the Singers | Family History Research

This I think is the best place to start. After all it is my surname! My father’s family is largely German and this is their story.

England was a great place for Germans to emigrate to from the 18th century onwards. In 1714 we had a German King and the George’s stayed basically German until Victoria – and she married a German Prince. Trade was encouraged and it was a good place for Germans to flee at various stages of persecution.

I started with the information I knew – my grandfather’s date of death. From there I was able to get his date of birth and hence his birth certificate. Albert, my grandfather was born 26 July 1901, named Max Albert Singer. His address at birth was 28 Blackwall Buildings, Thomas Street, Whitechapel. Now being born AFTER 1st April 1901 means he missed the census that year. I looked for references to Singer, but due to a mis-transcription it was hard to find it. However I did an address search and found them listed as SCOGER. (Don’t worry – we are Singers). So there we had the start of the family. They were very poor, living in just two rooms, and are listed with 3 children. This however caused more problems as the children were all known by middle names!

So we have Fritz and his wife Sophie, Ludwig, Fritz and Freda, plus Max we knew about. It turns out there were 5 children in all. Frederick Ludwig born 9 Feb 1893 and died 18 Mar 1894: Eugen Ludwig (Lew) born 26 May 1895 and died some time after 1920; Edwin Fritz (Frederick) 25 Mar 1897 to 15 Dec 1963; Sophia Anna Freda (Freda) 24 Jun 1899 to 13 May 1979; and Max Albert (Albert) 26 July 1901 to 4 July 1976. As time has gone on more and more has been found out about these children. So it’s time to tell their stories here and then let us move onto the parents.

Frederick Ludwig Singer born 1893 died at the age of 13 months. This quite upset me. I knew infant mortality was more pronounced in the 19th century, but I did not expect to find it quite so close to me. As time has gone on I have found more and more infants in the family who died, but this was the first. The entry on his death certificate says the cause of death was “Violent shock from burns caused by the deceased putting a lighted candle off the table during the temporary absence of his mother – accidental death.” Poor child. Like all the children, Frederick was born in Blackwall buildings and this is a very poor part of the East End of London. There is a photo of this below. In the 1901 census they had 2 rooms between all of them !

Eugen Ludwig Singer (known as Lew) born 1895 went into the 19th Hussars. In the First World War he served first in the Durham Light Infantry, then the 19th Hussars (Queen Alexandra’s Own). He was awarded the 1914 Star, the British War Medal and the Victory medal. He went to India where he was in 1920 (as on the postcard we have of him), but from there we had no trace. We wondered if he possibly married and died in India, but that was pure speculation. The Ministry of Defence has no record of his service; many papers were lost in the Second World War. So all trace of this branch of the family was lost. This was one of the greatest mysteries. We do know from the photo to the left that he was in the 19th Hussars, and from the medal card (below) that he was in the Durham Light Infantry. But why did a poor lad with a German background who was born and brought up in the East End of London end up in the Durham Light Infantry and in the 19th Hussars (a North Eastern regiment). This problem and what happened to him took me six years to crack! I now have his full history and have talked to his daughter.

Edwin Fritz Singer (known as Frederick) was completely unknown to my father. There must have been a “falling out” between Albert and Frederick at some point after Albert’s wedding. However on one of Albert’s wedding photos there was a picture of a man and a baby. It was finally traced to be Frederick, his wife Magdalen Elizabeth Lavery, and their baby, Magdalen Lavery Singer.

Magdalen was born in 1928 and married Michael White in 1956. They do not appear to have children and both have now died. Michael was a Foreman Joiner and Frederick was a Journeyman Tailor. However when he died he was a caretaker for a block of flats.

Sophia Anna Freda Singer born 1899 married Charlie Arend. It appears he was a journeyman baker (as was Fritz, Sophie’s father). He too served in the First World War, where as a Private in the Middlesex regiment, he was awarded the British War and the Victory medals. They had one daughter Doris in 1917 and then emigrated to America on the Mauritania in 1929. It appears that Charlie’s father and brother also emigrated and stayed with a sister of Charlie’s mother who had emigrated as a child. However by 1930 they were all back and obviously as a result of the depression had not been able to make a go of it there.

Doris may have married Richard Tormay. It’s a little confusing as her death certificate is in the name Tormay, but there’s no trace of a marriage certificate. If there is another Doris Victoria born on the same day as our Doris, then that could be where the confusion has come about. But for now Doris is another mystery. She does not appear to have had children. We do know she came back from America though.

Finally Max Albert Singer (Albert, my grandfather) was born in 1901 as we have said. He married Hettie Peel in 1929. They had two children, my father and uncle.

For a long time that was all I knew. I could not get the records back any further to the children’s father. As mentioned before, to get German records back further, you need the religion and the exact birth town. It’s not as easy as the UK. Eventually, however, the marriage records of Fritz and Sophie from the German Church, Dacres Lane were found and traced them to the London Metropolitan Archives. Actual copies of them were obtained and it was found that they were very complete. Fritz was Catholic and came from Weißenburg, Bayern, and Sophie (whose maiden name was Jüngling) was Evangelical and came from Remmingsheim, Württemberg.

So now I was there! I wrote to the ministers in both these places and eventually had replies. Sophie’s family was easy to trace and I have got a full tree all the way back to Peter born in 1535! Her family has had a variety of professions and mainly seems to be shepherds and farmers. Sophie herself came over to the UK. around 1885. In the 1891 census she was a servant for Carl Muller in Southwark.

Fritz came over between 1891 when the census was taken (he’s not on the census) and 6 October 1892 when he married Sophie. His father was Friedrich and his mother was Barbara (her maiden name is unknown). They were tenants of the Casino Wirthschaft in Weißenburg. Friedrich was born in 1812 also in Weißenburg. His father was Peter Leonard Singer and was a shoemaker in Munich. He was born around 1785. There however the line stops, as Munich is far too big a place to get records from.

As part of the investigation copies of the actual baptism records of Fritz’s children were obtained. The first (Frederick Ludwig) was baptised in the German Church in Lewisham. The others were baptised in St Paul’s German Church, Hooper Square Whitechapel – the actual register is in the Tower Hamlets library. The librarian there copied them and I have actual copies on file. The records are all in German. Just one interesting sideline – Sophie lived in London for over 50 years. However my father remembers her and says that when she died she could barely speak English. So strong was the German community in those days she did not need to!