Soldier's Mother Lied About Her Age and Didn't Get the Telegram from the Queen!

[rolt968]

You find some odd things researching men commemorated on war memorials.

A soldier I am researching was adopted in the late 1880s ( he was illegitimate). His birth mother married in 1895. She died in 1965, aged 94.

She was actually 100 and three months,

She had knocked off three years when she married, possibly to make herself the same age as her husband. She seems to have lost a bit more in the next seventy years! ( I have seen quite a lot of this kind of thing over the years in some cases ladies (and not just ladies) reduced their ages by more each succeeding census!)

I have still to check the newspapers, but I think the lady in this case did not get her telegram from the queen.

RM

[sueburden]

It was not only the women.  My grandfather was 32 when he married my grandmother.  She was only 19 and 6 months pregnant.  His age on the wedding certificate was given as 28.   He also took four years off his age when he joined the Territorials a year later.

Sue