Dead mans ticket?

[Guest dorsetbaby]

I know someone who is wondering what this is. Can someone please explain it for me. Here is what she says about it.

Does anyone know anything about this.I could really do with some help. My Father was supposed to have joined the Army on a dead mans ticket according to what my mother told me when i was a child. We always believed he was born in 1902 and that he ran away to join the Army about 1917 as a Bugle Boy. Mum said that he was too young at the time as he was about 12 or 13 and he had to be 15. This means that he must have been born later than 1902 but taken someone else's birthdate of 1902. I'd like to know the meaning of this Dead Mans Ticket and how my father would have come by it . Does it mean literally what it says.? Also when he came out of the Army in 1934 he still took the date of birth as 1902, as that is on his marriage certificate. I was wondering if once you did this you were not able to go back to your original date of birth.

thank you reading this.

[Melui]

I know someone who is wondering what this is. Can someone please explain it for me. Here is what she says about it.

Does anyone know anything about this.I could really do with some help. My Father was supposed to have joined the Army on a dead mans ticket according to what my mother told me when i was a child. We always believed he was born in 1902 and that he ran away to join the Army about 1917 as a Bugle Boy. Mum said that he was too young at the time as he was about 12 or 13 and he had to be 15. This means that he must have been born later than 1902 but taken someone else's birthdate of 1902. I'd like to know the meaning of this Dead Mans Ticket and how my father would have come by it . Does it mean literally what it says.? Also when he came out of the Army in 1934 he still took the date of birth as 1902, as that is on his marriage certificate. I was wondering if once you did this you were not able to go back to your original date of birth.

thank you reading this.

Have you looked into making a family tree for your father? A lot can be done on the 'Net, or in County Libraries, using a blend of GRO birth, marriage and death indexes and Census material (roll on 1912 and the availability of f the 1911 Census). If you know names of your father's brothers and sisters and of his parents as well, it shouldn't be too difficult to ascertain whether or not he was born in 1902. You might have to buy a few certificates to be sure, but you should start with the FreeBMD website, which has a phenomenal amount of data up to 1910; although not everything has been transcribed up to that year yet, you can see from bar charts which years have large gaps in the data on-line. Failing that, if you can't get to a suitable library, there are websites where you can subscribe to access the GRO Indexes.

I don't know anything about Dead Mens' Tickets, but you should be able to work out much of your family history to discover the truth, even if his surname was Smith. The biggest problem would be if your father took on a whole new identity and you didn't know of any of his close family members.

Marion