With no Army nor prison documentation to give a place of birth, Thomas Tipper’s origins may have remained a mystery but for the visit of his father, John Tipper, to Millbank Prison. The prison record indicated that Tipper senior lived in Tutbury, Staffordshire and from that small start came a back-story for Thomas.

The 1851 Census of England and Wales indicated that John Tipper and his wife Lydia were living in Burton Street, Burton upon Trent (registration sub-district of Tutbury), Staffordshire. The census shows three daughters aged 11, 6, 3 years, and one son aged seven months; certainly Thomas was not living at home – and a bit young to have joined the Army at this time as his prison records show he was born in 1838. I then looked for John, Lydia and Thomas and Elizabeth (the 11-year-old) as a baby in the 1841 Census but could not find them as a family. Next step was to look for John and Lydia’s marriage … not surprising that this union took place in St Mary’s Church, Tutbury, but the date was a surprise – 4 Oct 1844. This implied that Thomas and his sister Elizabeth had been born out of wedlock.

I then looked again in the 1841 Census and saw that a Thomas aged 2 was living with a family named Archer, along with a Sarah Tipper, in the township of Coton, Staffordshire. What did that mean, I wondered. Had John Tipper been married prior to his marriage to Lydia? No marriage records turned up in Staffordshire, but I did find a marriage between John Tipper (father James, shoemaker) and Sarah Archer (father Thomas, occupation joiner) in the bordering county of Derbyshire. They were bachelor and spinster, both living in Derby in May 1838 at the time of their marriage and -unusual for the time – they could both sign their names. Back I went to the ‘Archer Census’ where the head of household was Thomas Archer, occupation joiner. So our infant Thomas Tipper was living with his mother and grandparents in 1841. Finding a Thomas Tipper born in 1838 with a connection to a John Tipper, potentially his father, I then looked for Thomas’s baptism – and there it was in St Werburgh’s Church in Hanbury 19 Aug 1838, parents John and Sarah Tipper. But what of prison visitor John’s wife Lydia, married in 1844? Was she his second wife? Yes of course, another St Werburgh’s Church record shows the burial of Sarah Tipper (Thomas’s mother) on 16 Jun 1841 aged 27. Perhaps poor Sarah was sick and went back to her parents’ home with her baby just a few months before she died. What was John senior up to while she was away?

Is all that proof of Thomas’s origin? Maybe not, but it is certainly a coincidence.