Albert Tunner & his mother Alice Whatmough

Today’s photos are of two people with quite unusual surnames, one of which I had originally mistaken for a rather more common name. First we have Bert Tunner:-

On turning to FreeBMD for help I found there were only ever THREE births registered in the whole of England & Wales from 1837 for an Albert Tunner:-

Births Dec 1870
Tunner     Albert                   Bury 8c 467
Births Jun 1894
Tunner     Albert John           W. Ham 4a 291
Births Sep 1909
Tunner     Albert Edward      Birkenhead 8a 456

Only one of them being in Lancashire, so I went with Albert born 1870 and found him in the 1891 census with the birthplace of Radcliffe, which was in the Bury registration district. But, was he the right one? Luckily there was another photo that came with Bert’s and this one had written on the back ‘mother of Alice Tunner’:-

This photo was taken in London but to me the writing was in the same hand as the one on Bert’s photo. So did Bert have a sister named Alice – I searched earlier census and found he did, she was born about 1862 & was at home with her parents & other siblings including Bert in 1871 & 1881.

Their mother turned out to be Alice Whatmough, born 26 Dec 1828 (bap 8 Nov 1829), daughter of Robert & Alice Whatmough of Pilkington near Radcliffe. She married James Tunner (Tunnah) at St Mary’s Church, Prestwich on 20 Dec 1846, a week before her 18th birthday. So far I’ve found 8 children for them but there may be more.

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If anyone knows anything about or is connected to the TUNNER/TUNNAH or WHATMOUGH families please do contact me, I would love to pass the photos onto a family member, even a distant one. Contact by email is preferable but if you are going to leave a comment please don’t forget to include your email address.

Dawn Scotting
pandora[at]kc.net.nz