I would like to revisit my brick wall to see if anyone can help. I am trying to find out about William Stephens. He was born 1857 in South Shields, Northumberland. I think I have him on the 61, 71 and 91 and 1901 census but not the 81. He was a merchant seaman and is named on the birth certificate of my grandfather as his father. His mother was Victoria Mary Wilkinson and she styled herself Mrs Stephens but I can find no record of them ever having married. Their son, Robert Consort Stephens, was born in 1903 and his mother married James Hetherington in Jun 1905. In the 1911 census he is living with his Wilkinson grandparents and Victoria is with her new husband and family elsewhere. I would like to know whether or not William ever married and if so whom as he is my maternal G Grandfather but I have hit a brick wall. I asssume that he was at sea on the night of the 1881 census but who knows. His parents - I think - were Thomas & Sarah but that is something I have not yet been able to substantiate. Susan