The Amazing Story of Jane Doe

The Woman Who Never Was

TEARS OF JOY OR TEARS OF SADNESS

After many years of campaigning for an official identity and passport, it seems it has finally arrived, addressed to Ms J Doe. I have reservations about opening the envelope and feel anxious in case I am to discover that the passport contained within will be made out for someone else, or that it could be in one of my former names of Hall, Worrall, Goss or even Clements. I wouldn’t mind the latter. After all I have been through two bigamous marriage ceremonies to acquire that name. According to a remark made by a Nottingham solicitor, my two bigamous marriages to Clem, my common law husband of almost thirty-nine years, were more legal than my first marriage to George Worrall on the 5 th May 1945 at the Bristol Register office.

This passport in my legally adopted name of Jane Doe will open up a whole new world for me. I will now have recognition for all manner of things legal, social and official. After a determined and relentless fight with many prominent persons assisting me in the conclusion of many episodes in my life spanning eight decades, could it really be that I have finally arrived at my goal? Is the right to a normal life enjoyed, indeed taken for granted by so many millions, finally mine? Or am I to be saddened by the contents of this official envelope and have to conclude that whilst over the years I have won a few battles, I have indeed lost the war? If it is the worst news that I could expect, I dread to imagine what dimension my life will take now. Will my few remaining friends desert me? Will I become an outcast to be shunned or mocked for daring to ask who I am? This document has been in my possession for several days now and even though I am tempted to tear open the envelope, I am still resisting for fear of the discovery that the Passport office have reneged yet again on their promise that Jane Doe has established her entitlement to a British passport and therefore British citizenship.

We were notified on the 26 th May 2006 by telephone by the UK passport office Durham, that the passport for Jane Doe would be issued within ten days and that this was now possible, as they had obtained their own copy of a birth certificate for Barbara Shaw. When they were advised that this could be considered an illegal act (Barbara Shaw has never existed, remember), they replied that they were only establishing that a birth had taken place on the 20 th May 1923 in order to enable the issue of the passport. If one question could be answered for me by whomever, the question would have to be this - how does one become a Jane Doe? In my case it was pure bad luck. The wrong place at the wrong time and certainly a wrong birth certificate. There is no doubt in my mind whatsoever about that. My whole life has been filled with uncertainty and many, many dreadful memories that will never ever go away. This situation may well have occurred in other circumstances, but it will certainly not have been recorded in English legal history, giving rise to a legal precedent, or a landmark legislation and thus opening the door to others in similar situations; whose births were not properly recorded and their identities tampered with for whatever reason, as mine was.

No other person should have to endure the anguish and torment that I have suffered for too many years but, as I know only too well, the fight has to continue until I and others are granted officially sanctioned and recognised status from the courts allowing access to our own birth records. In my case these records are closed to public scrutiny until the year 2026. Yes, I was born in 1923, so if I reach the age of 103, I may be lucky. What treachery!

The first I knew of the possibility that I would be issued with a British passport was when a week previously to the 26 th May, there had been a telephone conversation with the self same Passport Office. The content of that discussion was about presenting the birth certificate for Barbara Shaw. Clem notified the official that it had been described as a falsified document, and also the fact that I knew nothing of its existence until I had reached the age of forty-two and had by then six children in a marriage of nineteen years duration. Still she insisted that I must present it to them. Clem advised me not to and stated to her that we would be aiding her and ourselves in a crime as it had been well documented as being a falsified certificate by the Home Office. They previously had traced their records from 1923 through to 1931 and could find no such person as Robert Mark Shaw and no evidence of a marriage either. In the same correspondence we were informed that they had located a marriage between Sydney Shaw and Violet Shaw, formerly Goss, which took place on the 18 th July 1919. Clem had actually discovered this information some two years earlier, with the help of the legendary Mormon’s family history centre at Bulwell, Nottingham. But investigations have failed to confirm the existence of Sydney Shaw, so what does that tell us?