George Lanning

[Phoenix]

Name - "official" name and what they were known as
George Lanning
Date and place of birth
21 April 1799 Brook St Hampstead Road - according to the 1881 census
Names of parents
George Lanning & Jane Clement
Date and place of baptism - if applicable
9 March 1800 St Marylebone
Details of each of his or her marriages - if any
1 August 1819 St Pancras Parish Chapel to Mary Taylor. One of the witnesses is John Gorton - either his uncle or his cousin.
18 March 1845 to Rebecca Horseman nee Taylor (almost certainly Mary's sister)
Occupation(s) - if any
Iron Turner
Coach Smith
Smith
Coffee House Keeper
Retired Whitesmith
Gentleman (!)
Addresses where they lived (including county if in UK) - and please list which censuses you have or haven't found him/her on (if s/he lived in census times!).
1841 George Street off Oxford St
1851 33 North Street - left there probably fairly shortly after November 1851, when a murder was committed in his lodging house
1861 26 Weymouth Street Marylebone
1871 ditto
1881 34 De Laune Street Newington
Date, place and cause of death
3 August 1885. We do have death cert, but I can't remember full details
Date and place of burial.
Unknown
Details of will / administration of their estate - if applicable
None
Memorial inscription - if any
Unlikely

[Phoenix]

George Lanning was paying land tax on a house in George Street, off Oxford Street, in the 1830s. His mother was living in the same street at least between 1841 and 1851.

George's youngest children were block christened after his wife had died, in 1840. They are given an address in Tottenham St. Whether they moved there temporarily, or whether some friend or relation had taken them in and decided they ought to be "done" we can only speculate.

[Merry]

I couldn't find the block baptisms to see the date of them, but would it be worth knowing the names of families living in Tottenham St in 1841?

[Merry]

lol I looked from 1841 to 1851 and the baps were 1840! I guess Tottenham St in St Pancras is going to be very long, so perhaps not viable to search??

[Phoenix]

Thank you, Merry!

I suspect that in the days of the Family Record Centre we may well have worked our way through the microfilm, though we would not really have known what we might have been looking for.

While Tottenham Street is not that long, it was probably heaving from attic to basement. What was salutory was reading the names of the witnesses to the murder in 1851 and comparing them to the census. Only one witness (prostrated by the shock of the murder) had been there in the previous March.

[Merry]

What murder was that then?

[Phoenix]

Read page 240 onwards: http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/saxon/servlet/SaxonServlet?source=utc/xml/responses/proslav/prfiesa.xml&style=utc/xsl/utcprint.xsl&n1=28&print=yes&clear-stylesheet-cache=yes

There are, of course, plenty of accounts in the papers too.