Feeling... unproductive

 This really is something I should know about myself after forty-five years, but whenever I set time aside to do all the cool "this would be a great thing to do if I had some spare time at my disposal" things in my head, I never actually manage to do anything. But never mind! With perseverance and forgetting about the whole concept expressed in the first sentence there, I'm sure I'll eventually get all those things done!

Shocking family secrets exposed

A sequel to the previous post, in which I wondered who the Barbara Pridmore in the 1939 register might be. Well, the answer is simple and obvious enough, as it turns out.

Just to recap, May Foster married my great-uncle George Harry Pridmore in 1917, shortly before he was killed in the war. By June 1921, she was a boarding house keeper in the census. By the following year, it seems she'd had to give that up, because she had a daughter, Barbara, on July 29th, 1922.

I'm thinking the registrar is a little unreasonably judgmental here - in the box for 'Name, surname and maiden surname of mother' he's just put "May Pridmore, of no occupation". Too obsessed with those empty father's name and occupation boxes to put 'nee Foster', or 'noble widow of gallant officer tragically killed in His Majesty's service', I assume.

Anyway, what May did for the next decade I'm not sure - a boarding house might not have been possible - but she married one Leonard Elliott in 1934, and as seen in the previous post was living with him and Barbara and also May's younger brother Harry Foster in the 1939 register. There's another name blacked out there, who'll just have to remain the subject of curiosity for now.

Barbara then married a John Foster in 1943. He must have been a connection of May's, you would think, but doesn't seem to be a close relative; I've tried to follow their family lines back through the old censuses, and I can't see where the two Foster families join up.

Barbara gives her father's name as George Harry Pridmore on the marriage certificate. Which isn't technically correct, what with him having died four years before she was born, but never mind. John is a lance sergeant in the army, and they probably had at least one baby after the war, but it would take more research of a type that I really won't allow myself to spend the time and money on right now to be sure of it. Nor am I going to dive into investigating who the 'May Pridmore' who witnessed the wedding could be! Surely Barbara's mother was still going by the surname Elliott at that time?

Still, Barbara officially joins the ranks of 'honorary Pridmores', like Billy (John William) Pridmore, the son of Albert's widow Margaret! It's an uncommon surname, it's nice to see it get an infusion of new blood here and there!