I don't know if this is in the right place, but to my family Nellie was a black sheep. Let me explain -

Frederick Edward Woods, born Colchester 1870 and Nellie (Ellen) Kerney/Carney, born Pancras 1869 were married on 7th March 1891 at Clapham, a few weeks before the census. On census night they were living with the Carney family (RG12; 422; 94; 5).

In 1901 Nellie claims she is a ‘widow’, a laundress born in Hampstead, boarding in Battersea (Wandsworth) with the Smith family. Her son Frank E. has been entered as Smith because of mistakes on the sheet, ditto marks etc.), born 1898 in Westminster (RG13; 443; 25; 5).

In 1911 Nellie and 13 year old Frank are living with her father, Patrick Carney. She claims she is ‘Married Husband abroad’ (RG14PN2196 RG78PN75 RD26 SD2 ED8 SN11).

I couldn’t find a trace of a death for Frederick Edward Woods, and I couldn’t find him going abroad – BUT in a list of ‘Divorces and Matrimonial Causes’ I found this: J77/622/18998 Woods (Frederick Edward) v. W. (Nellie) & Silverman. This was in September 1897, and I believe Frank Edward Woods was born in Lambeth (not Westminster), in the last quarter of 1897. What had Nellie been up to?

A trip to the National Archives to see this document revealed that after their marriage the couple ‘lived and cohabited’ at Johannesburg in South Africa and at Colchester, and that they had two children, Frederick John Woods born 16th March 1892 and Walter James Woods born 1st May 1894.

All was not rosy, however, and in 1897 Nellie committed adultery (on several occasions) with the otherwise-unidentified Silverman at the Oxford and Reading Hotel, Bishops Road, Paddington. Frederick filed for divorce only five days after the last liaison. It sounds like a put-up job, but Frederick had to swear that there was no collusion or connivance with Nellie. Frederick was granted custody of the two boys, but at the end of the Decree Nisi, 19th April 1898 is a handwritten addendum: ‘Liberty to apply as to custody of child born since date of Petition’ [meaning Frank]. Nellie obviously retained custody of Frank. The Decree Absolute was on 31st October 1898.

The information that Frederick and Nellie had lived in Johannesburg was a surprise. I can find no trace of the boys’ births on FreeBMD, so perhaps they were born in South Africa. I can’t find them on the 1911 census either. Frederick himself seems to disappear, and I can only conclude that he continued to travel.

There seems to have been only one Frederick Edward Woods born in Colchester in 1870, and he was said to be a baker, both on his marriage certificate and on the 1891 census, and in both cases the word is quite clear. (On FreeBMD he is shown as Frederick Edward G Woods, the G probably being for Garnett, his mother’s maiden name, which was also given to one of his sisters.) There are two entries on Ancestry that might show him travelling from Durban to England – one in 1917 with his name in full and described as a ‘Merchant’, and the other in 1925, just Frederick E Woods, ‘Retired’ with the address ‘c/o National Bank of S(outh) A(frica) London Wall’. Both of these men, by the ages given, were born in 1870. Do you think it likely that a chap who started out as a baker could end up in banking?

I am not related to this couple in any way. I am just interested, because Nellie Woods is supposed to have become the second wife of my great grandfather, Frederick George Ford (1859-1942), whose first wife, Emily Georgina, died in 1919. I don’t know when Nellie came on the scene, but she was disliked by my grandfather and his siblings because they thought their father shouldn’t have remarried. The joke is that I can find no evidence of a marriage at all.