A MISSING SINCE SATURDAY-MAGGIE PARK

Whilst checking the catalogue entries of our Police posters which were completed by the Twixt Thistle and Rose volunteers, I came across this one which caught my attention, particularly as it was a local one relating to Berwick. It was very striking and made me want to find out who Maggie Park was and what happened to her. 

Firstly I looked to see if her disappearance had been reported and there was this short snippet in the Local News section of the Berwick Advertiser on 16 September 1887 :

GIRL MISSING – On Saturday forenoon about half past nine o’clock, a girl named Maggie Park, 12 years of age, living with her brother, James Park, shoemaker, 14 Church Street, Berwick, was sent a message to Mr Rankin’s shop in High Street. Since that time the girl has not been heard of or seen anywhere. She wore a brown felt hat, grey ulster and cape, green dress and lacing boots at the time of her disappearance.

This gave me some additional information as I originally assumed that James was her father, not her brother. Searching the 1891 census revealed that James was a shoemaker, aged about 25 in 1887,  originally from Scotland and married to Catherine. 

I was intrigued to find out if Maggie was ever found and this was where it got very interesting. The Berwick Advertiser contained the following article on 23 September :

A YOUNG GIRL’S ENTERPRISE – Last week we stated that Maggie Park, a girl twelve years of age, living with her brother, James Park, shoemaker, Church Street, had not been seen since the forenoon of Saturday 10^th September. It has now been ascertained that she set out from Berwick to walk to the house of her father, near Glasgow, a distance of fully 100 miles. She had got as far as Edinburgh before she was discovered.

I was relieved to hear that she had been found but was amazed that she had tried to walk that distance, not something many people, never mind a child would contemplate. I wondered what happened to her in the interim and quite by chance. In the same bundle of posters, I came across a handwritten letter, dated 13 September 1887 about Maggie which had been sent by Inspector M Fraser of Dunbar Police Station to John Garden, Superintendent of Berwick Police.

In the letter Inspector Fraser indicated that she had arrived there by train from Haddington at 3.30 pm, stayed until 7pm and then travelled back to North Berwick. If the police were contacted at North Berwick, they could detain her.   Obviously that didn’t happen as she wasn’t found until much later in Edinburgh.  What happened to her in between is a mystery.

Where was she going and who was her father ? The 1911 census indicated that James Park was born in Linlithgow about 1862. I checked the 1871 census and found a James Park, aged 9 living with his mother and father, Peter and Margaret in High Street, Linlithgow.  Peter was also a shoemaker.  By the next census, 1881, Peter was a widower and neither James nor Maggie were with him on the census night. However, I found Maggie, aged 7 in Cambuslang in the household of her married sister, Helen, now called Ellen. James at this stage was working London and was a boarder in a house in the Cavendish Square area . His occupation was listed as shoemaker. Peter, the father is missing from the 1891 census but he appears again in 1901 – listed as a patient, aged 76 in Linlithgow. Presumably in a hospital or institution.  He died in 1908, aged 84.

What happened to Maggie ? So far, I have not been able to find out anything further about her. She doesn’t appear on later censuses and so she is a mystery.

However, I have been able to find some additional information on her brother. James who remained in Berwick through local newspapers. He married Catherine Elizabeth Redfearn, daughter of a local innkeeper on 30 June 1883 at St John’s Church in London and must then have moved to Berwick. In the 1901 census, James and his wife, Catherine were living at 1, Marygate. By 1911, they were living at 3 Summerhill Terrace in the north end of the town. They had no children. The couple continued to live there for the rest of their lives – Catherine died on 23 January 1933 (not long before their golden wedding anniversary), aged 71 whilst James died on 6 February 1951, aged 89.

It was only when I looked at James’ obituary that I realised who he was.

The obituary which appeared in the Berwick Advertiser on 8 February 1951 stated that he was one of the last surviving makers of hand made boots who had come to Berwick 67 years previously ( around 1884) . His business was originally in Church Street and then he moved to his premises at the corner of Marygate and Hide Hill. To many a person with connections to Berwick , this was Park’s corner, the home of  “The Bootman” , a business which closed its door for the last time on 31 May 2003

Undertaking family history research can take you in so many different directions and along the way, you never know what you will find. When looking at the poster, I wanted to find out about the young girl but in the end, I found out more about her family and her brother, whose business was very much a part of Berwick in the past. One thing leads to another !