So this is a bit of an odd one and I suspect it's a case of a family story either being half true or at least covered up to hide the real story.
Charles Haddon Gray was my Great Grand Uncle b1866 d01/02/1941 in Addleston, Surrey, England. For most of his life he lived in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey and practiced as a solicitor. He was married to a Florence Camilla Martin and they had one child, Charles Haddon Redvers Gray (CHRG).
For years I could find almost nothing about CHRG apart from his birth, the 1901 and 1911 census and his death in 1971. I have however just found him on the 1939 register where he was listed as an unemployed Company Secretary in Walton-On-Thames.
The fact that I couldn't find anything about him seemed to fit a family story. That being that one day he decided to give everything up and essentially became a vagrant or at least someone who just roamed around. The story goes that the family were embarrassed by him as he would occasionally just turn up at their door and would stay a day or two before disappearing again. The main thing was that it was his choice to live like this and that he actually liked it. Indeed the impression I got was that he liked to cause embarrassment to his family.
Now this story came to me from my father but he now has dementia and so I can't verify any of this with him anymore.
However, I've just been searching the British Newspaper Archives and I found an article that suggests something else. With a name like this, I would also think it unlikely that there would be two people of the same name. For example:
June 1st 1934 - Thanet Advertiser - A Charles Haddon Redvers Grey is a solicitor in a fraud case where it states he is "of Chancery Lane"
There is also a book called The Mayfair Mafia: The Lives and Crimes of the Messina Brothers which apparently is a true crime book by Dick Kerby which is about "From the mid-1930s into the 1950s, one immigrant Italian family ran London’s thriving vice trade"
This is available on Google Books and in it it says:
"To start with, in 1934 Eugenio had already been busy. On 28 July at Bow Street Police Court, Charles Haddon Redvers Grey, a 33 year old solicitor of Crown Court, Chancery Lane, pleaded guilty to making a false declaration by saying that Hilda Ward, a 20 year old barmaid, was a fit and proper person to receive a passport. In mitigation, Mr, J. Thompson Halsall told the magistrate, Sir Rollo Frederick Graham-Campbell, that his client had been introduced to the girl by an estate agent with whom he had had many dealings and had no reason to disbelieve, and added that Gray was 'more foolish than knavish'. Fining Gray £50 and ordering him to pay 10 guineas cost, Sir Rollo sternly informed the prisoner that the offence was a serious one, punishable with a maximum sentence of two years imprisonment and a fine of £100"
His age of 33 in 1934 matches the birth of my CHRG so I'm as sure as I can be that these people are all one in the same.
Now it could be that after this he decided to quit and 'go off' or perhaps he lost his job and couldn't find work or perhaps he had some kind of mental breakdown. Alternatively perhaps he continued working somewhere, I can't tell as there just doesn't appear to be any records of him.
Does anyone know where else I could search for him to see what happened to him? Presumably there must be court records of this case, where would I be able to access them? Does anyone know if there are records of solicitors like when they qualified etc? I found a notice in the paper for when his father qualified as a solicitor but nothing for CHRG.