Liverpool & South West Lancashire FHS - Forum

Hello! I hope someone here will have local Liverpool knowledge that will help me. I have researched my own ancestors in other parts of the UK for many years but recently have been asked to do some research for a friend about a man who was a dockyard worker in Liverpool in the early twentieth century. Does anyone know where I can find employment records for Liverpool dockers? I also know that he was fatally injured at work and would like to find out the details but I have a ten year period to search within. Does anyone have any suggestions for searching for inquest records/newspaper accounts or anything like that over such a long period without dying of old age during the process? It's unfortunately a common name so ordering all the possible death certificate matches is not financially viable. Any suggestions would be gratefully received. Thanks very much for reading. RR

Welcome to the forum

You really need a date of death to then be able to look up newspaper reports etc. I presume your friend has some information such as the person's approximate date of birth and where they lived. Has he been found on the 1891, 1901 and 1911 census? If he's missing in 1911 is his wife listed as a widow? that would narrow down the search.

Again does your friend have marriage information on the person? Any children etc

Regarding Dockyard employment I think it weill depend on the job. If he was a dock labourer this was, I undestand, done on a fairly casual day to day basis and I doubt there are any records. Soemone will correct me if I'm wrong!

Give us more information and we will see if we can help.

Hilary
Ed Officer

Hi! Thanks for replying. I have a rough date of birth. I have found his marriage. I have found him, married, in the 1911 census. I have rough dates of birth for his children. Unfortunately this does not help with finding his death which happened after all these known events or with finding out more about his work. The only reason I can even narrow the death down to falling within a ten year period is because I know his widow re-married and I'm making the assumption (for now!) that she wasn't a bigamist. I think work records of some sort survive for the Royal Dockyards but maybe the non-royal ones are different, being civilian not military. I thought it was worth asking the question anyway. My friend thought he was a 'stevedore' - I agree that could well be a casual kind of job but I wondered if there would be pay records or something. Oh, well... Thanks, anyway!

I'm afraid that many of the films that portray the life of dock labourers, standing around waiting to be chosen for a day or even half day of work sometimes, are quite accurate, although if the occupation of "stevedore" was accurate then he may have been more regularly employed, however I believe some dock workers used this title more for status.

An obituary is what would be worth while looking for, but as Hilary says, you would need a definite death date to be able to check this in, probably, the LIverpool Echo.

Well, I think I'll put off reading 10 years of back copies of The Liverpool Echo for a very very very rainy day! Thanks for leaving me a message anyway!

There are no employment records as EO suggested But the records for the Mersey DOcks and Harbour Board are held at the Maritime archives. I have never accessed the minutes for these records so I can't say if there may be a mention of the accident. What is the name of the person you are looking for?

His name was John Howard. It seems to have been a not uncommon surname in the area. Thanks very much for mentioning The Mersey Docks and Harbour Board; I'll have a go at pursuing that line of enquiry.

Can you list the details you have found in the census ten years after 1901 please, then we can have a look in directories etc for you.

Cheers
Tina

That is a very kind offer. How do I insert a jpeg into a post?[/img]

To insert a picture in your post

If it is an image from the 1911 census that you are thinking of posting, might I suggest that you read about Look Ups and Copyright first of all.

Thanks - As you surmised, I didn't know I shouldn't share jpegs of the census. The info on it is:

John Howard aged 30, his wife Martha aged 26, two daughters - Barbara and Sarah Ann - aged 7 and 4 respectively and a son aged 7 months called John. They've been married for eight years and one other child has died. They were all born in Bootle. There is a widow in the house with no listed relationship and a different surname, possibly a lodger. The address is 72 Percy Street (4 rooms). This is the only match for a John and Martha Howard living in Liverpool searching within a ten year period around Martha's date of birth. He gives his occupation as Carter for an agent of some kind - it looks like 'Forcoardting Agent' but the handwriting is pretty messy. I don't think the carting would preclude him from working as a docker as well or taking that work up later. He lived at least 10 years after this and possibly twenty.

RR wrote: 'Forcoardting Agent' but the handwriting is pretty messy.

Could this be "Forwarding Agent". If you wished to ask an opinion on this, you could cut out a small portion of the census to show the writing and post this.

I don't think so, but judge for yourself if you like:

http://s1184.photobucket.com/albums/z340/reganra/

Thanks!

Hi,
Certain that census entry is indeed Forwarding Agent. The 'w' is written with an almost closed loop at the end. It has been written in later by the enumerator, presumably to categorise what sort of carter John Howard was. And it is written in the space for Employer. So he was a carter [delivery man] working for a company that took delivery of goods from a ship etc, and sent them on for delivery to the labelled recipients.

Looking for a clue as to John's death I checked for more children.
First his marriage.. This is the only one that fits the information supplied:
Marriages Jun 1903: Howard, John and Sutton, Martha - Liverpool - 8b - 120.

