When 'Arry Met Lily

At a pre-Christmas gathering, my nephew Jack produced a postcard that he had found in an old book. It showed a house on one side, and the message "Looking forward to seeing you Arry, Lily" on the other.

Naturally we all rapidly reach for our supposed smart-phones and overburdened the image search tools with its ideas. The results were all turn of the century 1800/1900s somewhere in north London. But who was Harry, who was Lily?

Newly retired, the brain itch began to work on me and so I sought a more positive answer. Google street view lead me from the vague 'north London' to a more certain 48 Carlton Hill, NW8, built sometime after 1861. Yes, it may have been done virtually, but I essential roamed the streets of north London comparing house fronts of different number 48s.

Next I dove into the online records and for No.48 I found the following trail:

•1911 Census:
The house was owned by Theodore Westrik, an apparently successful Belgian sugar broker. This census record included a Lily Elms, 22, as a domestic servant. Could this be the Lily who wrote the message on the postcard?

•1921 Census:*
The house is still owned by Theodore Westrik, but the census only lists a caretaker and her husband as present. Mr. Westrick was listed as being at his country property (Prestwood Lodge, Great Missenden). But Lily is not listed on the staff at either property.

o*This is the last census currently available to the public. Censuses details are only made public after 100 years.

So now I searched further on potential Lily Elms in London of the early 1900s:

•Her birth details are given as 1889 in Walworth Surrey (maybe July 28 1888). No census lists the family in any property there, but birth and other details of her and her brother all appear in that area.

•Her father was Frank Elms. Her older brother was Frank Henry Elms. , so he may have been called Henry, one of the diminutive of which is ‘Arry.

•The Elms family are listed as living at 126 Sidmouth Road, Leyton, Essex (now 206 Dawlish Road due to WW2 damage to other houses in the street).

•On the 31st December 2011 she is listed as marrying Augustus Frank Sayers who lived at 128 Sidmouth Road - literally the boy next door. That would explain her leaving domestic service shrtly after having been listed on the staff of No.48 in April 2011.

•In 1924, Augustus and Lilian are listed as emigrating on The Beltana to Melbourne in Australia where Augustus died in 1963 and Lilian in 1968.

It was irking me that the best I could say as to whether I had followed the correct Lily Elms thread was 'maybe'. So I gave that brain itch a final scratch and can now confidently drop the 'maybe':

•2nd April 1911: Lily was working at 48 Carlton Hill for Theodore Westrik.

•31st December 1911: She married Augustus Sayers.

•End of 1912: Lily and Augustus have a son shown in the birth register as Ernest F.W. Sayers.

•1924: They emigrated to Melbourne, Australia.

•1953: On an Australian incoming passenger card, her son signed his full name as 'Ernest Frank Westrik Sayers'.

oSo finally a firm circular link in the evidence chain. It would appear that her former was held is high regard by the young couple as they included his name when christening their son.

Phew, this little house challenge highlighted all the difficulties of historical research: people misremembering dates - even their own birth years, computers text-recognition changing Ernest to Ellen, and history in general (boundaries change, houses are destroyed, things happen).