Here's one for the collective RootsChat brain to ponder.
My great grandfather William Henry Oakey, after working as a solicitor's clerk and as a librarian at Gray's Inn (where he apparently compiled a beautiful copperplate index of volumes ... which was lost when the library succumbed to a fire bomb in the blitz) worked (with a brief interlude for war service) as a clerk on the London & North Western Railway, then from 1923 the London Midland & Scottish Railway, finally retiring in 1948 fom the newly-formed British Railways. (His railway service records will have been destroyed in the 1951 fire at Derby, which is a great pity ... )
So far as I can tell he spent his entire life in St Pancras and Watford, and his entire railway service at Euston and Watford Central stations.
It therefore came as something of a surprise to me to find, in the 1921 census, 37 year old William Henry Oakey and his entire family (my 37 year old grandmother Charlotte Eliza Oakey, my 11 year old grandmother Edith Eleanor Oakey, 6 year old great aunt Marjorie Kathleen Oakey, 8 year old great uncle William Charles Oakey and baby great uncle Albert Edward Oakey) all shown as visitors in the household of Edwin Alfred Parker a 1 Shaftesbury Place, Preston, Brighton.
Edwin Alfred Parker was 44 years old, and his household consisted of himself, 45 year old Ellen Gertrude Parker, 16 year old Mabel Louise Parker, 10 year old Rose May Parker and 5 year old Doris May Parker.
(RG15 Piece 04941 Schedule 1 District Reference RD 80 RS 1 ED 12)
Edwin and Ellen Parker were married in 1903 (Registered Sussex, Brighton 1903 Q2 volume 2B page 445) and Ellen's maiden name was Gray.
I cannot find any family connection between the Oakeys and the Parkers, and no geogrphical proximity which might have led to their becoming friends at any point in their lives, which begs the question why the Oakeys were visitors, en masse, in the house of the Parkers (which must have become very corwded to accommodate them all) on the night of the census.
However, Edward Alfred Parker's occupation is shown as "Machinist, LBSC" (i.e. London, Brighton & South Coast Railway) and this got me to wondering whether there was in operation some sort of railwaymen's holiday scheme whereby railwaymen in desirable holiday locations such as Brighton welcomed other railwaymen into their homes. One family got a cheap holiday, and the other got some much-needed additional income.
If anybody knows of such a scheme (perhaps organised under the auspices of the National Union of Railwaymen) I'd love to hear a little more about it.
(The only other possibility I can think of is that William Henry Oakey and Edwin Alfred Parker became friends on war service ... William Henry Oakey definitely served in the trenches and according to my mother was gassed and suffered broken health for the rest of his life ... but there are several possible candidates with that name and I have not been able to tie down his service record so I don't know his regiment ... trying to trace Edwin Alfred Parker's war record and seeing whether he served in any of the regiments that William Henry Oakey might have served in is one possible avenue to explore ... but I don't want to go there until I have ruled out the possibilit of a railwaymen's holiday scheme, which seems the more likely explanation.)
