Hi,
I was wondering if anyone could help me out with this. A few weeks ago, I was searching the Black Country Bugle website and found a story referring to a Nancy Anslow who died in the river in Stourport whilst on a work trip and yesterday my Grandfather, Barry Anslow, referred to a young girl whom he was related to, I believe cousins or second cousins they were but he can't be sure, who died drowning in the weir at Stourport, so I began searching for this Nancy and how we were related to her, but was unable to find anything, not a death record or even a birth in Dudley, where my Granddad was born or the surrounding area. I did think Nancy could have been a nickname or a middle name. My Granddad did say he couldn't remember her name so I was wondering if anyone could help me out in any way at all. The article on the Black Country Bugle website what mentions one of the other people's names who died with her. The article said there were three other people on the weir at that time, Kath Wilks and another Wilks who was her brother. Well, upon searching death records in the district of Stourport, nothing. It did say three of the bodies were recovered but Nancy was sadly not one of them. I did a search for just a Wilkes death over there with them being quite young, so I searched for them between the ages of 15-35, then I found 3 Wilkes' who died in the same quarter, all of them between the ages of 17 and 19 and all registered at Worcester, near Stourport, one of them being a Mary K Wilkes, then I assumed that Kath was a nickname she went by.
I then searched the Dudley Council Genealogy Research Service from a Mary Wilkes who died in 1955 and I found it, a Mary Kathleen Wilkes, buried with a man who died on the same day as her called Harold Edwin Wilkes, so supposedly her brother and a woman who probably their mother. They both died on the 14th May 1955 and were buried the same day at Dudley Cemetery on the 3rd June 1955, so I am quite confident that this tragic event happened on the 14th May 1955 on the River Severn in Stourport.
So if anyone could help, it would be a massive help to me, so I can get to the bottom of this.
Thanks,
Jack