Gosh no - you're not taking over, you're being a brilliant help! I'm still finding my way round, and need all the help I can get.

Re the wait for certificates - their email acknowledgement of my order on the 7th Sept gave an estimated despatch date of the 30th. When that date came and went I checked on the website, and there was a notice saying that there was a huge demand causing long delays.

The 1911 census showing Frank gives his birthplace as Stafford, so the 1901 looks like the right one. I am certain that the birth of Ethel and marriage of Lilian and Frank are correct.

Jack sounds like a likely candidate to be Ethel's brother - it looks like she was the first born, and I thought it likely that there would have been others born before 1914, when presumably poor Frank went off to war. As Lilian was only about 35 when she married Thomas Snow, there could have been children to that marriage too.

I've sent an email to local history studies at Bromley library, in the hope that they can tell me whether "The Cyclists' Rest" (Ethel's residence at the time of marriage) was a pub, cafe or whatever. Of course, her step-father Thomas Snow might have been the landlord! (I think I'm going to have to get that marriage certificate too!)

Well, I've just received the marriage certificate of Lilian's second marriage to Thomas Snow, and instead of the 'Widow' I was expecting, it says she was 'formerly the wife of Frank Baker, from whom she obtained a divorce.' I always thought divorce was quite unusual for working class couples at that time.

Someone on a family history forum gave me a link to the National Archives, showing the divorce was 1925. I'm trying to get more details but I'm not sure exactly how it works - I've requested an estimate for a copy of the file, but don't know what that will include.

And I think I might have at last found Frank's death - now I know he wasn't dead by 1926 I looked further on, and it looks as if he might have died at the age of 74 in Stafford, where he was born.

I'm spending far too much time on this - I'm definitely obsessed!

Yeah it does get really interesting, Lynne (formerly TaffsMum) gave me the bug. Not done much with the info she got for me recently due to various scenarios but I will pick it up again when my brain isn't so tired!!!

Well done Janet. from what I can gather divorce was unusual because it was so expensive - especially for the working class.
Some of these family history forums have some amazingly clever people on them Which one are you on ? Roots Chat is brilliant if that's not the one you're on.

I'm just doing a bit more of mine at the moment seeing as it's lashing it down & I don't fancy going out in it.

Yes - no good trying to do it when your brain is tired tawneywolf -my poor little brain is spinning sometimes. And I've become so involved with it all that I keep forgetting I'm actually doing it on behalf of someone else and should be passing the information on to her!

Yes Lynne - Rootschat is the one I'm on. I've read through loads of the posts, and it's staggering how some of them can find information that other people have been searching for for years.

Teeming down here too. Got to go out though, if we want to eat tonight. Won't be taking the dogs far though!

Heard back from the National Archives with an estimate for the divorce file. Including postage, I've just forked out £24.75!

It had better make interesting reading!

Nobody said this was a cheap hobby. should be interesting though.

I'm looking forward to reading it and I'm sure I'll find it interesting.
My late father, though, would have been disgusted at me sending away to get someone's divorce file - he would say I was prying into someone else's affairs and it was none of my business. He used to have a wooden box full of private papers, and when he was very old he told me that he was going to destroy them because they were nothing to do with anyone else. After he died, I looked in the box and they were all gone! Old certificates and lots of papers and photographs that would have helped me such a lot in my research. Such a pity he had that attitude - he used to enjoy reminiscing about general things like sing-songs in the pub and charabanc trips to the seaside and so on, but anything personal and he would clam up, whether it was about his life or other peoples's.

Never mind - I'm slowly but surely building the story.