Q I am trying to find my father, Stanley Walter Hibbert (born 1900, Fulham), on the 1921 census. I have tried different spellings, using initials, and thought that I’d found him – only to discover that it was an eightyear- old boy. I looked in the military in case he was conscripted at the end of the First World War. I think I’ve managed to find him in the electoral roll for 1921, living at 1 Elwell Road in Clapham. He’s still there in 1922. I’ve found his brother Frank in EC4.
John Killick
A It was a good tactic to use the London electoral registers available on Ancestry (ancestry.co.uk) to try to place your father in 1921. However, the Stanley Hibbert you found at Elwell Road is recorded as Stanley Arthur Hibbert in the 1921 census on Findmypast (findmypast.co.uk). I found Stanley Walter Hibbert living in Fynes Street in 1925 on the electoral registers, but he is not at that address in the 1921 census. Mistakes are more likely to happen when surnames are transcribed compared with forenames. Bearing this in mind, and seeing that your father tended to use his middle name in official documents, I used a wildcard and searched for Stanley Walter H* on the 1921 census – and up he popped. He had been transcribed as Stanley Walter Hibber. He is a private with the 1st Battalion, Royal West Kent Regiment, and, interestingly, he is at the Royal Barracks in Calcutta, India. If you never knew that your father was a soldier in India, this leads to a whole new exciting avenue of research!