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View Full Version : Help deciphering a Hamlet



Sue Mackay
18-12-2014, 3:45 PM
Could someone with access to the LMA marriages on Ancestry please have a look at the marriage of Thomas FILMER to Elizabeth WHITBREAD in 1802? It's not the clearest of copies, but they both appear to come from "this parish", ie St.Dunstan and All Saints, Stepney, and what looks like Hamlet Ralf. Can anyone either decipher it as somewhere else or tell me where Ralf is?

Megan Roberts
18-12-2014, 4:16 PM
It is definitely HAMLET, as on the bottom line she is a widow in the same hamlet. As to which hamlet ....

Sorry.

Sue Mackay
18-12-2014, 4:30 PM
I wonder now if it could be an abbreviation for Ratcliffe. The parish notes on Wikipedia end with "Hamlet of Ratcliff (or Ratcliffe) formed the remaining riverside portion of Stepney."

arthurk
18-12-2014, 4:42 PM
Ratcliff was what came to mind when I read your first message, and looking closely, I'm pretty sure it's a "t", with a crossing, rather than an "l". The same abbreviation is in the bottom entry on the opposite page, and given that several of the others refer the Hamlet of MEOT (= Mile End Old Town), I'm pretty confident that this is what it will be.

Arthur

Wilkes_ml
18-12-2014, 8:49 PM
I would take a guess at Ratcliff as well, as some of my ancestors come from Ratcliff....but I never knew it was classed as a hamlet, so I have learnt something new today!

richard40
19-12-2014, 9:11 AM
1802, quite early, Ratcliffe would probably be in it's transition period from Hamlet to becoming swallowed into Wapping, I had a gggrandmother born there in early 19th century, I believe before her birth they were classed as villages as they were outside London Wall, inside was London, outside was rural, Bethnall Green, Mile End, Bow, Stratford were all villages into the beginning of Victorian London when developement of those area began in earnest.