, Kenneth 1932,
Lpool S Christina 1936
Lpool S Francis J 1938
poss Lpool S Muriel 1943...
Someone in the Ogden's connected to Lloyd or Robinson?

Tina

Spreading the net widely to see if there's a link between the Ogdens and Lloyds, been trying to find a marriage for Clifford Ogden's mother and father without definite success. When her son was 3 years old she was a widow which matches the Harry Ogden death I found in Birkenhead March 1911.

There's a possibility that this is Martha's second marriage:
Marriages Sep 1913> Ogden, Martha E to Fitzgerald, Joseph R - Birkenhead - 8a - 1395.
We need Martha's maiden name from Clifford's birth cert to go down her line.

Because of the possibility that Peter's uncle took [or had taken by someone else] those Udine Cemetery photographs as a favour for rellies back home and there are so many 'ifs' and 'whys' to this I don't think we'll come across a link easily. There is a lot of background needed to be uncovered, like where and from what did 19 year old James Lloyd die 18 months after the end of WW2 and why weren't his remains repatriated for burial at home in the UK?

Dickiesam

Found this in the Army Roll of Honour 1939-1945. Thought it significant because the service # here is different to that posted by Peter and that on the CWGC site. Also worth noting that his regiment was the Royal Artillery 01/09/39 so is that when he enlisted? Would his service # have changed on promotion from 'other ranks'? Need military expert to advise.

According to CWGC Major Ogden was mentioned in despatches but can't find an obit or other item about him in the press. There should be something in the Wallasey/Birkenhead or Liverpool papers of early June 1945. Still looking...

Name: Clifford OGDEN
Branch at death: Other Corps, etc
Regiment, Corps etc.: Intelligence Corps
Branch at 01/09/39: Royal Artillery
Regiment, Corps etc.: Royal Artillery

Last name: Ogden
First name(s): Clifford
Initials: C N
Birthplace: Wallasey
Residence: Wallasey

Rank: Major
Number: 145834
Date died: 31 May 1945
Theatre of war: Italy

Dickiesam

Sorry my computer crashed and – worse - I lost my hard drive – with a week’s worth of un-backed up research on it, so I have been offline until now.

Many thanks for all this.

Some replies below:

Dickiesam

James died in November 1946, nearly 18 months after the end of hostilities in Europe. Major Clifford Ogden died 13th of May 1945, a couple of days after the end. Would be worth trying to find out where and how they died.

I have applied for their military records, but Udine Cemetery was used for a lot of burials from other places after the war and re-interred ones and for people who were too ill to be repatriated from local hospitals

If your uncle was related to James, did he go to visit the grave and while there take a photo of Clifford Ogden's grave as a favour to someone back home?

My uncle (called Hilary Hudson) was definitely “sort of” related to James. James was the son of my uncle’s step father, who is a Lloyd if you follow.

Hilary’s mother was a HUDSON, who lived in Birkehead for a while before eloping with my grandfather Lloyd, and this is where I think the Ogden link may lead, back to the Hudsons somehow. But I’m still not seeing it.

Otherwise, yes, I agree, he could have been someone he looked up to or was friendly with rather than related to.

(As an aside, Hilary actually married an Italian woman from Udine who we believe he met on his visit to the grave/s after the war.)

However, since only his parents are shown on the Commonwealth War Graves site, they would have been his immediate next-of-kin in military records I presume. If he had married, and was still married at death, his n-o-k would have been his wife.

That's an excellent observation. Thank you.


There is a lot of background needed to be uncovered, like where and from what did 19 year old James Lloyd die 18 months after the end of WW2 and why weren't his remains repatriated for burial at home in the UK?


I agree. It seems bizarre, and I look forward to (eventually) receiving his military records.


Tina:

Lpool S Christina 1936

This was the mother of James William Lloyd.

Re: Leonard Lloyd

Can I ask you sages for any suggestions as to how I would find the army number or military records of my grandfather Leonard Lloyd (b 1888 Chester), who led a colourful WW1 career (shot, blown up, gassed, stabbed, deserted, sentenced to be shot, reprieved, went back, ended up a corporal), but although he received a pension, after 10 years of looking I have been unable to find either his army number, his pension number, or even confirmation of which regiment/s he fought in (but I have seen a Norfolk Regiment medal of his, so I know he was with them for a time but the people there can do nothing without an army number).

Again I have applied for his military records, if they still exist, and they weren’t obliterated in the WW2 bombing, but I am not hopeful in the absence of my limited information and lack of regimental information or an army number!

Many thanks again,

Peter

Hi Peter,
Deepest sympathy over the computer crash! We have nearly all been there and done that.

To give us a chance of finding a possible link between the Ogdens and Lloyds I think you should get his birth cert. We don't know when his mother Martha married Harold but she was widowed between 1907 and 1910/12. The birth cert will tell us her maiden name and her father's name/occupation etc. It may also shed some light on Harold's strange forename, Olgent, in 1891.

Clifford Norman Ogden was born Birkenhead - 8a - 591 - Jun qtr 1907

There is also the possibility that the link dates from after Clifford's birth, perhaps through his mother's second marriage, if this is indeed her: Marriages Sep 1913> Ogden, Martha E to Fitzgerald, Joseph R - Birkenhead - 8a - 1395.

Have sent you a PM with some background to my thinking re this marriage..

Brian

EDIT! Give us some background.. dates & names to the Hudson/Lloyd "elopement". Did they marry? Or was she previously married and didn't divorce?

