Born in England under the name Samuel Jones, he was estranged from his family at an early age and placed in a school in Canada.
The two boys eventually were in a train accident; Jones survived, but Ford was killed.
Dashiell Hammett's novel The Maltese Falcon (1930) recounts the story, apparently based on a true case, of a businessman named Flitcraft who spontaneously abandons his career and his marriage, abruptly moving to another city and inventing another identity.
If this incident did indeed occur in the 1920s or earlier, Flitcraft would have encountered little difficulty in establishing a new life without formal documents such as a birth certificate and Social Security number.
If this had occurred ten years later, Flitcraft would have needed a ghost identity to begin his new life.