unique problem-need help

patsman07

My fiancee's father was born in London during the blitz. He doesn't remember his father and the only information he has on his is that his name was Arthur Langley, he was a Communist/marxist and he may have been Russian so the Langley might be an anglicised version of a Russian surname. His birth certificate has his step-father in place of his biological father.

Any advice on where to start my investigations??

pinkypinky

Is there an Irish connection? Our knowledge is fairly Ireland-centric on this board.

However, I'm presuming that the mother is no longer alive. Would there be any aunts/uncles or older family members? With a search like this, your best bet is personal knowledge. Failing that, what religion is the family? Parish records, if you know what part of London, may have something else.

I would ignore the Russian aspect until you have definite proof of it. There's no point starting what might be a wild goose chase on that front.

patsman07

pinkypinky wrote: »

Is there an Irish connection? Our knowledge is fairly Ireland-centric on this board.

However, I'm presuming that the mother is no longer alive. Would there be any aunts/uncles or older family members? With a search like this, your best bet is personal knowledge. Failing that, what religion is the family? Parish records, if you know what part of London, may have something else.

I would ignore the Russian aspect until you have definite proof of it. There's no point starting what might be a wild goose chase on that front.

Afraid the only Irish connection is that the mother married an Irish man a few months after the birth and moved here. I don't think the baby was baptised until after that wedding and there was a bit of a cover-up re the paternity. Difficult one it seems. If I had access to census records from the 30s I might have a chance of finding Arthur Langley but as far as I know those records aren't realised yet?

Coolnabacky1873

Civil birth, marriage and death records can be obtained from the General Registers Office.

Try the FreeBMD project and you might get lucky with a marriage record for Arthur Langley.

If he was living in London then try get your hands on city directories or telephone books for the year after the future father-in-law's birth.

If Langley was having kids during WWII then he might have been alive in 1911 or even 1901 and might be in one of the English censuses. You can search indexes on Familysearch.

There is also a burst of parish registers on there too, as Pinky was talking about. The Pinkster is also right about the Ruskie connection, leave that as a last resort theory.

More broadly if he was involved in the Communist movement try researching the history of the main groups, publications etc..