Failure! - Or where I can’t find the man I am asked to look for.

Welcome back to the latest issue of the 'UK People Search News'.

It seems only fair that I share with you an example of where I have been unsuccessful in one of my tracing assignments. As can happen I devoted many hours to the search and spent quite a bit of money without any result. As you will see the whole case is inconclusive and at the end I set out some possible reasons why I could not get on the trail.

Background:

I was asked to look for a man who we will call James Anderson. The information I was given was:

1. that he was born around 1953
2. that he had been raised in Caithness
3. that he lived in Lambeth
4. that he was thought to be very ill with cancer and that he may have died
5. that he was a care worker for the London Borough of Hackney
6. I was given an old mobile telephone number
7. I was given an old land telephone number

The Investigation:

An investigation is a series of steps taken that hopefully develop information about the person you are looking for and should eventually lead to the person themselves. With the best will in the world, you never know how many corners you will have to turn to find someone, or indeed if you will find them at all.

1. I looked in the electoral register for Lambeth and listed all the people with the name John Anderson. I used Tracesmart at http://www.tracesmart.co.uk/ to find all the John Andersons that were listed as being born in the period 1952 to 1954.

2. I also checked electoral registers going back to 1992 on CD and DVD ROMs, but with no obvious signs.

3. I used the telephone directory to find all the J. Anderson’s in the target area as well.

4. I rang the old telephone numbers I was given to find that they were disconnected. I used an Online Codelook at http://www.magsys.co.uk/telecom/codelook.asp to find the location of the land number. It was Streatham Hill / Herne Hill area.

5. I entered the land number into AFD Names and Numbers (a paid service) and discovered that it had been an ex-directory number.

6. The next step was to phone the Registry Office in Lambeth to ask if a death had been registered in the last 6 months. They looked up the name and said that no there had been no registration of that name in the last year.

7. I phoned the Human Resources Department in the LB Hackney and asked if I could forward a letter to a member of their staff. They agreed and I duly wrote to Mr John Anderson. In a few days I received a call saying that they did not have a Mr John Anderson on their books.

8. I wrote to the local hospitals addressed to the hospital social workers, but I was not surprised when I had no reply. I also rang the cancer wards and asked for Mr Anderson by name, but with no luck.

9. By this stage I was beginning to realise that I had no real information about my subject, so I decided to try to find his birth certificate. My first move was to look him up in England and Wales using the Find My Past site at http://www.findmypast.com/index.html but I couldn’t find anything very likely.

10. I suspect that he had been born in Scotland, but there is no online search facility for that, so initially I phone New Register House in Edinburgh to ask for a 5 year search from 1951 to 1955. They called back to say that there was no one answer to my request so they would not be sending me any certificates. Now, I have family in Edinburgh, so it was time to go on a visit and pop into New Register House while I was there. Sitting at their monitors in the archive under the great dome roof, I found 3 possible entries of the right name and in the right area. I also came away with their dates of birth and so on.

11. Using the dates of birth and the Tracesmart service I was able to locate the three John Andersons who were dotted around Great Britain and Northern Ireland. None of them was our man!

12. In quiet moments, I looked up the name on the internet, but with no success. I looked him up on a Director Search at Companies House and checked to see if he was an undischarged bankrupt. But no matches anywhere.

Conclusion:

As you can see, despite quite thorough checks, I was unable to develop much further information about my subject.

So why is this?

My guess is that my client did not have some very basic information right. For example, what if we had his name wrong?

It could be incorrectly spelled, or more likely this is a case where the first and middle names have been reversed.

How does this work?

Say that you were christened Derek John Anderson, but you didn’t like the name Derek, you may choose to call yourself John Anderson. However, it is likely that all your official documents would still show your name as Derek Anderson.

Last thoughts:

I often find that unsolved cases can be solved after leaving them aside for a while. A fresh eye may see things that I had missed the first time around. As to whether I will ever find this particular gentleman, I don’t know, but I hope that I have learnt something along the way and that I am getting better at finding people.


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I hope that this information is useful and that it helps you to find the person you are looking for.

I run a people finding service called Blood-Ties Tracing Service, which you can find at http://www.blood-ties.com/. I should be happy to help you in your searches.

Archives of these e-letters can be found on the 'UK People Search News' at http://uk-people-search.blogspot.com/ Please feel free to re-publish this article so long as it remains unaltered and this resource box is included.

The views expressed in my articles are mine alone and while they are effective methods used in my own business I cannot guarantee the results that you will achieve. While these articles are written with every care, I am not a lawyer and you should consider the legality and morality of any steps you take to trace people. Please remember that your investigation could cause distress to others so tread gently and make sure your contact is welcome to them.

Until next week -

Best regards,
Giles
info@blood-ties.com

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