Over the last few weeks, many of our blogs have been about what we’ve been getting up to …. and over this time, we have been accruing many amusing finds for you from various documents we have been searching through. Now, on a warm but windy Wednesday, it’s time to share them, don’t you think?
Woof Gertrude was a servant in 1911 – you cannot be serious!? Well, apparently yes!! The names appear to have been transposed however, so she was probably Gertrude Woof but is that really any better? Aged 20, she was a servant for Thomas and John Elliott Braithwaite at 6 Hillside Road, Wallasey:
Woofing appears to be a continuous issue in 1911 with James Woof Cronshaw of 2 Aldwych Place, Brownill, Blackburn. Even his son is John Woof Cronshaw, though his birth registration in September quarter 1910 conceals this with ‘John W. Cronshaw‘:
Further Woofing occurs in Walton on the Hill at 511 Cherry Lane with Joseph Woof, a boiler maker with a steam ship company, heading up the family:
Ironically, we perhaps would have expected that these Woof name bearers were born out of this country, but NO! Frankly, Woofers are everywhere though there is a greater smattering of them in the north of England. In fact, there are 1,856 births, 1,269 marriages and 1,170 deaths for Woof in FreeBMD at the time of writing, and that’s just surnames!
The question is though: Woof is sooooo common, but no Miaows? Why?
