February 2008
"Have any of you got any interesting stories about criminals, or family members who were the victims of crime?" This question, posted by quiffdo last September, launched the idea for the theme of this issue. Once again the members came up trumps with a wide variety of nefarious ancestors lurking in the branches of their trees. Backing up this month's theme is the launch of a new initiative. Each month we will be running a thread on the research board, based on each issue's theme, to assist members in researching similar stories in their own trees, drawing particular attention to the resources to be found in the wiki. If you are reading this and you are not a Family Tree Forum member, then you are most welcome to join in with the discussion at Family Tree Forum by clicking on register on the tool bar. The Editors
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The Police
This month in the occupations section to go with the theme of our criminal ancestors we thought we would have a look at the group of people responsible for catching them: the Police.
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The Metropolitan Police
A brief history from 1829-1900The Metropolitan Police force was created in 1829 by Sir Robert Peel (from which the old nickname “Peelers” originated) to address the high levels of crime and disorder in London.
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My Police Ancestors
Since I have several relatives who have been on the wrong side of the law, it is a relief to know that I also had people on the right side too!
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| Tragedy in Dolphin Lane | Fire in Boston
Jennie's grandmother’s maiden name was Launchbury, and when she started to research her family history she told her about her Uncle Frank and his family who had died in a fire in Boston, Lincolnshire, in 1936.
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| I shall not pay a farthing | The Walsham Three
I'm not sure what my great great uncle, William H Oxborrow, a Suffolk preacher and coach painter, would have made of his story appearing in FTF Magazine under a criminal theme, but in January 1903 he found himself at the Ixworth Petty Sessions charged with refusing to have his youngest daughter inoculated against Smallpox.
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| Should I read them? | Happy Days
In the drawer was the bundle of letters. They had been there all of my life and many decades before, but should I read them now she was gone? Well, I expect you can guess!
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| Absolute disregard for danger | Uncle Matt makes good
When the First World War broke out, my grandfather Denis, his wife and two children, and his two brothers and one sister were all living together in Croydon Park, Sydney, Australia, in what had been their late parents’ house. Denis had a family to support, but his brothers Matthew, 30, and Thomas, 24, were single and free to join up, which they did.
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| Convict ancestors |
I found a convict
I started researching my husband’s family many years ago. As he had a fairly uncommon surname, I thought it would be easy. The things we learn!
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Ticket of leave
I have been researching my family history for nearly twenty years now and until recently, if anyone had asked, I would have said that my ancestors led pretty ordinary, even dull lives.
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| Machine breakers |
The black cap
About half of my ancestors on my father’s side of the tree lived in Australia; some of their forebears had emigrated from Ireland, some from Kent and some from Yorkshire. It was among them that I expected to find one or more convicts, but so far, all of them have turned out to be economic migrants.
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Not transported
One set of my mum’s great grandparents, William Liddiard and Ellen Cleeter, were both born illegitimate and have the unique distinction, in my experience, of each having their mother’s names listed in the father's column on their marriage certificate.
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| Capital Punishment |
Matrimony or prison
Baptised 1762, hanged and gibbeted in 1789, John Walford was born in the Parish of Over Stowey in the depths of the Quantock Hills in Somerset. He was from a respectable family. His father William had a small business as a collier and charcoal burner which he sold in local villages.
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Shot his wife
Way back in the mid 1970s one of our daughters, who was 7 years old at the time, arrived home from school with her summer homework, which was to make a family tree.
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Deadly rice pudding
Whilst I was researching my Tarver ancestors from Gloucestershire, I discovered Harriet Tarver who, at 21 years of age, murdered her husband, and was the youngest woman to be hanged in Gloucestershire during the 19th century.
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The scrumper who killed
As some of you may be aware, my mother died when I was a baby. Ten years later my dad remarried and I have step-siblings. A couple of years ago I gave my youngest step-brother his dad’s family tree as a present.
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| Sent to Broadmoor |
The Rendcombe Tragedy
This is an account of how I used census information, newspaper reports, assizes papers and websites as well as records offices, to trace the tragedy of William Mealing and his fiancée Sarah Moss in 1862 in Rendcombe, a small village in the Gloucestershire Cotswolds.
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