Lost Tillin Family Update

Thanks to Kirsty's comment on my previous post I started to try and track down Ulverscroft Road.

First I used FindMyPast's search by address function to confirm which district the road was in - this turned out to be Camberwell. Then I went over to Ancestry.co.uk where I have a subscription and went to the Search page for the 1881 England Census. On the search page I typed "ULVERSCROFT" into the keyword field to see what would happen and it brought up 491 records. I hit view on the first record then scanned the pages until I got to number 3 Ulverscroft Road.

3 Ulverscroft Road taken from GoogleStreetview (2013)

 But..... the house was described as uninhabited!!! So back to the drawing board....

I went to the 1891 Census record and looked at the address - 9 Alton Terrace - but I couldn't find this on a map. So I looked up the record on Ancestry and scrolled back a few pages until I found Landells Road. I googled Landells Road and it was in a similar location to Ulverscroft Road and not far from St John the Evangelist in East Dulwich so I felt I might be onto something.

Back to Ancestry and I typed in Edward Tilling as the search in Census records for the 1880's. It came back with results for the London Electoral registers for Dulwich in 1890 and Edward Tilling was registered as at 138 Landells Road. It looks like that's the earliest electoral register for Dulwich on Ancestry so let's head back to the 1881 census and see if I can find the road.

In 1891 the family were in District 34 of Camberwell so I started there. I was slightly waylaid by the fact that Landells Road is mistranscribed as Landele Road but once I had sorted that out I browsed every single page of district 34. Unfortunately this only went up to 114 Landells Road - not 138 that I need. So I browsed district 33 as well, page by page, and still no 138 Landells Road.

138 Landells Road taken from GoogleStreetView (2013)

I tried a search for Flo* Till?n on all records and stumbled across a school admission for Florence and her sister Rose in 1887 with the address of 138 Landells Road on it. I am now even more convinced that I'm on the right track. The school admission record was brilliant as it also confirmed the father's name as Edward and the date of birth for both girls.

But for now I still haven't found this elusive family in 1881...

Lost Tillin family in 1881

I'm trying to track down a Tillin family in the 1881 census - I have them in 1871 and in 1891 but they seem to have disappeared in 1881!

The head is Edward Tillin b1829 and his wife Mary b1832. In 1881 they could have had the following children with them Frederick b1862, John b1864, Alfred b1867, Arthur b1869, Elizabeth b1871, Rosa b1874 and Florence b1877 but some of them could have been away doing other things.

I'm sort of convinced that they should be somewhere near St John the Evangelist church in East Dulwich but I can't work out which district this is on the Census! I've started to browse through the census by page but this is a slow process and gets interrupted a lot by the 21st century Tillins so I forget where I'm up to. The last address I have is the one when Florence was baptised in 1878 but I can't quite make it out - any ideas?

This is taken from the London, England, Births and Baptisms, 1813-1906 collection of  records on Ancestry. I've tried looking at Google maps but I can't come up with a road. Is there a website that shows London as it would look in 1881? And how do you translate a place/street to a particular district in the census?

Off to continue the detective work.....