Is is possible to find out if some 1 is alive or dead, that went missing in the 1930's?

Question

I know its a long shot, but my great aunt, went from wales to london to work, when she was about 17, no one heard anything and her family went looking and she was never found

I use ancestry and typed in her full name to see if there are any death or marriage certificates and nothing, just a birth certificate.

what im asking is, are there any websites that have missing persons from 1930's onwards, or if there is anything I can do to find out anything!

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

It would be very difficult, but if you're really determined to stick with the project, it is possible. You would have to start with published directories from that timeframe. They're usually shelved in reference sections at the library. You would be looking for a residence in her name. If you can't find one, your search gets nearly impossible. But if you do find one, then keep tracking her in annual directories for as long as she can be found.

Then you go to voting records and see what you can find. I don't know when women were given the vote in the UK, but I think it was much earlier than the 30s. See how far you can track her there.

Once her name disappears from the directories, start with newspapers and go reel-by-reel looking for a marriage announcement. I would find it hard to believe that she would get married and not tell her family, but it's possible. Stranger things do happen.

I know that in the UK it is possible to get help from the Salvation Army in tracking lost family members. I'm just not sure they go back 75 years. But it would be worth a phone call.

Eventually, someone was tracking something about her. The problem in this case is the timeframe. It's too soon for census records and much of what you need is covered by privacy acts. But what gets published in newspapers is free for the reading. You just have to be very patient in reading everything and see if they mention anything. With that isolated era, it may be the only thing that will give you answers.

Answer 2

i dunno but if she was 17 in 1939 she would be 86 now. If she dissapeared and either died and they didnt know who she was or she changed her identity i dont think youll find her. sorry :(

Answer 3

Don't forget that she may have "married" and changed her name.

My own grandmother didn't marry her husband, (but was always known as Mrs. -----) till my father was 12.  Not sure why they bothered since it was a bigamous marriage anyway!

So you may not find a Marriage Certificate and any Death Certificate could be in a "married" name without her having gone through a marriage ceremony.

Answer 4

You could approach Social Services dept in your town and explain that you wish to find her, they can trace people by their Social Security number. Everyone had a national insurance number, and before that an ID card, particularly through the war, as they wouldn't be able to have got rations without it.Did no one report her missing to the Police of the time. I know that the police at the moment are still looking for people that disappeared eons ago. There was a case down here in Devon a while back where a wife and child disappeared ages ago, and they opened the case again, and actually found that the husband had, had something to do with the disappearance.

It may well be that the local police in her area will have a file on her, and may be able to help in some way.

I would love to know if you do get any luck, as I have a whole family in my family who have disappeared off the face of the earth back in the 1960's. No one has been able to find them.

Good luck.

Answer 5

Things went a bit confused during the 1940s so she could easily be long ago dead and never identified. Then there could be no death cert. Or she could have travelled further and assumed a different name, under which she may have married so there will be no record of her marriage. She may also have fallen into the hands of unscrupulous people in London and have been murdered there under an assumed name. So many possibilities. Try advertising in newspapers, someone may know what became of her. Sad so many are forgotten and lost.

Answer 6

personally dont think so, sorry?

Answer 7

chances are there arent any websites because they really didnt keep track of that in the 30's.  i dont think the FBI or anyone really officially kept track of them besides passports.  idk what you should do....

Answer 8

You need to be aware that just typing a name into Ancestry is not enough.  The BMD indexes are not invidually indexed.  Those that are pre-date 1920 and are direct copies of what is on the FreeBMD sites.  For all dates between about 1920 and 1983 you have to painstakingly search every single quarter of every single year to find the entry you seek.  It takes forever.

If you search for the name "John Smith" as an example, Ancestry will throw up a list of all the index pages upon which that name should appear over a specified time period.  You then check each and every page for each year and see if you can find "your" John Smith among them.  It is a long drawn out process and entries can easily be missed.  I've lost count of the number of times I have tried a blanket search of the 1920s-1940s in a so far fruitless attempt to find the death of one of my 2x gt grandmas, but so far, she eludes me.  Without the census to fall back on (and in the case of women, reliable electoral records as they didn't get the vote till the late 1920s) there is not much to work with.  All you can be is methodical.  Get a system and make a note of each year you search as you search them.  Even then, you still might not have any luck, as whose to say she didn't meet an American airman in WW2 and return home with him after the war to the States?  It's all such a long time ago.  Theres a website called missingyou.net (or similar).  Have you tried them?  Alternatively, the Salvation Army are probably your best bet.

Answer 9

UK answer.

Women in the UK were given the vote for the first time in 1929, the minimum voting age was 21 so your aunt wouldn't have been included on any electoral register until she attained that age.

Here is the web site for the Salvation army, if you were to write to them they normally reply within a week of receipt  of the letter, and they do an amazing job locating missing people. I really hope that you solve this one, it must be awful not knowing what happened to someone.

http://www2.salvationarmy.org.uk/familyt...

Hope this helps.