You may remember that, a few months ago, we posted a blog about two ‘unknown men’ who were admitted to Herrison in 1904. One was later found out to be Horace Edward Scanlan, an engineer from Poole, and the other claimed to be Henry Octavius Keegan, an Irish-American who had gone out with two women in London and was found days later wandering naked in Lytchett Minster.
If you’ve been wondering what happened to these two men after they left Herrison, then now is your chance to find out!
Horace had started to regain his memory before being discharged, and from the records available on Ancestry it looks as though he went on to resume life with no recurrence of his memory loss. Initially, he returned to Poole, and then from 1906 to 1910, he appears on jury lists for Swanage, suggesting that he moved from his residence in Serpentine Road.
After that he disappears from the jury lists. The reason being that, in 1910, he emigrated to Canada, alongside his eldest son, Horace John Scanlan. He appears on the 1911 census of Canada as a lodger in Vancouver, in the house of Morgan Morgan. He is recorded as being an employed, 50-year-old mechanical engineer. Interestingly, his race is given as Irish, and his nationality as Canadian! Could the latter be a ‘typo’?
Horace’s wife appears to have remained in England, as she is on the 1911 census at an address in Parkstone, with three of her adult children, Charles, Laura, and Norah. Can we be sure that the Canadian Horace is the ‘our’ Horace? Well, it would appear so, because in 1915 Horace John joined the Canadian Over-Seas Expeditionary Force, and his Attestation Paper gives the name of his mother as Mary Scanlan, whose address is Hermitage Road, Parkstone, Dorset, England.
Mary Scanlan died in March 1924 and was buried in Parkstone. Horace John does appear to have returned to England at least once before his mother’s death, as he is on an incoming passenger list for a ship returning to Canada from Southampton in 1919, but we have not yet found any evidence that her husband Horace returned to England after 1910. It is possible he did but the records are not available on Ancestry currently, assuming they have survived at all.
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Henry Octavius Keegan has, unfortunately, proven to be much more elusive than Horace. It is possible, of course, that Henry Octavius Keegan was not this Unknown Man’s real name. It was much easier to change one’s name in 1904 than it is today! Alternatively, it may just be that his middle name wasn’t used in later records. Henry Keegan was once a very common name, particularly amongst Irish Americans, so he could be one of a large number of people. Either way, it remains the case that the only record we can be certain mentions him is the 20th November incoming passenger list for the ship he did not board from Southampton to New York. Unless one of our readers knows more, his story will most likely remain a mystery!