Читать книгу Collins Tracing Your Family History - Ryan Tubridy, Anthony Adolph - Страница 99

We knew George became a postman. Postmen’s records are at the Post Office Archives (see here) and the pension records showed only one likely candidate, whose pension started in 1919. His application told us he had joined the Royal Mail in 1899 and had served with ‘diligence and fidelity’. His date of birth was stated to be 22 June 1855, a year later than the age suggested on the marriage record. But even with this new information, a record of the birth was still not to be found.

We therefore tried his army records, finding his service papers in TNA, in class WO 97. These told us masses about George, including that he was 5’ 8" tall with a chest measuring 31/4’ and that he had a sallow complexion, brown hair, brown eyes, a good physique and a pulse of 64 beats per minute. We learned of his travels to India and South Africa, and back, the diseases he had suffered there: like most soldiers, he caught both hepatitis and syphilis, but he continued to serve. In the end he was posted back to England, to Canterbury, not far from the Royal Dragoons pub on the appropriately named Military Road. He later suffered a riding accident while serving in Ireland, leaving the army there in 1898; his conduct had been ‘exemplary’ and ‘temperate’, which means he did not drink too heavily. For the record, his death certificate shows that he died of pneumonia and a fractured bone on 18 November 1939, aged 84, at 41 Elswick Row, Newcastle.