TRAVERS' TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS !

Almost 1,100 players have appeared for Swindon Town in a first team fixture since the club first signed on professionals in 1895 - and this site's research team has set about the task of trying to find each one's date and place of birth. That task - with the aid of the internet - is much easier nowadays than it would have been just ten years ago.
 
But even with the advantage on on-line research, one man has caused us more problems than any other - GEORGE TRAVERS - who spent the 1919/20 season at the County Ground. George came with plenty of experience, having served five League clubs stretching back to 1906, his last having been Manchester United. In 1912 he won an F.A.Cup winners medal with Barnsley, playing against Town in the semi-final.

In trying to trace George's origins our efforts were at first thwarted by what we have since learned to be purely fictitious

George Travers in the Town squad in 1919, flanked by Harold Fleming (left) and Bertie Davies.
data appearing in a number of publications. Without exception - probably because they were all 'copied' from the same source - these all referred to the man having a 'real name' of James Edward Travers. The
entry in Michael Joyce's Football League Players' Records 1888-1939 (shown left) is typical, with the given birth of 1888 in Birmingham and death in 1946 - published in good faith, but unfortunately on flawed data supplied by a club historian.

Confirming this birth 'fell at the first hurdle', as there was no entry for either James Edward or George Edward in the October-December quarter of the General Record office (GRO) birth index. The nearest 'match' is for a James Edward Travis, who may or may not have been born on November 4. There was an entry in the 1946 death index for James Edward Travers, but that too is irrelevant as we can now prove.

Scanning all GRO births over a range of years failed to reveal a definite match for our man. However, a likely match for his marriage was found - and duly confirmed his name to be George Edward. And his given age as 21 pointed to the fact that he was born between May 1886 and May 1887 and not in 1888. It also states his father was Hiram Travers, an 'actor' - so we could now refer to the national censuses to find the family and attempt to link this to a birth record.

Hiram or Hyram Travers (1850 -1922) was a music hall artiste and coster

comedian - and he did indeed have a son George Edward. But what was discovered next would be the first in a multitude of 'twists in the tale'. This George Edward was born in 1877 - so he would have been 31 and not 21 at the time he married - and 42 by the time he came to Swindon !

So did we have the right Hiram/Hyram ? The only others on record were Hyram John, a sewing machine salesman and another Hyram, not born until 1880. Bizarrely, as we later discovered, they both were sons of the music hall man - with different mothers ! But where was our George ?

We found a 'Geo' Travers listed in the 1891 census, born in London and aged 3 -

A copy of George's marriage certificate (click to enlarge)
although census ages are not always too accurate - living just round the corner from Molineux, in fact next door to Charlie Booth one of their players. He was listed as a 'visitor' to the Garrett family. But he appeared to have vanished by 1901 ! That was until a street search was done, which revealed that he was still there, but his name was now given as George Picton (incorrectly transcribed as Piston just to further confuse the issue !)

A breakthrough came when we discovered that the 1880-born Hyram appeared in the 1891 census in the same household as a Rosetta Travers - who was listed as the granddaughter of one Harry Picton ! But Rosetta did not trace back to a corresponding birth either, until a closer look was taken. Her given birthplace of Stourbridge in 1883 provided a clue. Violet Rosella Picton was born there on March 15 and her mother was Emily Picton - a music hall singer ! Emily also gave birth to a daughter, Emily Rosella, in Edinburgh on 14 July 1880. Neither birth records a father - but as both took on the name of Travers when they married, it would appear that both were illegitimate daughters of Hyram Travers. Emily (the singer) was the daughter of a George Picton and we believe - although we cannot yet prove - that she had another child that she named after him - George Edward Travers.

For the record, there were two other George Edward's in the family - both grandsons of Hyram - one born 1901, who died in 1965 and the other born 1902 and died 1905.

But what of our George's demise ? Trawling through death indexes for England and Wales year by year failed to reveal a suitable match for either him or his son George William, born to his wife Mary Ann in 1909. So a search wider afield was now on.

 
George's somewhat dysfunctional family background seems to have cast a shadow over him at various points in his life. During his brief stay in Wiltshire, he fathered a child - Irene Maud Middleton - which landed him in court. Then, after quitting professional football he stole £200, a colossal sum over eighty years ago, from Mary Ann. And after serving a two-month sentence for forgery, he decided to make a new start abroad. In November 1923, he left Southampton with Mary Ann and young George, bound for Wellington in New Zealand on the SS Athenic.

He took a job with the State Forestry Department, but in June 1930 returned to the UK and was admitted to Birmingham hospital with tuberculosis. His whereabouts were then unclear, until he landed in court yet again in Gillingham in October 1933 ! This time he was involved in a robbery and was sentenced to six months 'hard labour'.

How much of that he actually served is unknown,

A report from the Evening Swindon Advertiser 25 Oct 1920
(click to enlarge)

A report from the Birmingham
Mail on 24 March 1923
(click to enlarge)
but he again decided to quit the country to return to New Zealand. He worked as a labourer on the railways and we now know that he died there in December 1943. His son George William also died there in 1980, his daughter-in-law Dorothy May surviving until 2001.

So, James Edward Travers seems to have been a figment of someone's imagination. We have also disproved the previously accepted birth and/or death dates for many other players including Fred Butcher, Rowland Codling, Alf Dean, Jack Kirton, Jim Olney, Hartley Shutt, Len Skiller and Ben Woolhouse. And, like our friend Travers, many of these too were given spurious other first or middle names ! Strangely, they all played for Aston Villa, Birmingham, or West Bromwich Albion - an indication that they were probably 'invented' by the same author.

This fact has been brought to the attention of Michael Joyce who is contemplating removing all dates linked to these clubs from his 1888-1939 database. "Why people cannot just leave things blank when they don't know them is beyond me", he said.

NEXT IN THIS SERIES : CHARLIE McELENY