THIS week’s story is about a man who came from Germany and stayed in the area for the rest of his life.
In 1870 The Government brought in the Naturalisation Act which introduced administrative procedures for naturalising non-British subjects. A successful applicant would then be unable to be deported having pledged allegiance to the Crown.
Crucially, you had to have already been in the country for at least five years and it certainly helped if you were in a respectable job.
So it was that Oswald Friedrich Victor Wachter from Saxony obtained a certificate Of Naturalisation To An Alien at Bow Street Police Court in London on August 3 1871.