Secret history of my family home

But I have virtually no knowledge of the people who lived in my house before my wife and I bought it in 1997, apart from our immediate predecessors. Now, thanks to the 1911 Census going online for the first time this week, it is possible to look up precisely who slept under the same roof as us almost a century ago.

The entry for my house gives a fascinating glimpse of a life normally only accessible through the pages of period novels. The "head" of the household - no such status exists in today's census - was 42-year-old Abbis Peel. His occupation is listed as Commercial Traveller Mantles and Costumes. That means he was a travelling salesman who sold dresses and coats. Mantles - full-length women's coats to go over voluminous dresses - are normally associated with the Victorian era and it may have been that poor Abbis was already struggling as 20th century fashions moved on.

Abbis is listed as married for 13 years but no Mrs Peel was in residence, at least not on the night of the census. Was he separated? Unlikely at that time, surely.

Abbis was, like me, an incomer, born in Royston in Hertfordshire who presumably came to London for employment reasons - again like me. He shared the house with his 27-year-old step sister-in-law, Rose Stevens, and her two-year-old daughter Marguerite Stevens. It is impossible not to wonder what combination of circumstances, tragic or economic, threw together the married Mr Peel with his relatively distant relative and her little girl.

One other detail caught my eye. Hammersmith was then a working class area with few owner occupiers but gentrification has brought creative new names for this corner of west London: Ravenscourt Park and Brackenbury Village for example. In 1911 the road is simply located in south Hammersmith.