Having seen a documentary on the Yorkshire Ripper, I began working out some of his family tree. My interest firstly was around one of his victims, Patricia Atkinson, being of the same location and surname as some of Rosie's ancestors, for which I realised she must be one of her distant cousins, although as I do see there were many, many Atkinsons around. I was then wondering, could this sadistic killing trait already have been in the Ripper's ancestry and so began to look for any clues to this. The Ripper's hometown was Bingley and one of his ancestors there, his great granddad William Speight, was born in Philadelphia, America in 1894. He had been written of in the local papers, helping a drunk basket maker, John McDonnell, along a river path at night, homewards from the showground at the gasworks field where William worked. The dazzling electric lights had compromised John's ability to see well, the night was dark and the path slippery. So John was helped along by William until all appeared safe to carry on alone. John drowned in the river that night. The verdict of a jury was 'found drowned, probably accidentally fell into the river'. I looked to see if there were more drownings at this river and there were many. Maybe this was the usual way in an era when few people would have known how to swim. Still, I looked for any possibilities of foul play. One lady, some years later, was found dead in that river, naked, with her clothes hidden in a bundle. But who can know if such things were not just down to personal distress. And, anyway, I was struggling against such a slow internet. Interestingly, I then found a ripper style attack. This was in 1888 and was in the area the Yorkshire Ripper was from. A young boy, John Gill of Bradford, had been murdered and mutilated. This was the same era as the London Jack the Ripper killings, and the local people were horrified. So much is in the old newspapers on this. The milkman the boy loved to ride on the cart of, William Barrett, was the last to be seen with him. Though he was tried for the murder, he was acquitted, despite so much being against him, such as his activities in darkness during those days which others had observed, his befriending of children, and his calm state of mind under accusation, unruffled, with not a show of emotion. He had the support of church, family, his village, money gifts for the best of lawyers. he was said to be lovely, loved by children, that he never could do such a thing. He never explained what witnesses saw or heard of him. He went on in life, with wife, with children. All was before DNA analysis; what an amazing difference this has made. The murder was never solved. I can't conclude anything about the Rippers own ancestry from this, just food for thought. But then again, how much shall I fill my head with such things? I tune into other things instead. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees.
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I can't resist it, to get stuck into some genealogy researching. I'm curious to see if I can find any more clues to some gypsy heritage. There are hints, but no certainties. I did a read up about gypsies, both Irish and swarthy easterners, but I'm none the wiser. Maxteds were many in Kent, and one I can see was a farmer, very much a settled profession. One Maxted stole from a Kingsnorth in Pluckley, the Kingsnorth's being the family of my friends Jeremy and Ian, for which he was sentenced to transportation to Australia. One of my great Aunts, Selina Maxted, eloped to America with a cousin, being pregnant by him and having two daughters out there before returning. She never married. I want to find out more on this story, but fail to find records so far. Selina's brother was my ancestor George, the one who died falling off a haybale, being pierced by a stick into his entrails. If I was a superstar on Who Do You Think You Are, they'd whip out the whole story, no problem, and for sure tell me if there was or was not gypsy blood. It's interesting that I do have Mediterranean DNA, for so do gypsy descendants, their Indian traces being oft watered down and out. It's also interesting that I can feel so at home in these warmer foreign lands. I am not such a stranger to these places after all. Back to researching, I found out more about my many times great Aunt Selina. Her cousin Edward was a bricklayer who died when they were back in London, after their few years in New York, maybe after a bankruptcy, after which Selina put an advert in the papers looking for a position caring in homes or offices. As revealed by the next census, she and her remaining daughter, the first also having died in London, both found work as family nurses. So, Selina, yes, she does sound interesting somehow, a single mother who had a stint in New York. And I was looking at my ancestress, Elizabeth Mugway of Stalisfield, who got into the papers as an old widow. By marriage she was Elizabeth Roberts. It was her husband, Charles Roberts, who is said to have been of a gypsy family, the Otterden gypsy Roberts. Elizabeth was in the papers for having been neighbour to a murder victim, Hannah Giles, killed by a man, Samuel Seager, who obsessively stalked Hannah while her husband was out rat catching with his dogs and ferrets. Elizabeth was well acquainted with