Family HiStory
Created | Updated Last Week
Family HiStory
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Once upon a time, a disabled Researcher was exploring a family history website. As well as finding information about their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents, they encountered a fellow disabled person. This disabled person had been living a relatively short distance away from the Researcher's current location, but was a hundred years away from the Researcher's current time period.
The family history website told a story. In the 1939 Register, which was a census taken in England at the start of the Second World War, Lillian was recorded as a 'cripple'1 in her 30s. She was living with her parents, plus two brothers, both plasterers. Her older brother Harry was a widower at the age of 40, and his twin children (aged 16) were also in the household - his son was a 'general labourer', and his daughter was in 'general domestic service'.
Rewinding to the 1921 Census, Lillian was living with her parents and more of her siblings - five sisters and two brothers. Harry had not yet married, but was working as a plasterer, while his 15-year-old brother was a plasterer's apprentice. Lillian's older sister was a 'checker' at Port Sunlight's margarine factory. Her younger sisters were at school full-time. Lilian herself was not disabled - she was working in a laundry.
Rewinding to the 1911 Census, the Researcher learned that Lilian had another brother, four years older than Harry. Lilian shared the household with her three brothers plus three sisters (her two youngest sisters were not yet born).
The Researcher then began to daydream, and wondered what happened next to Lillian after she became disabled (her disability was perhaps due to the physical nature of her work in the laundry). Perhaps her large family was able to support her financially, and care for her in the future beyond 1939. Or perhaps she joined a Guild, like the one in Leicester, where she could be looked after while working on less physically demanding tasks such as artificial flower making. Someone named Lillian was recorded as having died in 1962 in a place near Manchester - if that is the same Lillian, the records would suggest her family was disrupted during the war, but their disabled relative was cared for and sustained during that time. Lillian's story continues in records held in archives around England, in secure files that are not yet ready to be published.
