Catherine (Gibbs) Cohen (1903)

Born 24 Jun 1903 in Dublin, County Dublin, Ireland

Died [date unknown] in England, United Kingdom

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Biography

Kate (Gibbs) Cohen was born in Ireland.

Catherine was born in 1903 in Dublin, Ireland. She is the daughter of James Gibbs and Ellen Clarke. The family were Roman Catholic.

Her father passed away in 1905.^[1] Her mother remarried, to labourer Thomas Walsh in 1908.^[2] They no longer appear to be in Dublin in the 1911 census.^[3] It seems more plausible that the family moved to Lancashire (Irish labour was much in demand there), and then Kate moved on down to London later, than moving to London first with James later going up to Lancashire, where he married in 1920.^[4]

In 1930, in Hampstead, Middlesex, she married gas fitter Louis Henry Cohen, known as Harry. Two children are known (there may be more):

• George Reginald Cohen 1939-2022 Footballer, married 1962 Daphne G Church, 2 sons
• Peter John Cohen 1942-2000 Nightclub owner, married (unknown) Mead, son Ben (England rugby international).

Some accounts says Kate worked for London Transport, others that she was a stores manager at the local Lots Road power station. Both were probably true at different times.

Sources

1. ↑ Death record
2. ↑ Marriage record
3. ↑ Searches for Thomas and Ellen Walsh, with children James and Catherine/Kate Gibbs (ages known) produce no combined results
4. ↑ A clear trawl at the 1921 census would help here, if anyone has a subscription

• Familysearch.org

Research Notes

Putting George Cohen onto Wikitree has taken some effort. He and his father did not even have a profile on Familysearch when I started this, but fortunately Kate and James Gibbs had been created there, and James's large family enabled me to find an existing Wikitree profile connected to the Big Tree relatively quickly (I had a much harder time with connecting Gordon Banks and Alan Ball!). But I still had to build the chain of profiles, and I wanted to make them all look nice, and have the sources attached.

In fact, it is really fortunate that Kate was Irish, because the free-to-use irishgenealogy.ie website had all the birth, marriage and death records from her side of the family easily findable. English census records are a bit more tricky with paywalls restricting how you can search.

Louis (or Lewis) H. Cohen, Kate's husband, George's father, is a bit of a brick wall. There are just too many Louis Cohens in London, we don't know his exact birth date, or his parent's names, the only clues in George's obituaries are that some of his family have Ukrainian Jewish origins. So it's really helpful to have Kate and her brother doing most of the heavy lifting here.