Peter Alan Weston Stevens - At a loss

[AndreaWil]

Have you considered telephoning the cemetery administration office to inquire whether anyone relevant is buried with or near Henrietta?

That is a good idea! I'll do that now.

Thank you 

[AndreaWil]

So Peter isn't in the grave with his mother but someone else (whose name I don't recognise) is buried there - albeit it was a much earlier burial.  They are sending me the details and have confirmed that I can visit their offices to find out who originally bought the plot.  With any luck there is something connecting this to Peter's father which might shed some light on things.

Thanks again for the very helpful suggestion!

[AndreaWil]

Hi again,

I've now had the Letters of Administration through but there is no more information provided there than is already available on the probate calendar i.e. that he died in Tripoli at a place unknown.

This is deeply disappointing but not entirely surprising.  Does anyone know if there ought to have been some additional records available at the time of the grant of administration which might indicate how the U.K. gov't knew he was dead?

I'm still going through the gazette but so far there are no notices at all - i've covered all of 1951, 1948 - halfway through 1950.

Does anyone have any other suggestions?

THanks,
Andrea

[CaroleW]

As a solicitor handled the administration they would only be required to satisfy the registrar that Peter was dead.  Once satisfied, details of any documentation provided would not need to be reflected in the grant of admin nor would details of the whereabouts of his assets. 

That type of info would be held by the solicitor or possibly the tax office if there was a requirement at that time to register those assets.   

[zenobia37]

Hi Andrea,

it appears that when Allied control of Tripoli ended in 1951, the relevant papers held by the British Consulate there were returned to the UK and are now held at the National Archives. looking at their website, it seems this might include death certificates and given that your relative was a British citizen, I wonder if there might be something in there about him.

Have a look at the link below - I can't be sure but it might be worth visiting to have a look at them, or seeing if they offer a search service.

Hope this helps and you track him down in the end!

https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C7475

Best of luck,
Zen

p.s. it looks like he wasn't a diplomat; there is an FCO book online listing them all through that period and I can't see his name in that.

[AndreaWil]

Thank you both!

I'll get myself down to the archives over the next few weeks.

I still haven't given up trying to find anyone who might hold more records around the probate as I still can't work out how they knew he had died.

I've also now tracked down some Tripoli street maps from that era so i'm going to take a look at them and see if there is any clue about what he was doing there based on the address provided.

[AndreaWil]

Hi again,

It's been a while since I posted about my brick wall but I have now made some progress.  I had not been able to request service records previously because I have no death certificate but today I went to Rootstech (they're there doing service record requests in 3 hours) and were happy to use the probate records in lieu of the death cert. Anyway, they did a quick check first across MoD and RAF and found him in the Army. 

I've now discovered that he served in 2nd Lothians and Border Horse from Nov 1942 to Jan 1946 and then went on to the British Army of the Rhine.  He left the army in Feb 1947 so unfortunately I still have no idea how he came to be in Tripoli or what happened to him.

Also, the GRO have no record of his death at all.

Does anyone have experience trying to get hold of court judgements as at some point there was a declaration of presumed death (the Army were informed of his death in April 1950 which predates the probate notices by 1 year). 

In addition, since he was only 14 when his mother died and he was illegitimate would there have been any legal involvement?

[chempat]

I've now discovered that he served in 2nd Lothians and Border Horse from Nov 1942 to Jan 1946 and then went on to the British Army of the Rhine.  He left the army in Feb 1947 so unfortunately I still have no idea how he came to be in Tripoli or what happened to him.

Do you mean that he did not join until 1942, or that he joined in  1939, was not overseas until 1942,  so is not on 1939 register?

If he did not join until later, would it be helpful to know where he was in 1939 - who was he living with?

[AndreaWil]

He enlisted in Dec 1941 and left the country in 1942.

I can't find him on the 1939 census with any relative or by searching on his name/ birthday (including name variants / + or 1 a year on birth date) but then he would have been a minor at the time so wherever he was he might still be blanked out.

He did enlist in Bristol though which is a new location for any of the family so will try new searches there.