I was just checking over my family tree as I do from time to time and looked again at the census records for my great-grandmother, Lois, after whom I was named. She is described as being a visitor to her own home in Glengorm Road, Willesden. Her own children, baby Nelson, little Ida and the two young boys George and Horace are there as sons of the head of the household, Lois’s ‘husband’ Louis. There is also a servant living in the house… but Lois is ‘a visitor’
Why? Because in actual fact, in the face of convention, she and Louis never married although they had five children together. Louis, in this census is written down as ‘George Walford’; was this an error on behalf of the enumerator, it seems unlikely by this time; it had been more common in the early years of census collection.
It seems sad to me that Lois had to pretend to be a visitor, but maybe she and Louis didn’t think of it like that; maybe they accepted their situation, lovers living together with their children, unable to marry but maintaining an outwardly respectable front. it wasn’t until after Louis’s untimely death that Lois gave herself the surname of Walford,a although it was never an official name change that was how she remained for the forty remaining years of her life and that is what is on her death certificate.
Lois Elsden 