Joseph Barnett

[gallicrow]

In the 1911 census, Joseph Barnett is living at 60 Red Lion Street, Shadwell:


There is no sign of his wife, but it says he has been married 23 years, which of course would mean that he married in 1887/88. Was he described as a married man at Mary Jane Kelly's inquest?

I think I've found Barnett's wife nearby as a patient at the St George in the East Workhouse Infirmary:


Note that the number of years married and lack of children matches the details for Joseph. The "nil" is for occupation.

The only marriage that looked like a possible match was one between Joseph Barnett and Louise Rowe that was registered in Hackney in Q3 1887.

[Debra A]

Hi gallicrow
Well spotted. There are a few old threads here and on JTR Forums covering research on this question that may help you.
Barnett 1911 on Casebook
Barnett 1911 JTR Forums
To save you going down the same road- the marriage to Louisa Rowe was definitely ruled out as researchers found the marriage certificate showed it was for a musician named Joseph Barnett with nothing in common with our JB. But the Louisa (probable wife of 'our' JB) in the SGE Infirmary in 1911 still hasn't been identified, nor the marriage found.
Debs

[gallicrow]

Thanks very much Debra, those threads are very useful.

I still haven't worked out the maiden name of Barnett's mother. With five children to check it ought to be a doddle, but it's beginning to look like at least some of their births were not registered, or registered under alternative names or spellings that I haven't found yet.

On the Casebook main for Barnett, it says that his mother, Catherine, abandoned the family in 1864 or so. Do you happen to know why it is assumed that she abandoned the family rather than died? There are a couple of likely suspects for her death around that time.

[Debra A]

Thanks very much Debra, those threads are very useful.

I still haven't worked out the maiden name of Barnett's mother. With five children to check it ought to be a doddle, but it's beginning to look like at least some of their births were not registered, or registered under alternative names or spellings that I haven't found yet.

On the Casebook main for Barnett, it says that his mother, Catherine, abandoned the family in 1864 or so. Do you happen to know why it is assumed that she abandoned the family rather than died? There are a couple of likely suspects for her death around that time.

Well spotted again, gallicrow. There is definitely a lot of confusion in the primary source records about the actual surname of Joseph's mother. Using a combination of the statutory birth records giving the mother's maiden name and also the London Roman Catholic baptism records, I found that her surname was apparently O'Brien/Brien/Brian/Bryan, sometime Shanahan(and variant spellings) and also the surname Hayes appears on Joseph Barnett's birth certificate but could be a simple mix up made because one of Joseph's godparents at his baptism was named Hayes.

The idea that Catherine Barnett abandoned her children is an old, outdated one. Chris Scott found that Catherine actually married the man named Allman whose house she was listed at in the 1881 census as housekeeper. I found that the Allman family appear in some of the Catholic baptism records of the extended Barnett family and there are other clues from the Catholic records hinting Catherine was still around

When the new A to Z is published, a lot of this kind of information will be brought bang up to date!

Debs

[gallicrow]

Hi Debra.

Thanks for the information about Joseph's mother. I found the O'Brian / Brian surnames for some of the Barnett siblings in the GRO index of births but was thrown by the apparent mother's maiden name of Hayes for Joseph himself. It's amazing the mistakes that occur in the records!

The comments by Chris Scott on this thread suggest that he thought (in 2013) that Louisa Rowe (or rather Agnes Louisa Rowe) was the same woman who married the fish porter Joseph Barnett and was in the infirmary in 1911:
https://www.jtrforums.com/forum/pers...1-census/page3

Chris mentions elsewhere that he had ordered the marriage certificate for Joseph Barnett and Louise Rowe from 1887, but I can't find any posts that say he received it or what it contained.

[Debra A]

Hi Debra.

Thanks for the information about Joseph's mother. I found the O'Brian / Brian surnames for some of the Barnett siblings in the GRO index of births but was thrown by the apparent mother's maiden name of Hayes for Joseph himself. It's amazing the mistakes that occur in the records!

The comments by Chris Scott on this thread suggest that he thought (in 2013) that Louisa Rowe (or rather Agnes Louisa Rowe) was the same woman who married the fish porter Joseph Barnett and was in the infirmary in 1911:
https://www.jtrforums.com/forum/pers...1-census/page3

Chris mentions elsewhere that he had ordered the marriage certificate for Joseph Barnett and Louise Rowe from 1887, but I can't find any posts that say he received it or what it contained.