I have not read this thread in detail yet but can say that on commissioning, a soldier would be given a new number, known by 1939 as an officer's 'personal number'.
D

Background – A scandal for the time no doubt.

Hilda Fitzpatrick (b 1896) [my grandmother] lived at 21 Sackville Street, Liverpool, with her father, James Fitzpatrick, seemingly a rarity at the time – an Irish immigrant with some money.

He and his wife Annie and their numerous children all lived in Sackville Street for a long time before moving to 223 Hawthorne Road where I have them in the 1911 Census. James was a fruit and vegetable wholesaler, and seemed to be doing well.

In 1911 around the corner from Hawthorne Road, in 59 Stanley Road, I have one Harry David Hudson living with his grandparents who owned a shop (now a post office on the corner of Wadham Road), and working as a “shipbuilder’, but I suspect as an apprentice something or other (I have lost my 1911 census page), as James, Hilda’s father was something of a massive snob and wouldn’t have let her marry someone he didn’t think was good enough for her.

In the course of the next few years (date unknown as I have yet to embark on this bit; I only found out Harry Hudson’s full name last week), Harold married Hilda, and they repaired to the Wirral where family lore has them living a very comfortable life with servants and a big posh house.

Enter Leonard Lloyd. [my grandfather]

Len was born in Chester in 1888, and came from a long line of Lloyds going back to the Napoleonic wars, who lived in and around and ultimately died in the (still today) tiny hamlet of Oscroft, just outside Tarvin in Cheshire, where the graveyard has many Lloyd headstones in it.

They were all hard working labourers, or, later, manual workers, and seemed to have led tough agricultural working lives in overcrowded conditions in tied houses, with extended families, occasionally drifting within a 5 mile radius of Oscroft but never further and always returning.

I lost him in 1901, but by 1911 I have him married with two daughters (one bizarrely born in Scotland) and living with his extended family in Dee Street, Chester. He’s still a labourer.

We know later he worked as a gamekeeper (and poacher) in Upton Convent and he was a crack shot, and served as a sniper in WW1.

Now, we know he went off to fight in World War 1, and some time after returning, in some Lady Chatterly way, managed to meet Hilda, who would have been in a massively different social class to him.

Hilda already had four children of her own in her comfortable married life to Harry, but she threw it all away and they ran off together and moved to Liverpool, where she was totally ostracized by her apoplectic family (her father never spoke to her again), and they ended their lives in pretty miserable conditions to be honest.

Only hours ago I discovered in 1911 her father was a Councillor in Bootle Town hall, so clearly he would have been embarrassed by this (for the time) immoral and unladylike behavior, and in fact part of his outrage was because of the type of person she’d left her husband for!

Hilda and Len obviously never married, but they had my father, Wilfred Owen Lloyd, and other children, and she also brought the Hudson children to live with her, including the war grave-annotating Francis Hudson.

One of Leonard’s brothers, William Lloyd, was the father of James William Lloyd, who is now in Udine cemetery.

And in a weird circle of fate and Life, Hilary, visiting the graves in Udine, met an Italian woman called Pia, who he married.

When Hilary died, Pia gave us Hilary’s effects and in there we found the existence of James Lloyd’s grave (let alone his very existence) and the intriguing reference to Clifford Ogden.

And that’s how they all link up!

Hi Peter,
Thank you for the 'background'. A fair bit to bite into there. Considering the scandalous elopement happened a good few years before Lady Chatterly was written, it could have been the idea for the book. Not life imitating art but art imitating life for a change.

What a story! And the couple stuck together in circumstances vastly different from what Hilda was used to. Quite remarkable. Echoes of one of my Mum's sayings.. They made their bed and now they have to lie on it.

Looking forward to learning the content of a couple of certs at some stage, should you pursue this quest.

Dickiesam

Looking forward to learning the content of a couple of certs at some stage, should you pursue this quest.

Luckily I have pursued most of it already, up to 1911, but the period between 1911 and 1921 would be the most interesting re the elopement.

If you'd like any specific cert info let me know!

Hi Peter,
I think we need two certs to start..
1) Clifford Norman Ogden's birth: Birkenhead - 8a - 591 - Jun qtr 1907
and
2) Take a gamble and get this marriage cert.
Marriages Sep 1913> Ogden, Martha E to Fitzgerald, Joseph R - Birkenhead - 8a - 1395.
If the maiden names match we will have Martha's father's name & occupation. If she is the same Martha we can hopefully then find out who she is, siblings etc.

Brian

The marriage of Martha Ogden to Joseph Reginald Fitzgerald is on www.cheshirebmd.org.uk It is a civil marriage BUT no alternative surname for Martha is given so I would question whether it is the marriage of Martha Ogden widow.

It would be interesting to see if Martha is shown in the directory at this time.

Personally I would only get Clifford's birth certificate

Hilary
Ed Officer

Thanks. Any idea how I could best get this online? (I live in Thailand).

Many thanks,

Peter

Using the references given by Dickiesam, above, you can order the certificates online at http://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/

Hi all.

I lost this website link and only found it again recently. We have now sorted out the Clifford Ogden link, from relatives in the Wirral. He was a family friend, which is where my own researches had led me.

In the time I have been offline, a relative in Liverpool, who recently traced the grave of another WW2 uncle who was shot and killed as a POW in Poland, went out to visit the grave.

http://www.crosbyherald.co.uk/news/cros ... -27463598/

Thanks for all your help and comments on here. I hope to get to grips with some more family history in the coming months and will post anything else where I hit a brick wall - you have been warned!

Best wishes,

Peter