Those individuals who have been born in England or Wales with the name Bungle appear to have some variations in their surname and hence are multiply registered – Harry Bungle E. Deasey or Down or Deasey-Down, born June 2000 in Southend on Sea….. and Anton Bungle J. Aish or Hyde, August 1992 Solihull North.
Other Bungle characters have been sighted through time, including Charlie Bungle Smith, born 6 October 1883, whose World War I Draft Registration Card is indexed on Ancestry.com. Unfortunately, the transcriptions on many of the commercial sites are rife with a plethora of erroneous Bungles, causing one to stray from the correct Bungling path.
In December quarter 1840, Andrew Bungle Thompson died in London. Ages were not recorded in the GRO death indexes this early on, so he could have been an infant, teenager, adult or old age pensioner, for all we are able to find out from the index. It does seem awfully surprising that the word ‘bungle’ – meaning ‘to spoil (an operation) through clumsiness, incompetence, etc; botch’ according to the Collins English Dictionary – was used as a name so early in the nineteenth century!
