This month marks the 233rd anniversary of the birth of Sir Robert Peel, who was twice prime minister of the United Kingdom and is credited with being the founder of the Metropolitan Police in London. It was on 5 February 1788 at Chamber Hall in Bury, Lancashire that he was born as the son of a wealthy textile manufacturer and politician, also confusingly named Sir Robert Peel. His father’s industrial background made the younger Robert Peel the first prime minister to have come from such a setting.

Peel’s father had been one of the early textile factory owners of the industrial revolution in Lancashire. His move in 1790 to Staffordshire came about on his election as the member of parliament for Tamworth. With his wealth he had bought the borough, along with Lord Bath’s former estate in the area, and he had then made Drayton Manor in Staffordshire his principal residence and adopted the lifestyle of a country gentleman. In 1800 he was created Sir Robert Peel, 1st Baronet of Drayton Manor in the County of Stafford and of Bury in the County Palatine of Lancaster. He would represent Tamworth until 1820, when he left parliament.

On the death of his father in 1830, Sir Robert inherited the baronetcy and the estate, and followed in his father’s footsteps when he became Tamworth’s MP. Though it was not just in politics that the second baronet left his mark. In farming circles he is remembered for breeding the first Tamworth pig when, on his inherited estate, he crossed pigs local to the area with pigs from Ireland to produce the hardy ginger-to-red animal known as the Tamworth, or Tam, and sometimes the Sandy Back.

The parliamentary seat for Tamworth in the House of Commons was by no means the first time that the second Sir Robert Peel had been an MP. As a result of his father’s influence and political connections, Robert Peel Jr had originally become a member of parliament when he was only 21, in 1809. At this time he represented Cashel, Tipperary, an Irish ‘rotten borough’ with only 24 electors in the constituency who voted him into the House of Commons in Westminster unopposed. He next stood for Chippenham in Wiltshire and for a time represented it in the Commons before then becoming an MP for Oxford University in 1817. Finally, in 1830, he took the Tamworth seat that had been his father’s ten years before him and went on to hold it until his own death in 1850.

Sir Robert Peel’s time in parliament saw him serve two terms as the British prime minister, the first running from 1834 to 1835, with the second being from 1841 to 1846. In his political career Sir Robert held a number of government posts (in both England and Ireland) before he rose to be the home secretary in 1822. It was while in this post that in 1829 he set up the Metropolitan Police Force. One thousand police constables were based at Scotland Yard and they became known as ‘Bobbies’ or ‘Peelers’ after their founder. It was not, however, just law and order that he was responsible for; in 1844 Peel introduced the Factory Act, limiting the number of hours that women and children were permitted to work in factories and he is often referred to as the founder of modern conservatism.

Checking the records
Using the wills collection on TheGenealogist we are able to find the will of Sir Robert Peel’s father, the 1st Baronet, in a document dated 27 July 1820. This Prerogative Court of Canterbury Will has a date of probate of 8 June 1830 and a single click affords us an image of the document.

When family historians research their ancestors who have moved about the country, there are a number of record collections that can be turned to. We can look at the census collection, use residential and trade directories and also more unique land records such as the tithe records – all available on TheGenealogist.

In 1837, at the time that the younger Sir Robert Peel was serving in the opposition Tory party, the Whig government put in practice a law to reform the payments of tithes. To carry out the will of parliament required a massive land survey of the majority of England and Wales to be undertaken – one which would capture the names of the owners and occupiers of land in the mid-19th century and ranging from small plots used for houses and gardens to large country estates. In Staffordshire, Sir Robert Peel’s huge holdings of the estate of Drayton Manor near Tamworth can be found in the 1837 tithe records on TheGenealogist.

This website, in an association with The National Archives, has put online the only national coverage of these unique land records. Each plot of land is recorded in fully searchable apportionment schedules that detail the type of use the land had been put to, as well as the extent of the plot, together with the names of the occupier and the owner. The records are all linked to the tithe map which can show a researcher the exact holding of land that an ancestor held in Victorian times. These maps, drawn up at the time, are now digitised on TheGenealogist and pins identify the exact plot, or plots, on a greyscale map or on a colour tithe map where it is available.

Searching tithe records from across the country for Sir Robert Peel allows us to find not only his Drayton Bassett estate in Staffordshire, but also his leased London house. It is recorded in Princes Gate to the south of Kensington Turnpike Road in Middlesex. At this address he is listed as the occupier, while his landlord is the Earl of Listowell whose own town property, Kingston House, can be seen located on the tithe map close by to Peel’s.

The tithe survey took some time to complete so that the records cover a period between 1837 and the mid-1850s. This means that they can be a useful complementary tool to the census collections for 1841 and 1851. Searching for Sir Robert Peel and family we can see that by 1841 they had now moved on to Spring Gardens in Westminster, near to the Mall. Unfortunately Sir Robert died in 1850, after a fall from his horse, and so he is not recorded in the next census for 1851.

Voting records identify another address
Other records on TheGenealogist that can be used to find residences include poll books and electoral rolls. Searching for Sir Robert we discover that he had voting rights at a property in Margate in Kent in 1832. His place of residence was, however, listed as being in Staffordshire at a time when he was the MP for Tamworth. As this was before the time of secret ballots, introduced under The Ballot Act 1872, we can tell that he didn’t use his vote for any of the three candidates in Margate. From the printed poll list, published after the election, we can see three columns on the right of the page headed with the initials of the candidates. In Sir Robert Peel’s case none have been marked with a dash, unlike examples of the other voters on the page. Why did he have the vote there? It would seem that Peel owned property in St John, Margate and in fact part of the area was called Peel Town after him. More results returned on TheGenealogist include an electoral roll book, this time for 1874 and so after the Ballot Act stopped records revealing how voters cast their ballot. This document lists Sir Robert as a voter at his Drayton Manor estate in Staffordshire.

Trade directories, as accessed on TheGenealogist, can also be a fantastic resource to discover where your ancestor lived. In Sir Robert’s case we are able to find him and his younger brothers Edmund and William recorded in Pigot’s 1835 Staffordshire Directory. Sir Robert is listed, as we would expect from our other records, living at Drayton, but we are able to now discover that his brother, William Peel, lived at Bonehill in the Fazely district of Staffordshire, between Drayton Bassett and Tamworth, and like his elder brother was an MP. This record also shows us that another brother, Edmund Peel, also lived in Bonehill at the time.

Another line of investigation that should not be ignored is to look for your ancestors in the newspapers and magazines as a report may mention a place or an address for them. In Sir Robert’s case searching TheGenealogist’s Newspaper and Magazine collection returns a piece in The Illustrated London News for 30 July 1842 that reports a deputation from Leeds and Manchester meeting Sir Robert Peel at the official residence of the prime minister in Downing Street. Other reports refer to him coming and going from his home in Drayton Manor.

Peel’s death in 1850 is recorded in the July-September GRO Deaths index for Westminster that we can find on TheGenealogist. Reports say that Peel had been thrown from his horse while riding on Constitution Hill in London on 29 June 1850. While Peel was on the ground his horse then stumbled on top of him fracturing his collarbone and rupturing his upper chest arteries. Peel died three days later on 2 July at the age of 62 and his son, also called Robert, became the 3rd Baronet and also the MP for the same Tamworth seat as his father and grandfather.

When ancestors move, or have several places of residences, then tracing them may need a search of several record sets other than just the decennial census. Using the famous statesman who was twice prime minister as an example we have consulted wills, tithes, census records, poll and electoral books, directories and newspaper collections on TheGenealogist in our quest to look for address clues.