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Absent Voters List Ww1

G

Gary Davies

proper brummie kid
I have a James Davis 41452 5th Res R War Regt at 56 Princip St Birmingham. I am trying to obtain record. But don't know where to start. This was in 1918 and 1920.
 
hi gary and welcome..a lot of the ww1 records did not survive ww2 bombing of the records office but if you are lucky and they did you will find them on ancestry..you need to subribe to this...i will take a look for you and i dare say other members will check...did james have any midde names and do you know his date of birth?? and is davis definately spelt without the letter e ?

lyn
 
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Hi Gary, Morning Lyn. I have done a search on Ancestry and he is not coming up with that number - there are a lot of James Davis. I half expected that on Service Records but at the moment I can't find him on Medal Rolls either. I am wondering if he had a different number at some point (quite common as units were joined up after battles). I will persevere. As Lyn said any additional info would help.
 
hi janice same here...i also could not find a medal card with that reg no on it ...as you know even if the records no longer exist the medal cards are all intact...little more info needed

lyn
 
I agree - it seems very odd. I did find that number but not attached to James so am not sure what is happening. Definitely need more details.
 
Good morning Lyn,

Well we all like solving mysteries, don't we? It'll be a few hours before I can really look at it due to visitors and things, but I'll add it to the to-do list. Anyone else welcome aboard! :)

Maurice
 
morning maurice...i agree..this one could keep us busy over christmas but we need a little more info if possible off gary
 
Place and date of birth would certainly help - at a guess, Birmingham & circa 1900 - but that may well be on the 1911 Census.

Maurice
 
This is all I have. The information was posted on this site for my cousin Maureen Hubbard. If you put in 56 Princip St Birmingham 1907- wilkes/davies by a lady linda. I like in Australia and I very much appreciate anything that can be done. Thankyou Gary
 
Good afternoon Janice,

There is obviously a problem with the FMP indexing as if you include Princip Street (admittedly dodgy writing) as one of the keywords, nothing is found, whereas search on Thomas S. Wilks and just Birmingham finds it OK. Not that it helps - James Davi(e)s wasn't on the scene then. Did he and Alice eventually marry?

He first appears on the AVL of 1918 out of nowhere and stays until the Electoral Roll of 1920 giving us very little to work on, there being so many James Davi(e)s, this one should be fun.He must have been aged 21 by 1920 and I suppose the same age rules applied to the AVL There's a Jim Davis in New John Street in 1911 born in 1896 and a Richard J. Davis in Park Road. Hockley born in the same year, but he could be a John. I also haven't looked at births before 1895 and who is to say he was actually born in Brum or when he arrived there if not?

Maurice
 
Hi Janice

Our posts crossed - I would expect him to be born between 1891 & 1900. But where? In 1911 number 56 just houses the Wilks family and is he on the 1939 Register. See below

Maurice
 

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Good afternoon Maurice. I agree it is a puzzle especially with so little to go on. It seems from the other thread that the only connection is that James was at the same address so we have no idea where he came from/
 
I've had a quick flip through the FMP service records for James Davis in WW1 in the hope of spotting that 41452 service number, but so far nothing. Apart from that 41452 & the RWR there is currently no way for telling the James Davis' apart. Now if they were to issue the 1921 census early..... perhaps!

Maurice
 
I searched Ancestry for that number and it came up with that number or things like s/41452 on the medal index 41 times all different names. Not one was in the Royal Warwicks.
 
Well the oldest WILKS daughter was Alice G and she married Rolfe A. WEBLEY (a 19 year old bootmaker living in Bromsgrove in 1911) in 2nd Qtr 1916 in Aston, so there doesn't appear to be any family connection between DAVIS and the WILKS. Wilks had a much larger family in 1911 and Alice leaving home, they had a spare room and probably decided to let it out as Army billets - unless anyone can come up with a better idea, with a name like James DAVIS we may well be sunk. He may not have even stayed long in Brum. With so many soldiers being discharged in 1919 (my father was one of them) there were very few jobs available. Dad's railway job at Curzon Street had been given to a married guy with four kids whilst he was still single. Legally Dad could have got his job back, but he was "shamed" into not doing so.

Maurice
 
Ooops! According to ladylinda's research, Alice WILKS didn't marry, but for our purposes it matters little - James DAVIS still leaves Princip Street.

Maurice
 
I think that it is most probable that the records that Gary is seeking were lost in the WW2 fire, On such documents as we have, James has consistently spelt his name as James DAVIS with no additional forenames. The various Electoral Rolls are producing on average 32 spelt that way for each year that is online, and they tell us nothing other than the persons address and that he is of voting age.

This afternoon I extracted all the service records for the WW1 period for James DAVIS - there aren't that many - and went through them page by page looking for any reference to 41452 or Princip Street, the only real information we have to go on. I discovered absolutely nothing. I also double-checked the Medal Rolls on Ancestry - just in case - but again found nothing. I also checked the British Library Newspaper Archive around that time and also the London Gazette (though only officers generally get a mention in that), and again zilch!

If the records were still in existence I would have expected some snippet of info to turn up somewhere.

Maurice
 
I think the Alice on the Electoral Roll is the Mother (second wife of William) so your marriage is probably right for the daughter. The other thing I wondered was about Joseph where does he disappear to? Is there a connection?
 
Sidney (Sidney James) could be another name and Davies is OK . That's where he got our family name from. Thanks once again. I realise this takes up time and I appreciate anything that can be done.
 
This probably won’t help at all, I've found James Davis on the 1918 AVL at 56 Princip Street and have uploaded a copy below for your info/records.

I have also found the following regarding the formation of the 5th Reserve, Royal Warwickshire Regiment, which might help someone else who understands such things further your search.


https://www.forces-war-records.co.uk/units/316/royal-warwickshire-regiment/

3/5th and 3/6th Battalion Territorial Force
May 1915 Formed in Birmingham and then moved to Weston-super-Mare.
08.04.1916 Became the 5th (Reserve) and 6th (Reserve) Battalions and moved to Ludgershall.
01.09.1916 The 5th absorbed the 6th and joined the South Midland Reserve Brigade of the Territorial Forces.
Mar 1917 Moved to Catterick and on to Northumberland where it remained until the end of the war.
 

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I am not sure about this but if he was a reservist in the TA and did not actually fight would he would have had medals? That might explain why we can't find him on medal rolls.
 
I'm sure you're right, Janice, as Dad was in the Tank Corps as a non-combatant due to medical reasons and although I have found his service record, I've never found him on the Medal Rolls.
If you're going to include DAVIES as a spelling, you are left with an almost impossible task. In one year on the Electoral Rolls there are about 32 James DAVIS on the Birmingham Electoral Rolls, excluding at least that many again with more than one forename. Add DAVIES & multiple forenames and you would have at least 250 possibilities and no means of identifying the one you want in any one year.
Gary, am I right in presuming that he never left the UK, i.e. as far as you know he never emigrated?

Maurice
 
I tried the Davies route and decided there were too many. I would assume he left the area - as William Davis (Alice's Father) came from Gloucestershire I wondered about that but then he could equally have stayed wherever he was posted to. A needle in a haystack!!
 
Don't know about him leaving the UK. Thanks everyone for trying. I am sure there will be other questions about another topic that I will post.
 
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