Looking for Jessie Sheba Barnett grave... died in London 1936

[Josephine]

This is what the National Archives have on James, costs £3.30 to download. With those names it has to be the right man!!

Ancestry has:
Service No F17138 accountant
1st service date 20 Jan 1916 President II
last service date 31 Mar 1918 President II (Battersea)

It's on FindMyPast as well.

Next of kin is his wife Jessie at 12 Cathcart Rd., South Kensington, London. He was discharged from the Navy in 1920.

Best regards,
Josephine

[fairlane]

Using free search facility James Bentley Wellington Evans b.1883 is living in Wandsworth, London in 1939. In the same household is Edith Mary Bergin so if James & Jessie didn't divorce she wasn't free to marry anyone else.

[Josephine]

At any rate, finding her obit and/or funeral home record might help.

It's interesting that her son's biological father claimed him after her death. I wonder if the son was cared for by an agency/organization and if those records might be extant. What kind of documentation would have been required to ship a 15-year-old boy off to a presumed relative in Australia?

[lizdb]

Ah - I see. Son wasn't born till 1922.
So she had reverted to maiden name before then. Maybe when she went to Australia with another man.

[rosie99]

Phyllis F Barnett dies in 1951 aged 56

There isn't a Phyllis Frances Barnett in the birth index which might suggest an overseas birth or this is her married name, but there isn't a match for a marriage.

In case it's relevant there is a 6.6 year old (I presume it means 6 1/2) Phyllis Barnett coming from Sydney to England in 1902 travelling with a 30 year old Mrs Barnett. There is no information as to where they are going in England or their previous address

[lizdb]

Death

Sep 1958
Wandsworth
5d 541
James Bentley-Evans
age 74

So, if this is him, she was never widowed.

[Josephine]

It sounds like Jessie followed her married lover to Australia and then the man claimed the boy as his son after Jessie died.

Might she have taken the biological father to court in Australia for financial support of the son?

Stavros, have you checked this?

Just trying to think of the various places documentation might be found.

[Stavros]

Yes its rather confusing. We have the right address as amongst my late fathers papers was a small photograph with that address on the back. Also the British Red Cross archives have her a typist at  212 Euston Road  home address which is the same as she had for that marriage to Mr Evans.
The  "wife of ---Barnett Farm labourer"  could be her relationship to her sons father Major Melvyn Herbert who was a vigneron , distiller and orchardist.... hardly a labourer.
My Dad Laurence Michael Barnett had his mothers surname. His father on public records was only ever recorded as Uncle or guardian.

[Stavros]

Oral family history was that Laurence Michael Barnett was placed in an orphanage in 1936 on the death of his mother until his father Mervyn Herbert organised his passage home as quoted "leaves UK on 13 March 1937 returning to Adelaide. He is listed as a clerk. I would like to find records of where he was cared for although at 14 he would in 1936/37 no longer be treated as a child?

Sadly he also had TB and after serving briefly in Australian Army was medically discharged with TB but again from oral history was repatriated from Durban after serving on merchant ships. My trouble is that Dad was a storyteller and in fact a journalist for a time and since i was 16 when he died, its hard to work out fact from fiction!