The marriage certificate and some discussion appears on this thread gallicrow:

https://forum.casebook.org/forum/rip...w-issues/page4

The marriage was between Joseph Barnett and Louise Rowe.

[MrBarnett]

Hi Gallicrow/Debs,

It’s great to see someone new to the field (or at least to Casebook) getting stuck into independent research. Over the years a lot has been discovered that isn’t easily accessible unless you know where to look. Hopefully the new A-Z will bring a lot of material from disparate sources together (they’ve been working on it long enough;-))

Keep plugging away, Gallicrow, I’m sure there’s still lots of interesting stuff to find out there.

Gary

[gallicrow]

Thanks Gary. I must admit I find searching the casebook and jtr forums trickier than the 19th century records! The inclusion of the mother's maiden name in the GRO birth records and the age at death in the death records (both of which became available fairly recently) has made this sort of job much easier than it used to be.

[MrBarnett]

Thanks Gary. I must admit I find searching the casebook and jtr forums trickier than the 19th century records! The inclusion of the mother's maiden name in the GRO birth records and the age at death in the death records (both of which became available fairly recently) has made this sort of job much easier than it used to be.

I often find it hard to track down my own posts on the boards. And it’s easy to forget exactly what you have posted on a particular subject.

The Catholic records Debs mentioned are full of interesting nuggets. A number of the people involved in the case were of Irish Catholic descent and used St. Mary and St. Michael’s in the Commercial Road for weddings and baptisms. There was also a Catholic census in 1893 that has some very interesting entries.

Personally, I can’t wait for the 1921 census to become available early next year. That may tie up a few loose ends.

[Debra A]

I often find it hard to track down my own posts on the boards. And it’s easy to forget exactly what you have posted on a particular subject.

The Catholic records Debs mentioned are full of interesting nuggets. A number of the people involved in the case were of Irish Catholic descent and used St. Mary and St. Michael’s in the Commercial Road for weddings and baptisms. There was also a Catholic census in 1893 that has some very interesting entries.

Personally, I can’t wait for the 1921 census to become available early next year. That may tie up a few loose ends.

Me too. Not to mention forgetting what my conclusions were the last time I trawled a certain archive and having to perform the same task again six months later, looking for the same information. Bloody amateur!

[gallicrow]

I guess the 1921 census will be the last one many of us will see - the 1931 census records were destroyed during WW2 (*) and the government seemed to be too busy doing other things in 1941.
(*) I wish we could blame the Germans, but I think it was a fire that was started accidentally!

[MrBarnett]

Me too. Not to mention forgetting what my conclusions were the last time I trawled a certain archive and having to perform the same task again six months later, looking for the same information. Bloody amateur!

Only today I remembered a timeline thing I’d done about the Old Red Lion but struggled to find it until I remembered the name ‘Blinkhorn’ to search by. For a man who has trouble remembering his handful of online passwords, that was quite a feat.

[MrBarnett]

I guess the 1921 census will be the last one many of us will see - the 1931 census records were destroyed during WW2 (*) and the government seemed to be too busy doing other things in 1941.
(*) I wish we could blame the Germans, but I think it was a fire that was started accidentally!

Fortunately we have the 1939 Register which sort of bridges the gap. That may sound too late to have any relevance to the Whitechapel Murders, but I looked at it just a few weeks back to check the occupations of various members of the Lechmere family.

[gallicrow]

Regarding Joseph Barnett's mother, Catherine, who may have had the surname Bryan or O'Bryan - as Debra mentioned above, Catherine appears to have worked as a servant in the household of Thomas Allman for a while after the death of her husband and may have ended up marrying him in 1885 (the entry in the freebmd has the bride's name as "Katherine Barnetto"). However I think that Catherine died later in 1885.

Anyway, Thomas Allman married again (for at least the third time!) in 1891 to someone called Mary Leary. Mary was a widow, born in Ireland around 1845, and her original name was Mary Bryan!

I can't help wondering if Catherine and Mary were related. There's probably too large a difference in ages for them to have been sisters.

There was a photo on ancestry of Joseph Barnett's sister, Catherine (1853-1911) on a family tree of someone who appears to be directly related to the Barnetts. I copied it and attached to the tree I've been constructing on Family Search:
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/pe...tails/G85X-FQC
Unlike ancestry, Family Search is completely free and you don't even have to become a Mormon to use it.

[Losmandris]

This is really interesting. Could have been possible that Barnett was married in 1888? That he was seeing MJK on the side, as it were? Unlikely I presume but the census entry does make you wonder??