Reading Branch meeting 27th June 2019 Speaker: Members  Four members talked about their ancestors and artefacts. Peter Caton continued a theme connected to Walter Hildyard the circus performer. This time the subject was his grandfather Charles Hildyard Todd of Islington. A check on the censuses found him in 1861 & 1871 with his parents. In 1881 with his wife and daughter and 1901 with all the family but in 1911 Charles was missing. Further investigations traced him to a workhouse in 1910 and Army Service records where his next of kin was listed as a mysterious Octavia Ketera. Angie Catt gave a very detailed account of the tragic and heroic deeds of her grandfather James Augustus Gibbons. In 1882 he was charged with theft of pigeons and received a sentence of 6 weeks hard labour aged just 16. He married Florence Amelia Slingo and had five children. In 1906 whilst employed at a utilities company he saw a boy fall into the flooded…