Apologies for my long absence and thanks for resurrecting this thread.
I have my Joseph's army record. He joined up in 1813 at the (declared) age of 19, which gives a birth date of c 1794 and was discharged in 1823. He served all of his time in India and the UK. He did not go to the West Indies or West Africa.
He married Elizabeth Beckwith in 1820 in Calcutta. Their marriage entry is silent as to the parentage of them both. Their children, from the IGI, are Charles, born Berhampore 1821 and Amelia b 1822, who I suspect subsequently died.
If we start to look at Robert and Henry being their sons as well, logic intervenes, as well as the fact that Robert gave his father as Edward when he married, and Henry's marriage entry is silent as to his father.
When Joseph returned to England at the end of his army service, he brought Elizabeth with her, but judging by the Leicester Chronicle entry, he abandoned her and took up with another woman, with whom he had children, including, I believe, the second Amelia.
I cannot find a death for Joseph and what looks like the obvious entry is in fact the death of a child. The St Margaret's and St Leonard's parishes of Leicester were crawling with Bodycotes of various spellings and there was certainly more than one Joseph.
Elizabeth appears on the census in menial occupations through the years, and dies in the workhouse in 1884. The story in one line of the family is that she was actually Indian and had never even had to dress herself before she came to the UK.
I am still unsure of the parentage of Joseph, his relationship if any to Robert and Henry and the relationship between the him and the various people who shared his roof in the 1840s and 50s.
