Regarding Henry Part II

This is just a quick follow-up to my previous post about Henry Walker, the young Canterbury solicitor who was named co-respondent in an 1864 divorce case. I'd love to be able to write that I've found so much more information now and know where he was after 1866, but that would be pure fantasy. I'm no further ahead.

Gerard Llywarch MBE and wife Margaret (née McPartland) on the Isle of Wight, 1920s

What has happened is that I've been in contact with a descendant of the couple, Edwin Denne Collard and Frances Anne Groombridge, the newspaper reports of whose divorce case led me to find Henry Walker. The family stories she has heard do back up the facts I've found, and she has been able to clarify a few things, in particular that Fanny Annette remained with her father's family and that she did know that she had a half-brother in Harry Augustus Walker Collard, but they did not grow up together.

I've also spoken to a distant relative of Margaret McPartland, who was the second wife of Gerard Llywarch, the youngest son of John Edward Llywarch and Fanny Annette Collard, and who has kindly given permission to use the above photograph of them in the 1920s. Gerard was being treated for TB at a sanatorium on the Isle of Wight, but succumbed in 1924.

I've also received my Society of Genealogists membership and looked through their solicitors' indexes, but as I had suspected, the dates covered by this index pre-date Henry Walker's career and so he does not appear. I have also received a quote from the National Archives about the cost of reproducing all the papers relating to a legal case in which Henry was involved, but the cost suggests that it would be far easier just to go to Kew and see them in person as it sounds like an awful lot of documents of which very few are likely to be helpful. I think that's my next step.