Can anyone help solve a many generation old family riddle please?
I have an ancestor- Henry Mottlee- who allegedly worked in India as a medic of some sort.
Henry was born in Westminster in 1839. His father died in 1850 and mother in 1854- both of consumption.
Henry disappears after the 1851 census where he appears with his mother, and does not re-appear until 1873 when he marries in Hackney to Elizabeth Anna Griffin.
Henry and Elizabeth have a family over the next few years, and in 1887 they emigrate to Australia.
Family legend has it that Henry worked in India at some time, and older relatives remember him having a 'doctors bag with all the bottles and jars of curatives', and I have discovered a letter in the Sydney Town Clerk files in Australia mentioning the government there contacting him in 1906 to seek his advice on plague management as he was'the most qualified man in the country on this topic, having worked for the Indian government as an advisor on plague management'.
His Australian death certificate in 1921 lists his occupation as a medical specialist (informant was grandson) and yet there is no mention anywhere else of him being a doctor or anything similar- his occupations on all other documents list him as a stationer, newspaper editor and bootmaker!!
I checked THakers on Ancestry- but I dont think the dates suit when Henry might have been there.
Does anyone know anything more about Brits working in India in the later 1800's that can shed some light or point me in the right direction- I have no idea how to solve this riddle- but would really love to!!
KYlie B
