The Amazing Story of Jane Doe

The Woman Who Never Was

WHIT SUNDAY 1923 . . . .

The leading news story on 20 th May 1923, Whit Sunday, was the shock resignation of Prime Minister Andrew Bonar-Law who, having been in office for only six months was reportedly bowing out due to ill health. Indeed, it transpired later that Bonar-Law had been diagnosed with the terminal throat cancer that claimed his life in October 1923 – just a year after first entering 10 Downing Street. Mr. Bonar-Law is quoted as once saying, “If I am a great man, then a good many great men of history are frauds.” This head of government was apparently a modest and unassuming man with hidden depths. No doubt these qualities gave rise to his nickname, which was ‘The Unknown Prime Minister’. Fraud is a word I can identify with. It is defined in the Oxford dictionary as criminal deception; the use of false representations to gain an unjust advantage; a dishonest artifice or trick, and lastly, a person or thing not fulfilling what is claimed or expected of it. Unknown is another word that I can readily apply to my own circumstances.

The weather was nondescript. Overcast, not really that warm, nor too cold. Maybe a little disappointing for those planning a Bank Holiday outing, but unremarkable. Unlike the events taking place in a small back bedroom of the dwelling known as 30 Cross Street in the City of Nottingham, where a baby girl was making her entrance to the world. She was a bonny, bouncing baby, too, weighing in at 10lbs 8oz and her delivery had to be assisted by the use of forceps. Midwives were not then qualified to use forceps, so a doctor must have attended this particular birth. However, no doctor is recorded as being present and a note from the Principal Archivist of Nottinghamshire County Council states that “The midwives’ records for the 1920’s have been closed to public inspection because they contain personal and possibly sensitive information on possible illegitimacies, etc.”

When details of this birth were registered nearly three weeks later, on 9 th June, the little girl was named as Barbara Shaw. Her father was entered as Robert Mark Shaw, a farm labourer, and her mother was Violet Shaw, formerly Violet Goss. However, no record of that particular Robert Mark Shaw has ever been traced – he did not exist. What is incredible is the fact that there was no trace of this child for the next forty years. Officially, Barbara Shaw did not exist either.

Cross Street was but a few paces away from the Central Market, Sneinton Market, the Victoria Ballroom and the Palais de Danse, all very popular venues at that time, particularly at weekends and holiday times. A handful of back streets and alleyways further on was the infamous Narrow Marsh area where Violet, in company with her glamorous sister Lily (a prostitute) and brother Billy with his glass eye, would frequent notorious pubs such as the Red Lion, The Loggerheads (still open today), and the Old Volunteer, to name but a few. Other favourites with the trio were the Corner Pin, and the Old Dog & Partridge in Parliament Street. Violet’s main talent lay in the art of bending the elbow and being generally ill natured. Lily on the other hand was no mean whistler and, with Billy yodelling in accompaniment, entertained the punters whilst no doubt weighing up one or two possible clients for later.

Old Narrow Marsh was known as the worst slum area of the city, with as many as five hundred people to an acre, mostly living in overcrowded and filthy tenements. Murder, rape, and prostitution were all commonplace in the squalid streets and it is interesting to note that many of the criminal acts, including murder, were perpetrated by women. Narrow Marsh women of the day were hardened and stood about in groups, wearing cloth caps and smoking or chewing strong tobacco. They could cough and spit as well as any man. The streets were foul and alongside the more light-hearted entertainments such as buskers and barrel organs, there were dancing bears, cruelly and wilfully mistreated and suffering unspeakable agonies. Stray, starving dogs cowered in the shadows whilst pickpockets would hang around pub doorways ready to fleece the senseless inebriated. The famous Goose Fair attracted travelling thieves in their hundreds and they would gather in the area and fill the lodging houses and furnished rooms, some of which were little more than hovels. In backrooms of the pubs illegal abortionists terminated the lives of the unborn and, by using filthy, primitive instruments (such as crochet hooks) were often responsible for the deaths of the desperate women who sought their services. Those who survived the ordeal were likely to be maimed for life. Barefoot, unkempt children were felons – uneducated maybe, but not lacking in artfulness.

