1921 Census - so sad...

[Merry]

I saw this page posted up by FMP on FB, but there was no info with it or comments.

https://search.findmypast.co.uk/reco...68%2F0231%2F03

For those of you who can't access it, we have a young family, husband Arthur Vince is a 28 years old tax officer working for the Inland Revenue. He has a wife, Gladys, and young son Robert (Bobby) aged 16 months. Dad clearly has a sense of humour, saying he was born in "Appy Hampstead". He also made a prediction by drawing a cartoon on the census page of some officials sitting around a table with a document on it reading "War 1936" and a comment alongside suggesting the 'cannon fodder' for the next war (predicted as 1936) would be found on the 1921 census (with a long row of exclamation marks).

Of course, I had to look and see what happened next.... In 1939 Arthur had risen to Senior Tax Inspector and his son was still at home, now an Invoice clerk.

Unfortunately his father's prediction would come true, as Robert became that 'cannon fodder' in 1945.

From CWGC:

LANCE BOMBARDIER ROBERT STANLEY VINCE

Service Number: 974108 Royal Artillery, 89 Bty., 23 Field Regt.

Date of Death 18 April 1945 Age 25

Buried or commemorated at FAENZA WAR CEMETERY VII. D. 14. Italy

Son of Arthur and Gladys Vince, of Mill Hill, Middlesex.
Personal Inscription

OUR BELOVED SON DIED IN ACTION AT THE FINAL HOUR BEFORE THE DAWN OF PEACE

How awful. I wonder if Arthur remembered what he wrote in 1921? Arthur passed away less than three years later.

[ElizabethHerts]

How poignant, and what a b****y waste.

I think Arthur Vince would have been worth knowing.

[Olde Crone]

Yes, so sad.

I sometimes think when looking at a run of census - oh, you don't know what grief is coming your way.

OC

[Janet]

Very sad indeed. What tragic prescience. Thanks, Merry.

[Nell]

Originally Posted by Olde Crone

Yes, so sad.

I sometimes think when looking at a run of census - oh, you don't know what grief is coming your way.

OC

Thank goodness!

The two really sad things I've found in my research (the ones I felt most) were a family of several children, siblings and cousins, who died of "summer diarrhoea" (possibly cholera) in a hamlet in Gloucestershire. Everyone in the hamlet would have known, and most been related to them. A generation gone.

And

my great-great-uncle, who was probably alcoholic had several children who were taken into care and split up. Only one of them married and had children of her own.

[Kit]

So tragic. I know war is inevitable at times but I hate the consequences.

I recently bought a book called The Last Secret of the Secret Annex, which is about one of the people who hid Anne Frank and her family. I've read the blurb on the back and the prologue and can't bring myself to read anymore, knowing there will be heartache involved.