Oooh, what a mess I have here! I do hope you can comment on this messy post - please read on! With the help from British Jewry and eastern European archives, I have recently discovered, Hannah Swiedler, my 20 year old female relative (single) came to live in London in 1902. From what information I have her father (Moshe Yekutiel Svidler, aka Jekiel or Fekiel Swiedler according to her UK marriage cert in 1905) died in Russia before she came to live here. I think he was religious but not Hasidic. I don't have any information whatsoever about her mother from any archive in the UK or in eastern Europe, I guess it's possible her mother died in Russia too, and it is very hard for me to prove who her siblings were as my family moved from the Russian Empire all over the shot (including Uzbekistan!) also changing the way the family surname was spelt some even changing it completely, and were not listed in those early days in UK archives I've checked to date, they aren't even listed as living at a particular address which we in the family have always known was where descendents were later born & lived. But, I am hoping to receive her 1905 East London Shul Hebrew marriage cert shortly. What is confusing is, she had male siblings and I think I've now found out she had more than the family thought she had, but if I am right and I have tracked down 2 of her male siblings (who were NOT in the UK till 1911), then it's rather odd because the age gap between her and her brother/s was a good 20 years, and her father was at least 55 when she was born. Is this common, for children from the Russian Empire to have such old dads?!! And do you think it sounds like her mother was her father's second wife? What I am also wondering is do you think it was allowed or was likely that a 20 year old single Russian woman who could not speak English would travel all on her own to live in east London? I heard some time back, that a single man was not allowed to come to live here unless he was married or had family here already, so what were the rules about single women from the Russian Empire in 1902? If she had a brother who had come to live in London and who was already married either in London or in Russia before she arrived, would she have been allowed then to come to live here on those grounds? Or, do you think it was allowed/more likely that my 20 year old female relative came to live with aunts/uncles who perhaps were already here? And if so, why can't I find any information in the National Archives or in the Family Records Centre about them in 1902?!!!! Any comments would be most helpful! Thanks, B. Shiel

< . .because the age gap between her and her brother/s was a good 20 years, and her father was at least 55 when she was born. Is this common, for children from the Russian Empire to have such old dads?> As a rule of thumb, I generally assume that the span of childbearing was 25 years in the 19th century. So a gap of 20 years between siblings would not be impossible. Nor would a father aged 55 - leaving aside the biological fact that men normally remain fertile into old age, as long as his wife was younger than he was, it is entirely possible. A quick glance at my family tree showed my gggf becoming a father again at the age of 52, at which time his wife was 42 and had been having children for 23 years. Family sizes and patterns seemed to change quite abruptly from the start of the 20th century, and the families of 10-12 children gave way to families of 2-3 - usually more closely spaced. Interestingly this change pre-dated the "popularisation" of family planning methods by about 20 years but one must assume that knowledge of how to limit family size was becoming widely known even before the pioneering work of people such as Marie Stopes. Beverly Bergman Camberley UK