Charles Hodgetts Cooke

[Megan Roberts]

A friend of mine asked me to help her find her grandfather who she knows nothing about. He was called Charles Hodgetts Cooke.

What I can't find is any record of a marriage to her grandmother Rosalie Bagley, who was born in 1898.

I think that Charles was married to someone else and never divorced.

There is only one birth registered in England & Wales with that combination of names, and that was in 1874 in Worcester, and he was the son of John Thomas Cooke and Amelia. Charles Hodgetts Cooke was a coach painter and seems to have married twice. Firstly to Alice Mary Grimley in Droitwich in 1894, and then in 1897 at Blackburn to Mary Elizabeth Pickering, describing himself as a widower.

Mary Elizabeth Cooke died in 1945, and my friends mother was born in 1926. In 1911 Mary describes herself as head of the house and as married.

I won't give locations because they moved around like yo yos.

So can anyone find a marriage between Charles and Rosalie? All the children's births were registered under Cooke with Bagley as the maiden name.

A second question that is puzzling me is that my friends mother, and siblings were put into Catholic orphanages / homes around about 1930. The two girls were in Nottingham and the son was in West Derby. Apparently their mother visited them frequently.

Rosalie was baptised in Minehead Anglican Church and as far as I can tell Charles was also Anglican. So why would they become Catholics, which is what happened?

Any thoughts would be most gratefully received.

[Lesley Robertson]

Is there nothing in the 1939?

Is it possible that the Catholic orphanages were the only ones that had spaces if it was a sudden need for space? Did Caharles die suddenly?

[Megan Roberts]

1939 - I've found nothing for Charles. My friend has the impression that he died around the time they went into the orphanages. However, I am a little wary because she has so little information. I think I have found Rosalie living in Nottingham as the DoB matches, and in that she is on her own and described as single...

[Lesley Robertson]

Has the family contacts from that time in the New World? A member of a family in my OPS vanished from the area and was not found until someone in Canada emailed to say that she’d found a grave for someone from Whitsome, and was it useful? Turned out he’d gone over to see his sister and had a fall. Since he was already WW1 ag. Lab., I had never even considered an overseas holiday,

[Megan Roberts]

No I have never heard them mention any.

[grisel]

There is a death June Q 1931 Basford, Charles Hodgetts Cooke age 56.

[helachau]

Electoral Registers (FMP)
2260 R - Cooke, Charles Hodgetts, Homemead, Wimborne Road, Poole
2261 Rw - Cooke, Rosalie, Homemead, Wimborne Road, Poole

[Megan Roberts]

There is a death June Q 1931 Basford, Charles Hodgetts Cooke age 56.

Grisel

Thank you very much for this. I had previously found that death, and thought it likely, but the index on FreeBMD and FindmyPast only have Charles H.

I have just checked with the GRO site, and they have Charles Hodgetts Cooke, so mystery solved,

[Megan Roberts]

Electoral Registers (FMP)
2260 R - Cooke, Charles Hodgetts, Homemead, Wimborne Road, Poole
2261 Rw - Cooke, Rosalie, Homemead, Wimborne Road, Poole

I knew that they were in Poole up to 1928/29, because that is where their children were born.

Thanks for this.

[Megan Roberts]

I been having a look on Ancestry, and came across a tree that has Charles Hodgetts Cooke's death certificate attached to it.

"R. Cooke, widow" registered the death, and then about 4 or 5 months later she went and made a statutory declaration to the effect that she wasn't a widow and her name was Rosalie Bagley.

So I wonder whether in her grief she had an attack of conscience and unable to cope with 3 infants turned to the church for support.