Dr. Weekes was the parish surgeon for the town of Sandwich (Kent). In 1841 he was conducting experiments with electricity in his laboratory at 43, High Street.

In William Sturgeon's Annals of Electricity for 1841, Weekes records that: "An interesting and intelligent little girl, about 14 years of age and who was in the habit of witnessing scenes of this description, while handing to me some articles of apparatus incident to my purpose, accidentally stood upon the wire and such was the severity of the lateral shock thereby incurred, that she was sent reeling across the laboratory."

Extract from 'The Mysterious Dr. Weekes' by Alan Twyman
(ISBN 0 9513889 0 8).
For more info visit www.open-sandwich.co.uk

The Research

I decided to look him up in the 1841 Census.

My first step was to log on to the PRO Catalogue Search page at:
http://catalogue.pro.gov.uk/BasicSearch.asp

In the first field I entered: Sandwich (the town where Dr. Weekes was living in 1841).

In the second field I entered: 1841.

In the third field I entered: HO 107 (the reference code for the 1841 census).

I obtained 2 matches for 1841:

HO 107/465: Ash-near-Sandwich.

HO 107/494: Sandwich Town & Port

I now knew that if I was to find Dr. Weekes entry in the 1841 Kent census, I had to look for piece number 494.

Armed with that information, I browsed through the 1841 Kent Census CD Set from British Data Archive.

Alan Twyman's book mentioned that Dr. Weekes was baptised on March 7th, 1790 and that his laboratory was situated in Sandwich High Street but sadly the Dover District (which includes Sandwich Town & Port) didn't have a Street Index as its population is below 40,000.

The book also mentioned that for one of his experiments, Dr. Weekes had strung an insulated wire from the tower of the church of St Peter's to the tower of the church of St Clement's and had arranged a connection from the centre of the wire, via a neighbour's chimney, to his laboratory, at 43 High Street.

From that piece of information, I deduced that the High Street must have been part of St Peter or St Clement's Parish.

Browsing through the Sandwich/St Clement pages I found the records for High Street and, sure enough, William Weekes was there. Although his age was not accurate as he should have been 50 not 45 (typical of the five year accuracy of census material), the rest of the information left me in no doubt that I had finally found my man...

Useful Links:

www.uk1841Census.com

www.BritishDataArchive.com

www.TheGenealogist.co.uk

www.GenealogySupplies.com