From Calcutta to Devon: A British family’s global footprint

18th September 2025

We continue our series on how colleagues have used the 1921 census to find out more about their family history. This is Jasmine’s account of what the 1921 helped her discover.

My grandparents on my father’s side were both born in Calcutta, India, in 1919 and 1929 respectfully. I believe their fathers knew of each other, since they both worked in the jute business and had offices on the same street, but my grandparents did not meet or marry until later in England. This, unsurprising, since their families would have moved in different circles. My Grandma Cynthia’s would have been invited to balls at the Governor’s palace, with my Grandpa Robert’s likely living a more modest expat lifestyle.

When Robert and Cynthia’s marriage ended before I was born, Robert remarried. To Catherine (Kate) Trevelyan, also born in India but this time in Indore where her father worked for the Indian Civil Service. From the number of people with British parentage listed in the census as born in India, these coincidences are perhaps not as surprising as one might think.

Robert does not appear in the 1921 census (nor do his parents). He wouldn’t move to England for another few years, alongside his brother with whom he attended boarding school whilst their father stayed working in India. Ancestry does, however, tell me that my great grandparents Robert and Dorothy married in Madras in 1918.

Cynthia’s father, Ezekiel Judah, was also living in Calcutta in 1921 – born into the Baghdadi Jewish community there. Ezekiel didn’t marry my great grandmother Sylvia Frank until 1923, so presumably she wasn’t living there with him. According to the census, she was in Paddington, London, aged twenty seven and single, living with her parents, two siblings and three servants. Her father Leopold was a Wool Merchant from Baravia, Franconia in Germany, and her brother Joseph appears to have followed their father into the family business. As a Sephardic Jew, it would have been quite something for Ezekiel not only to have married a Jewish woman from outside his Calcutta community, but a German Ashkenazi one.

Of Sylvia’s three siblings, only two are recorded as living at 49 Westbourne Terrace. Her sister Ella’s twin Murray was, at the time, a Lance Corporal in the Infantry arm of the Army and is shown as stationed in Wimbledon. The census record he appears on also confirms that he was born in Paddington. Thus, answering the niggling question as to where exactly in London this generation of Franks were born and lived.

1921 census entry for Sylvia Sarah Frank
Crown copyright

1921 census entry for Murray Arthur Frank

Return listing those in service.
Crown copyright

On my mother’s side, I also had little luck finding relatives since my Grandma’s family would have been in New Zealand, where her elder brother Bobby was born in 1921. My Grandpa John’s line proved more fruitful, however, and I was able to find his father, Leonard Westcott, aged twenty two, living in Totnes in Devon and working as a Bank Ledger Clerk.

Interestingly, the surname Westcott can be traced back to the Lyttleton family of Worcestershire (of whom we hold numerous records). In 1400, my ancestor Thomas Westcot – a soldier endeared to Kings Henry IV and V – married Elizabeth Lyttleton, daughter and heir of Sir Thomas Lyttleton. The story goes that Elizabeth’s father would not consent to the marriage unless Thomas Westcot promised to call their first son by his mother’s name to secure the Lyttleton inheritance. Their other children retained the Westcot name.

1921 census entry for Leonard George Westcott.
Crown copyright

Whilst the 1921 census helped me piece together some aspects of my family history, it tells you something of the impact and reach of the British Empire, that a British person such as myself struggled to find their ancestors in a British census.