RootsChat.Com

Have a look at <www.didcotrailwaycentre.org.uk> .  They have a collection of historical GWR stuff including Victorian photographs, and should be able to suggest other sources.

I'm not sure how you might hope to distinguish a later 'copy' from a later 'original' by the same artist, as the manner of brushstrokes would be similar in both.  Is there any chance that the earlier version was itself a 'copy' ?

(I am not an artist but both my parents graduated from the RCA and my father was in art education)

The circumstances of the death, if correct, would have led to an inquest. For inquest deaths, the coroner is always the informant who instructs the registrar to register the death and that can't happen until after the inquest is concluded - historically that wouldn't usually mean much of a delay but now can be months (or occasionally years) later.

The registration will appear in the usual death register though - so perhaps the family story has got confused over the years ( or was invented in the first place).

I am inclined to believe the folklore, which came from my cousin to whom Charles was also a great-uncle, her mother having also grown up in Liverpool.  Charles appears in the 1901 census, unmarried, still living at home; also in the annual Liverpool trade directory until 1903 with the Lancs & Yorks Assurance, where he was a middle manager, as confirmed by the archivist at Aviva, the ultimate inheritors of the L&Y.

Of course there are all kinds of possible explanations, such as emigration, change of name, inaccurate transcription, etc., but I would have thought some kind of death record might be found, in later years if not then ?

Don't forget that the early 1930s were the Depression years, so perhaps they decided that they just couldn't afford to marry.  I don't know when my parents became engaged, but they became 'an item' in about 1927, but didn't marry until 10 years later.  A large part of that was because my father damaged his spine in 1931 and spent 18 months in hospital, but I think waiting to marry was a common occurrence.

Thank you, I'll go for Dressmaker

It isn't that easy to make out, but it's much harder to make it read anything else !