This week, I stumbled across the Old Mersey Times website. What an absolute treasure! From The Genealogist’s Lament to missing people, divorce, bigamy, bankruptcy and a whole host of other information, for anyone with Merseyside ancestors this is a ‘must’.
Personally, I do not (as yet) have any forebears who stumbled into Lancashire, let alone to Liverpool. However, that does not stop me from delving into the site to find some fascinating nuggets of history. Who knows…. name bearers from my one-name study might suddenly appear! Other people’s names certainly do!
The WW1 Memorial at Toxteth Park for example, has been fully photographed with several Guild registered names including Prentice, Worthington and Gribble. The first miner’s VC is reported in the Liverpool Mercury in 1908, the award being made to Francis Chandler – ‘a typical Yorkshire miner, grey bearded and approaching 60 yrs of age’.
The marriages are separated by year, again transcribed from the Liverpool Mercury. In 1913, a Wyatt/Millington marriage is noted with Elizabeth Millington being the ‘3rd dau of the late Francis and Mrs Sarah Millington of Borough Road, Birkenhead.’ So much information can be gleaned from just these two lines…..
The executions at Kirkdale Jail entries make fascinating but often harrowing reading with Elizabeth, wife of Arthur Shaw, a tailor, being murdered by strangulation in 1884 due to her ‘drunkenness and neglect of home duties which aggravated him.’ Arthur was hanged on 8 December 1884.
Sadly – you know you were wishing it too – the site isn’t surname indexed. But that does not detract from the wealth of information provided for free on this site.