One of the more colourful characters of the area was a notorious criminal, a murdering villain by the by the name of Charles Peace, who lived in the district for short periods. He apparently had a lady friend there, a Mrs. Hunt. He made his way there on one occasion when he was being pursued by Yorkshire Police and narrowly escaped capture by the local force at a house on the corner of Red Lion Street. The officers discovered Charles in bed and he is reputed to have said, “It’s a fair cop, the game’s up. I’ll come quietly, but for the sake of decency, stay the other side of the door while I dress.” They thought this a reasonable request but gave him too long and when they went into the room after him, found it empty, with the casement swinging open. When they ran to the window and looked out, Charles was briefly glimpsed at the bottom of the drainpipe but he got clean away – the warren-like network of narrow alleys assisting him in his escape and no amount of blowing on the whistle being of any use whatsoever. He most probably made for one of the many caves, some of which housed the performing bears. To search that part would be like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. After that, the police learned never to leave their quarry alone again – dressed or undressed.

Both live and stillbirths took place in the grime and filth of the dark alleyways and often the sickly, mewling infants who managed to draw breath were simply abandoned to their fate. Births and deaths such as these were obviously never recorded, but the child mortality rate was anyway very high, and large numbers of babies and very young children simply suffocated whilst in bed with their mothers, at any age from two or three days to six months. It was common for five or six children to share a bed with their parents and indeed many families lived, ate and slept in one fetid room. As might be expected, rats were rife and made their nests in beds where people were sleeping. Much of the area had been demolished by the early 1930’s and the goings-on consigned to history, but a more sinister place of such ill repute would be difficult to imagine.

Baby Barbara at least was spared the stigma of being born in such indescribable squalor, but what pattern was her life to follow? What was to be the destiny of this innocent, vulnerable, dependent child? That same child who ‘went missing’ and apparently vanished from the face of the earth almost in the same instant that she claimed her place on it? What happened to her?

Could that child have been me?

The baby girl who had just come into the world at 30 Cross Street, approximately 130 miles north west from Downing Street, was to discover in adulthood that her birth certificate was fraudulent and as a direct result of that criminal deception, she was to spend the rest of her life, not like Mr. Bonar-Law, ‘The Unknown Prime Minister’, but as ‘An Unknown Person’. That child is now in her eighties. Until she was in her forties she believed that she was Barbara Hall. She married as Miss Barbara Hall and became Mrs. Barbara Worrall, but twenty-two years and six children later she discovered that when she married, she had actually been somebody else. Barbara Shaw. She had unknowingly been living a lie for all those years. Her marriage was declared invalid; therefore her children were illegitimate. Barbara Hall/Shaw/Worrall had no idea who she was then and is no nearer to the truth today. During her life, she has been issued with no fewer than seven (and possibly nine) National Insurance numbers, at least five differing NHS numbers have been assigned to her and even the ID number (RMCU74/4) issued during the war appears to have been ‘pulled out of the air’, as it bore no reference to any personal or family circumstances. Which number can be proved to be valid? Are any of them valid? She has changed her name by Deed poll and a legal document states that she is now known by her chosen name of Jane Doe. But who is she really?

I am Jane Doe. I have in my possession the document, which according to the law of the land, states that I am that person. On paper. But who was I in 1923, on 20 th May when I was born? Who was Robert Mark Shaw? There are no records to prove that he ever existed. And Violet Shaw? Apparently she had once been briefly married to a Sydney Shaw. Who was he? Again, there are no records to prove or disprove his existence. And what has been one of the most frustrating aspects of trying to unravel this mystery, and the most soul-destroying? To be met at each and every turn with comments such as, “Sorry, our records do not go that far back”, “Sorry, those records have been destroyed” (by fire/flood/other means), "Sorry, we are not at liberty to divulge that information”, “Sorry………..”

Yes. I am sorry, too. But my sorrow is real and it hurts and it is still festering somewhere deep inside me. Whether acting upon orders or merely indifferent to human feelings, those officials had no idea of the stress and trauma I suffered and will continue to suffer until I know the truth surrounding the birth of Barbara Shaw on Whit Sunday, 1923.

Was I really that child?