| Family story has it that Harry was born and bred in Bermondsey and accords with the facts regarding his parent's marriage and certainly his father's life and death in this area.
The War Pensions Section of the Department of Health and Social Security have an unverified record - but presumably on information given by Harry - of his birth on 24 June 1886 in Bermondsey. Many years later at the age of 81 or so his widow recalled that his year of birth may have been 1884, but this memory seems in error.
A son and daughter, Walter and Mary, who were 7 and 11 when their father died, could recall the story of young Harry being brought up by a 'Granny Smith' who was a midwife and he had an adopted brother named 'Ernie' (or possibly a half- or step-brother?).(See Part 6.5).
'Granny Smith' and Harry's mother Alice Louisa Till turned out to be the same person. When Alice Louisa's Death Certificate in 1932 was obtained, she was named as 'Alice Louisa Gander, known as Smith'. Why? (We still don't know the story behind this.)
Harry was of the early generations of Gander's legally required to attend elementary school but without a definite address to go on, little attempt has been made to wade through the hundreds of school log books available in the London Metropolitan Archives for the schools of this densely populated part of South London.
The first definite record we have of Harry is not until 5 April 1909 when as a bachelor aged 22 he married in St. Peter's Church in Hammersmith, West London, a young Irish girl Kate Ann Carroll who was still a week short of her 18th birthday (the marriage certificate says her age was '20').
Kate Ann was a Roman Catholic and almost certainly she married either without her parent's knowledge or against their wishes which probably accounted for the marriage taking place in London. | |
