Sparrowhawks in London

There are strange things done in the midnight sun Bethnal Green!

Ancestry just updated their version of the 1911 census adding 926 images for Bethnal Green, North East, District 25.

At random, I looked at image 116 and spotted the name Sparrowhawk. Unusual, perhaps not so much for London's East End.

Rosina Rose is head of household, married (not widowed), age 31, married 15 years, four children and four living.

Below on the form is 53-year-old person Victoria McLachlan, identified as mother, and four Rose children 12 to 5 years of age.

Below that, in different handwriting, is a 4-month-old child, Alfred Sparrowhawk Rose who would be the fifth. GRO records show Alfred William Sparrowhawk Rose birth registered in the first quarter of 1911 with mother's maiden name Ethera. There is no surname Ethera in the whole BMD index!

While you can't believe everything on the census in this case it was accurate in as much as there were four children "born alive to the present marriage". Someone read the column heading carefully, something I didn't at first. There's a baptism for an Alfred William Sparrowhawk on Christmas Day 1910 to parents Alfred and Rosina who were not married.

The last entry on the census form, also in the same different handwriting, is Alfred Sparrowhawk a 35-year-old boarder.

What about Rose's husband? Rosina Heather married Frederick William Rose in Islington in the 3rd quarter of 1891, According to an Ancestry compiled genealogy they both survived to the 1940s.