I still wonder why Wilhelm was in the Jewish Community because I have his marriage certificate, he was married in a Catholic church. Perhaps he was Jewish and Emma his wife was catholic, but I have discovered her Jaycock family, Grainger family and Hook family, and none of the certificates I have indicate a Catholic ceremony.

Believe me nothing would make me happier than to find out he was Jewish, because then I might be able to find out more on the JewishGen site about him, and this would mean that my grandmother was at least half Jewish.

Maybe his wife (Emma) died and he married a Jewish lady. I am so happy to have found this information, it now makes me drop my previous questions based on assumptions, and allows me ask relevant questions.

When I find out all there is to know, and hopefully a living descendant, I intend to write a book about him called the man with no name.

Through finding out my great-grandfathers place of birth, I have been able to make contact with a very helpful lady living in Schwaz, Austria, the village of his birth, and his father's too. His father Johann Wilfling was a clerk in a Cigar Factory, Tabac fabrik, he would have grown-up during the times of civil unrest and freedom fighting against Bavaria. The village was burnt almost to the ground during his youth and then he would have seen it rise to become a thriving silver mine town, Schwaz at this time was also known as 'the fugger-town' named after the man who owned the silver mines. This explains Wilhelm's trade as a metal worker. When he came to Britain he had a trade into which he settled immediately as a tinplate metalworker, later becoming a sheet metal worker.

During his working lifetime he moved around London from Bermondsey at the time of his marriage (1897) to Emma Jaycock at the Most Holy Trinity church, St. Olave, moving to Islington, Edmonton, Camberwell, then back to Bermondsey, and finally Twickenham. Wilhelm had 4 daughters and one son, the second daughter Wilhelmina died at the age of one of Gasteritis/Enteritis. Wilhelm was still working at his trade when he was 69 years old.

Emma (his wife) Jaycock's family are very colourful too, with her father George drowning in the river Thames under suspicious circumstances. Her mother Rebecca was born in Cork, Ireland. I found a descendant of Emma's half-brother; her father would have been my great grandmother's nephew.

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