Question assessment

A real investigation

Could a family story about a disappearance at sea be tested?

Lucy grew up knowing that her aunt June and the child’s nurse had disappeared from a passenger ship in 1935. The family also carried a disturbing explanation. She wanted to know what the surviving records could prove, and where it had happened.

The person
June Cameron, aged 21 months
The event
A disappearance from the liner Shropshire
The date
Sunday 4 August 1935
The result
A 30-page sourced investigation

Published with the family’s permission. This public case study uses the findings and citations from the investigation. It does not reproduce subscription records or archive images whose separate publication rights have not been cleared.

01 / The question

The family knew the outline. Could the record supply the detail?

Lucy’s account placed her grandparents, their children and a nurse on a voyage back towards Malaya. It said that June and the nurse disappeared, and that a suitcase filled with rocks revealed a planned murder-suicide.

The research task was not to retell that account as fact. It was to identify the voyage, find contemporary evidence, reconstruct the family around it and mark the exact point where documentation gave way to memory.

“Did records survive, and could the place where it happened be identified?”

02 / Reconstructing the event

Several small records formed one defensible chronology.

  1. 17 September 1934

    Passenger indexes place John Austen Cameron, Margaret Elizabeth Cameron, Anne and June together on the Oxfordshire, arriving in London from Rangoon.

  2. 2 August 1935

    An outward index places the family on the Shropshire, bound towards Colombo. June appears to have been mistranscribed as “Jane” in the index.

  3. 4 August 1935

    Contemporary reports state that June and her Chinese nurse disappeared at lunchtime off the Pembroke coast. The ship stopped and searched without finding them.

  4. After the event

    Later records revealed the family’s return to Malaya, distinguished wartime experiences and a medical tradition spanning three generations.

03 / The findings

What the evidence could, and could not, support.

The value of the investigation lay as much in its boundaries as in its discoveries.

June, the ship and the dateContemporary reports name 21-month-old June Cameron, the liner Shropshire and Sunday 4 August 1935.

The broad location and searchThe disappearance occurred off the Pembroke coast. Reports say the vessel stopped and circled the spot, but no exact coordinates were found.

Two candidates for the nurseChinese-named passengers appear close to the Cameron family on the relevant 1934 and 1935 journeys. The indexes do not conclusively identify either woman as the nurse.

The weighted suitcaseNo accessible contemporary report confirms the later family account. Its absence from brief news reports does not disprove it; the claim remains unresolved.

The exact place at seaOffshore from Pembrokeshire is documented. A precise map pin would go beyond the evidence until the ship’s official papers are examined.

04 / Beyond the central question

The research uncovered a family shaped by medicine, migration and war.

Three generations of doctors

June’s mother, Dr Margaret Elizabeth Cameron, was medically qualified. So were both of Margaret’s parents, Thomas Clerkson Paterson and Frances Annie Leete, who worked in medical missions in Shantung, China.

A wartime story corrected

June’s father, Dr John Cameron, was interned in Singapore and later appointed MBE for his service. A New Zealand Gazette notice showed that Margaret was in Auckland by May 1942, correcting the belief that both grandparents endured the same long internment.

A focused question opened into a wider history, but every additional finding was held to the same standard of proof.

05 / What comes next

The investigation ended with a route forward, not a manufactured ending.

The report identified the records most likely to answer what remains unresolved.

The ship’s official log
The strongest lead for the exact position, timings, search and any record of evidence found in the cabin.
The original passenger manifests
Needed to compare the two nurse candidates and inspect age, occupation and household annotations.
Longer British press reports
Several identified articles may contain details omitted from the short Reuter reports available so far.
Evacuation records
Could establish how and when Margaret reached New Zealand before Singapore fell.

Selected public source trail

Known Again · Case study

The disappearance of June Cameron and her nurse

30
carefully designed pages
31
numbered source references
3
clear evidence classifications

06 / The finished work

A report the family could read, question and keep.

The finished investigation brought the chronology, records, family reconstruction, evidence judgements and next research routes into one coherent account.

“We could not have done this without you, and it means so much to us. I would be happy to recommend you to anyone wanting to find out about their past.”Lucy Cameron, June’s niece
Read the public case study Rights-safe summary · PDF · no archive scans

Initial question assessment

What question has your family never quite answered?

Tell us the account as you know it. We will consider which records may survive, what they could realistically establish and where the evidence may run out before you commit.

What you receive

The records most likely to bear on the question

Where the evidence may be weak or unavailable

A clear £495 proposal, only where the starting information suggests a worthwhile research route

Who is the investigation for?

We normally reply within one working day.

This is a brief personal email, not a report or a record search. Please do not include sensitive information about living people at this stage. Tell us about a photograph or document rather than attaching it; if it may help, Nick will arrange how to share it after he replies.

If you prefer, email hello@knownagain.co.uk.