Then these are Howard nee Sutton births 1912 to 1925...
Births Sep 1912: Howard, Martha - [Sutton] - W.Derby - 8b - 495.
Births Dec 1914: Howard, Doris E - [Sutton] - W. Derby - 8b - 470.
Births Sep 1917: Howard, Amy L - [Sutton] - W. Derby - 8b - 517.
Births Mar 1919: Howard, William S - [Sutton] - W.Derby - 8b - 496.
Births Dec 1921: Howard, Dorothy - [Sutton] - W.Derby - 8b - 664.

Perhaps RR could confirm these births?

Then...
Looked for marriages for Martha Howard up to 1935 and found these two:
Marriages Dec 1932: Howard, Martha to Baxendale - W. Derby - 8b - 684.
Marriages Sep 1933: Howard, Martha to Bennion - W.Derby - 8b - 1161.

And finally...
The only John Howard deaths to fit with the above and in age were these two:
Deaths Sep 1928: Howard, John - 49 - W.Derby - 8b - 380.
Deaths Jun 1930: Howard, John - 49 - W. Derby - 8b - 453.

I believe the 1930 one to be the most probable?

Dickiesam

Would there have been a coroner's inquest if Mr Howard died as a result of injuries sustained at work rather than natural causes?

ZED wrote:Would there have been a coroner's inquest if Mr Howard died as a result of injuries sustained at work rather than natural causes?

From: http://www.plymouth.gov.uk/inquestguide2.pdf
An interesting document. Perhaps the URL should be included in the 'useful and informative' section?

"When does the Coroner have to hold an Inquest?
When a Coroner is informed that the body of a person (“the deceased’) is lying within his jurisdiction
and there is reasonable cause to suspect that the deceased:-
(a) has died a violent or unnatural death;
(b) has died a sudden death of which the cause is unknown, or
(c) has died in prison or in such a place or in such circumstances as to require an Inquest under any other Act".

DS

Dickiesam - thanks very much for the research. The marriage and children match the info I was given/have found out. The exception is Doris; I don't recognise her but maybe I have overlooked her; I'll check. The Baxendale 2nd marriage is the one I presumed was correct too. That was Martha's surname at death. Would you mind explaining how you narrowed down the deaths to just two? I mainly search on ancestry - and for this job I've been checking Lancashire BMD too - and even knowing the rough date of birth and the place of birth and the ten year period he must have died in, I get far more results than that. I realise I'm probably just being thick. I assume from your expertise with Victorian handwriting that you are a more experienced researcher than I.

Zed - yes I assume there would be a coroner's report somewhere. I'm hoping if I track down the death certificate that will indicate whether there was an inquest. Sometimes they were reported in local papers.

Down at the record office there is Coroners inquests held 347COR. With Dickiesam narrowing the date of death down to just two. You now only have to search in the Inquest register for.

July, August, September 1928
April, May, June 1930

Would you mind explaining how you narrowed down the deaths to just two?

Hi RR,
You had mentioned finding the family in 1911 but unfortunately omitted his age. I assumed he wasn't married in the 1901 otherwise you would have said so. I then found the 1903 marriage. The Free Index for 1911 gave me a probable confirmation of his YoB and a backtrack to 1901 found his YoB to be abt 1881..

The births of the children, which I had to assume for the time being were all to the Howard/Sutton marriage of John and Martha, with the last child being born in 1921, gave me a lower cut-off point to start looking for a death.

Using twisted logic for possible Martha Howard marriages, restricted to Liverpool, West Derby and Toxteth, having reckoned that with all those children she wasn't going very far to find a spouse, I used FreeBMD [between 1922 and 1935] and came up with just two.

Another assumption that I had probably found Martha's second marriage as one of those two gave me the higher cut-off point for the death search.

Based on the fact that John Howard would be abt 39 in 1920, about 49 in 1930 and therefore 52 at the later marriage year, I searched FreeBMD with the same Districts restriction as before for a death with a matching age between 1921 [the year the youngest child was born] and 1932 and found those two. Had the last child been born in say Sept qtr 1921 I would have searched from 1920.

You mentioned not knowing about Doris E bn in 1914. Sadly probably because of this:
Deaths Jun 1915> Howard, Doris E - 0 - W.Derby - 8b - 507.

Dickiesam

PS: FreeBMD @ http://freebmd.rootsweb.com/cgi/search.pl
It is so far complete only up to 1935 to 1945, varies with each of the 3 indexes.

Dickiesam - thanks for the explanation. If I understand you correctly, you are saying that there are only two possible matches if you limit the search to A. the districts of West Derby & Toxteth and B. the years 1922 - 1935. I was also searching from 1922 - 1932 but I had thought that I couldn't assume the district where the death (caused by an accident at work) was registered would necessarily be the one local to his home. I was looking in the whole Liverpool area. That's why I had a lot more results from my search. I guess the W. Derby ones you've found are a good place to start though - thanks again. I appreciate it.