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Well, there’s a unanimous verdict from the handwriting experts that it wasn’t the same person who signed the two marriage certificates, so it looks as though the coincidences regarding the two Alfred Popes were no more than that.

I’m very grateful to everyone who helped look into this and particularly to wilcoxon for your suggestions as to how best to check this out and for the research you did on the second Alfred.

Malcolm

Many thanks for your feedback about this.

The context is on another part of this site (John has provided the link above).  If the two Alfreds were the same person then it would have been bigamy.  Given the penalties they would be risking, I suppose it’s possible that someone would want to change their signature in this situation, but I’ve no idea whether this would have applied in the 1870s!

I can’t see any way proving that it was the same person, but it was worth having a look at these documents to see if they helped.

I don’t know whether anyone can help with this.

I’m trying to find out whether a man called Alfred Pope, who was married to a Martha Good in 1863, was same man who married my great aunt, Kate Dunstan, in 1877.  I have copies of the parish records for both marriages and, although the signatures aren’t the same, there are similarities.

I’ve attached a copy showing both and I’d be grateful for opinions as to the likelihood of this being the same person.  I can provide a link to the two documents if that helps.

Many thanks

Malcolm

Those do look possible but it would make him rather old, as you say.

In Findmypast there's a parish record of a John Pope, widower, who married Elizabeth Watson, spinster, on 29th January 1832 at Alverstoke, which is across the water from Portsea.

There’s a baptism record for an Elizabeth Watson on 3rd August 1796 in Portsea.  Parents David and Elizabeth.

There seem to be a lot of Popes in that area though!

The Gwent office says it has a copy of the parish registration of Alfred & Kate's marriage so I've ordered that and we can see if that helps at all (£12.25, so not too bad).

That's brilliant, thank you for looking all this up!  I knew Alfred had a sister because she was baptised at the same time as he was.  This is the extract from the record:

Pope, Emma – father: John – mother:  Elizabeth – baptism:  1841 Aug 15- comment: 5 years old – St. George’s Parish 

Pope, Alfred – father: John – mother:  Elizabeth – baptism: 1841 Aug 15- age 4 weeks old – St. George’s Parish

So she was born about 1836 and they hadn't quite got around to baptising her before.  I was just thinking today that I should follow this up, but my subscriptions are only for the UK and Ireland so I couldn't have traced them to the US anyway!

It can't be a coincidence that Charles and Alfred were both drapers.  Perhaps Alfred was working with Charles while he was learning the trade - you did find he was a visitor in London in 1861.