Diversity in Victorian Britain - Genealogists' Forum

Tom Tom · #1 18-02-22, 19:29

Hi everyone.

Back to teaching ‘The Victorians’ as a History topic to my Year Five class, which I am very excited about.

I want to do a lesson about diversity in Victorian England and how there were people here from all over the world.

I want to use some census documents, and have had some success searching by keyword/ place of birth etc, but I wondered if anyone here had any relatives who were foreign nationals or naturalised British subjects, born somewhere else in the world and wouldn’t mind sharing either the link (ancestry) or the folio number etc so I can look them up. The more exotic, the better!

Thanks for looking!

Janet · #2 19-02-22, 04:27

I wish! Sadly no, at least not that I know of, but what an interesting quest, Tom. Maybe you could report back to us on any interesting finds.

Are your Year Five students about 10 years old? I have great memories of a wonderful teacher in Grade 5. I expect your kids will remember you for this.

Good luck!

JBee · #3 19-02-22, 08:45

Sorry No Tom

I think you should look at census's for say London and Cardiff and major sea ports.

The only ones I have were children born in the 1900's to an Army Family (so not Victorian) who were born in India and Egypt.

crawfie · #4 19-02-22, 08:58

Tom - have sent you a pm

Merry · #5 19-02-22, 17:23

What about the East End of London?

Here's a life story of Michael Posimensky, a cabinet maker who came to London with his family in the late 1880s.

https://www.jeecs.org.uk/news/110-jo...-cabinet-maker

His surname is spelled as above in the 1911 census (mentioned at the bottom of the article). Here he is with his family on earlier censuses (note most of the neighbours are also from mainland Europe):

1891:

https://www.ancestry.co.uk/imageview...83&pId=9511755

1901:

https://www.ancestry.co.uk/imageview...a&pId=15884557

There's lots of online info about the East End Jewish community, so plenty for Yr 5 to think about. Can they find all those countries on a map? Poland, Russia, Germany etc (oooh, but Poland wasn't a country back then!)? What about all those occupations - tailor, cabinet maker, silk weaver, goldsmith, pawnbroker? What did they all do?

Phoenix · #6 19-02-22, 20:40

Alas, it's too early for your period, but the Trafalgar ancestors database makes such searches easy: https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/trafalgarancestors/

The challenge is often that place names have changed. Ships would take any hands they could find: many were lascars - wich appears to mean generally from south est Asia and India.

Tom Tom · #7 21-02-22, 20:03

Thank you all! We did this today and they were fascinated and kept finding more and more on each census page to talk about.

Yes Janet - they turn ten in Y5 and are so excited about everything!