The Hampshire Family Historian | Volume 51 No.1 | June 2024

Member’s article

address for him and Laura in London. He does not seem to register to vote anywhere in London after he leaves Emma at the end of 1886/beginning of 1887, probably because the voting register is a public document available for inspection by any members of the public after publication and he would certainly have wanted to keep his exact location unknown. There is also no evidence that Emma attempted to have him prosecuted. It was very unusual at the time for criminal proceedings in such cases. And divorce was also very rare at this time, very expensive and requiring an Act of Parliament. On the 1891 census Frank and Laura are sharing a house with another couple. He is now working as secretary of a chartered association – this is MAIDIC (Metropolitan Association for Improving the Dwellings of the Industrious Classes – one of several Victorian efforts to provide better quality artisan housing in London). Their offices were near St Pancras. The address they are at in Willesden is well away from other Butler households in London, most of which are east of the centre. It is also about 13 miles to Barnet. I had several conversations towards the end of her life with Hilda Butler about Frank. Although she had some knowledge of what happened to him later, there was no mention of this first bigamous marriage, of which at the time I was ignorant. He is living with Laura in 1891, but no children are shown on the census. In fact, there is no evidence that he and Laura had any children during their relationship. Her age is shown as 25, though her true age by the date of the census was 27. She reduces her true age again at the end of the century. We are now approaching the period when a crisis might well have arisen in Frank’s life. He

has abandoned a wife and two children, married another woman illegally and is about to have to accommodate the arrival of George Thomas Butler, his nephew, at MAIDIC. George could have joined MAIDIC from about 1894/5 and is shown working there on the 1901 census. Hilda Butler said there was contact between them there. The other issue might have been Laura – did she find out as the end of the century approached that Frank had not been free to marry her? Or did her behaviour become irrational: her father Henry had had mental issues and died in his early forties in a lunatic asylum after a stay of 18 months. Maybe she was also showing instability, causing Frank to fear she might expose him if she had become aware of his real wife. At all events Laura reports herself a widow when she marries Jack DENNIS, a 25-year-old builder, born in Ireland, on 21 November 1900 in Hastings, Sussex, admitting to the age of 30 when she is in fact 37. This implies that she and Frank separated some time previously. When on 7 December 1898 she is a witness to her sister Maud’s marriage to Howard Charles Heaton at Holy Trinity Church, Brompton, she signs herself simply Laura Butler, so the state of her relationship cannot be deduced. The last certain mention of Frank in London relates to some land tax returns which show him responsible for some MAIDIC properties in Westminster which place him working for MAIDIC at least until mid 1900. However, Hilda Butler reported her father telling her that when Frank left MAIDIC he said he was leaving his job and going off to South America (no detail given), i.e. he was escaping the situation he was in by leaving the country. Unfortunately, there are no documents which help understand the sequence of events during the year of 1900, but rather than leaving

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