Disem on WW1 medal index

[ALAMO2008]

Did you see the Police Gazette 1931 for Hove where he appears to have been sentenced to 6 months for Fraud ?

[Deirdre784]

Did you see the Police Gazette 1931 for Hove where he appears to have been sentenced to 6 months for Fraud ?

Yes thanks, one of several i'm afraid. Just been putting together a timeline (the name certainly helped search).....

Born 21 April 1899 in Wantage, Berkshire, to John Edward Adlam Dowling and Bessie Barrett.
1901 – with his family in Wantage
1911 – with his family in Shepton Mallett, Somerset (Crown Inn)
Jul/Aug 1915 – enlisted with the North Somerset Yeomanry
Oct 1917 – transferred into the Machine Gun Corps (Cavalry)
Sep 1919 – battalion disembodied; may have been demobbed
Jul-Sep 1920 – married Gertrude May Jones in Merthyr Tydfil (registration district)
Jun 1921 – appointed to the Borough Constabulary Force ‘after 3 and a half years service in the Great War with the Machine Gun Corps (Cavalry)’
Jul-Sept 1921 – son Edmund born in Merthyr Tydfil
15 Aug 1923 – daughter Eileen born in Merthyr Tydfil
18 Jan 1924 – police service terminated for misconduct
May 1924 – pleaded guilty at Bristol police court to obtaining money (£1 and £1 18s) by false pretences; sentenced to one month hard labour
March 1931 – Hove police court, obtaining money by false pretences – sentenced to 6 months hard labour
March 1931 – appears in the register of habitual criminals re the Hove sentence; one case of larceny at Bournemouth taken into consideration when sentence was passed
February 1932 – Torquay police court – embezzling money (£8) – remanded in custody to enable further enquiries to be made (sadly nothing more found
1936 – electoral register at the De Vere Hotel, 60 Hyde Park Gate, Kensington and Chelsea (still there but mixed reviews)
1939 register – single! Waiter at the Bracklesham Bay hotel in Chichester, Sussex.
1951 – married Lily Horne (nee Legg) in Westminster
2 June 1966 – died at the Westminster hospital, day after moving into a new house (1 Tyrrell House, Churchill Gardens, Westminster)
22 Aug 1966 – probate (admin) granted to Gertrude May Dowling, widow
1969 – Lily married again, and died in 1970

[Andy J2022]

Deirdre,

As I'm sure you are aware his first marriage to Gertrude is registered twice, once as Henry Adams Dowling (Vol 11a page 1974) and then a corrected entry (page 1974A) as Harry Adams Dowling, possibly implying that Harry is not short for Harold but for Henry. Or perhaps that was another of his deceptions, thinking that Henry sounded better than Harry?

It's also probably time to link to the other thread as Alamo is uncovering stuff which is already covered there.
https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=875599.0

[Deirdre784]

Hi Andy, no i didn't realise that, nor had i looked for it, as his birth was registered as Harry (JuneQ 1899, Wantage, mother Barrett).

The posts were never intended to be linked, just occurred at the same time and i wasn't planning on naming Harry! But they have become entwined.....

[Andy J2022]

Correction. The 'Henry' marriage entry was page 1975, not page 1974 as previously stated. Plus neither entry shows his name as 'Adams', only A. Just to make it even more confusing there's Henry J Dowling entry as well. I'm sure the family don't want the extra expense of another marriage certificate, but it would be interesting to see the actual wording on the certificate, plus the marginal anotation.

[Deirdre784]

So there would be an annotation in the margin (not had one like that, and i have hundreds of certificates!). Strange to see the Henry J too as the 'Harry' family was living in Somerset.

I did their whole tree as far as i could without certificates - they are going to buy the later Harry one - so i don't think they'll want to buy that one too. He was Harry Adams Dowling in most records / newspaper clips, but don't know where the Adams came from as his mother was Barrett.

[Andy J2022]

And as I recall, his father had the middle name Adlan.

[Deirdre784]

And as I recall, his father had the middle name Adlan.

Yes, John Edward Adlam Dowling, and his mother was an Adlam

[Deirdre784]

it's getting more mysterious as i've been re-reading the conversations i had with my friends when i started helping them a few years back. They were convinced that Harry and Lily had 2 children, a son who was a policeman, and a daughter. At the time i assumed they were Lily's from a previous marriage as she was in her mid 50s when she married Harry, though hadn't found any from her first marriage (to Frederick Horne in 1915). There is a Dowling / Horne birth in 1948 (in Middlesex) - but her maiden name was Legg so not correct. The only other thing i can find is that in 1921 there's a Herbert Warren Legg, aged 3, living with Lily and her husband Frederick; he's described as nephew to Frederick, but his mother, Lily's sister Annie is there too, says father is dead (mmn='-' on the GRO, baptism found naming only Annie). Now Herbert was a policeman in 1939, so maybe Lily adopted him or at least brought him up if she had no children of her own. I'm hoping that the marriage certificate might provide some info, maybe with witnesses, but otherwise we may to wait until they order Harry's death certificate (though won't help if Lily was the informant).