A little help from the otherside?

[Jo from Australia]

Maybe? Maybe not? But I MUST tell you about the weirdest thing! I have been doing my paternal grandmothers history for many years now and the little information I have is scarce and often plauged with white lies and the such. I found her mothers marriage cert finally a few years back and it listed her address as Custance Street in Shoreditch. It was early 1900's and it was a **** part of town. I spent a while looking for it and could not find it on any map - no matter what the age of the map. My hubby purchased London :A life in maps for christmas and low and behold in a chapter on "A Hoxton Childhood" there was a small excert from a 1920's map....there was custance street! I checked google maps and found that it is still there and thanks to statelite pictures I coudl see it! Now I ahve had this book for almost a year and read through it a number of times but never noticed the map on hoxton! Imagine my surprise with the little map showing only a few streets but happened to be the one I was after! :o) Happy surprise!

[pipsqueak]

Sometimes the answers are right under our noses - which is why it pays to keep going back and looking everything over. :)

[busyglen]

Really pleased for you Jo. It's really strange how things jump out and hit you at a later stage. As Pipsqueak says...it certainly pays to go over things more than once.

Glenys

[Jo from Australia]

I keep going over the death reg over and over again but still cant find the death for at least 6 of the ancestors! keep on lookin!

[Penny Gallo]

http://booth.lse.ac.uk/cgi-bin/do.pl?sub=search_catalogue_pages&arg0=Custance+Street&arg1=phrase shows that Custance Street was documented in the Charles Booth's survey of London, and there are several references. Unfortunately for the moment I don't think they have yet digitised Notebook "B44 pp197-202" which contains the details of the walk along Custance Street. It might be worth contacting the LSE site to see when this particular one will become available online. The descriptions are vivid, the walks made in company with local policemen on their beats who knew the ins and out of each district.

Perhaps the name "Custance Street" has recently been given to a new-build on the same site. It may have got bombed. It is not in my very detailed 1960 map, but does appear in an A-Z I bought this year. Good luck with your continuing search.

[AnnB]

I have found the following ref on the Booth site http://booth.lse.ac.uk/notebooks/b352/jpg/155.html which mentions Custance Street and its surroundings.........

Best wishes
Ann