Beware the spelling of Irish surnames!

When I have a female Fitzhenry who gets married and changes her name, I tend to follow her for another generation to record the rest of her life and the names of all her children.

Ellen Fitz-Henry (born in June 1878 at 25 Star Street Shadwell London) was the cousin of my great grandfather Thomas Fitz-Henry. I already knew that she married John Joseph Marney (born in Gravel Lane, Houndsditch, London in about 1875) in December 1897 at St Marks Whitechapel.

I knew that she had at least 3 children, and in the 1901 census was living at 207 Cable Street.

Dennis Miller emailed me saying that Ellen was his great-grandmother and he was now turning his attentions to researching her side of the family. Apart from the names of the children that I knew about (including Edith Florence Marney his grandmother, Ellen and Patrick) he also thought that there were William, Albert, Victor, Joseph and Clara. This made 8 children in all.

So I spent some time today to see if I could find out any more about this family.

First to the wonderful FreeBMD.
After 1911, the mother's maiden name was included in the indexes, so these four children are definitely children of John and Ellen, even though there is a misspelling of Fitzhenry for Victor:

Mar 1913
Marney William P Fitzhenry Stepney 1c 589

Jun 1914
MARNEY Joseph Fitzhenry Stepney 1c 597

Jun 1916
Marney David Fitzhenry Stepney 1c 523

Sep 1919
Marney Victor F Fitshenry Stepney 1c 395

So with the addition of David to the family, this now made nine children.

So where were they in the 1911 census? There were lots of Ellens and Johns on the 1911census website, but no John Joseph, Patrick or Edith.

Then I remembered that Marney was the phonetic spelling of Mahoney.
So I looked under Mahoney.
And I found them!

The rather messy census form had been filled out by John Joseph himself. He, and all the other other members of the family had their surnames spelt Mahoney.
And here's the raw stats:

MAHONEY JOHN JOSEPH HEAD married M 37 PRINTER AND CROPPER
born Gravel Lane Houndsditch
MAHONEY ELLEN WIFE married F 33
born Planet Street ST GEORGES EAST
married 13 years, 8 children 8 living
MAHONEY EDITH daughter F 12 CABLE ST SHADWELL
MAHONEY ELLEN daughter F 10 CABLE ST SHADWELL
MAHONEY CLARA daughter F 8 SAGE ST CABLE ST EAST
MAHONEY JOHN son M 7 SAGE ST CABLE ST EAST
MAHONEY PATRICK son M 5 SAGE ST CABLE ST EAST
MAHONEY JAMES son M 3 BROOK ST STEPNEY
MAHONEY ERNEST son M 2 BROOK ST STEPNEY
MAHONEY ALBERT son M 1 WEEK BROOK ST STEPNEY

So this makes 12 children in all.
And bless John for making a gallant stab at guessing where his wife was born - he knew it was somewhere heavenly, so he put Planet Street instead of Star Street!

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