both Hannah and her killer Samuel. Rumour was that this fellows obsession was borne from an affair which she had no wish to continue. That very morning Samuel had visited Elizabeth and she'd told him he was a 'queer fellow'. He warmed himself by her fire, while spying through the window on Hannah's house to be sure the husband had gone out. He then called on Hannah with the excuse he wanted her to stitch him some trousers. He was a shoemaker and sometimes she would bind his shoes for him. Having heard the rumours, Hannah's husband, Stephen Giles, had confronted Samuel and told him he was no longer welcome in the family home. Hannah made her sons stay by her whenever Samuel was around, but he got her alone when that evening she was off along the country road to babysit the children of a nearby farmer. He mercilessly slit her throat with a razor, shot her in the thighs and set her on fire. Such are the potential deeds of a stalker who who finds himself attracted yet thwarted by a lone vulnerable woman. Elizabeth and other neighbouring women sobbed their eyes swollen from distress at the killing of their friend and they robed themselves in black. The bakehouse they shared was where Hannah's body was lain, naked and burnt, all the locals and even strangers coming to view her. In one paper a map was drawn showing who lived in what cottage and the spot where Hannah had been found dead. Elizabeths cottage is marked, being the first homestead through a shared gate and across the gardens of the families. Hannahs house was the end one of a row of three, the bakehouse they shared being on the other end. As Elizabeth had been a frequent caller to Hannah's, she must have been party to Hannah's fears. And yet all else in the village had thought Samuel such a harmless man. After the killing Samuel went on the run, later to be found in another county, hungry and looking for work on the railroad, using another name, saying that he was of the Roberts family. He was recognised by a description in the papers, confessed, and was sentenced to execution. They'd 'had words' was the reason he gave for her death. Looking again at Maxteds, I found that Charles Maxteds marriage to Sarah Green, and I'd never noticed this before, though one just had to switch to the next page to see, a double marriage, the same time as his sister Sarah married her own amour. Sarah, the sister of Charles, had already had two illegitimate children, one while she herself was but a young teenager, and for respect of the second child, she had been in church about to marry, the record having begun to be written, only for it not to go ahead, not till these years later with another child now on the way. It sounds Eastenderish, dumped at the altar! Oh, the stories of the past, if we but knew them. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. ![]() I have another genealogical breakthrough, hurray, this being finding out why my ancestor, John William Harrison, was put in prison for half a year back in 1871. Oh, how so long to find this. But there it was. Being a waterman/bargeman John had crossed the Thames from Greenwich to the Isle of Dogs, whereon he began loading his barge with iron from the Samuda wharf at Blackwall. Half a ton he got into his barge when he was spotted by a man who he then set to wrestling with. As it is said, he tried to throw the fellow in the water and would have succeeded if not for another person spotting the fracas. He was given six months hard labour in prison, hence his daughter, my great great grandmother Maria, having to go into the workhouse at the age of 11, her mother already having died from tuberculosis. And for Maria's deceased mother, Eleanor Caroline Barton, who'd been raised in an orphanage, I found newspaper clips about the Sailors Female Orphan Home where she grew up, of her singing along with the other girls for the public 'Oh Where is the Guide of my Infant Years'. Even back then, when Eleanor was 7, it was reported that one of the other girls of the orphanage had died of consumption (tuberculosis). I researched more, looking at where in London my people lived and what those areas were like. When my ancestors lived at Cock Lane, beside St Sepulchre church, I do think that unlike now this was a colourful and stimulating place to be. St 'Pulchre, as it was known, was right by a prison, the Old Bailey, and the cells of those condemned to die. It was inseparable from those surrounds, tolling the bells and praying for the souls of all those condemned ones who would stop there on the way to the gallows, having a gift of flowers presented to them. But a walk away from there were other homes for my family, in more notorious areas, Field Lane with its plethora of resold stolen handkerchiefs, Plum Tree Court which was an escape route for thieves, and its neighbouring Shoe Lane, being by St Andrews Church, where priests needed bodyguards for this being such a rough place. My ancestress Sarah Bunney died in the workhouse just by there, though of a good old age. She was a survivor, and her daughter Hannah Bunney had by now long gone to Greenwich. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. I began transferring my family tree to my new yellow laptop and wrote up the various details I had so far concerning my ancestor Bartholomew Sugrue. I am fascinated overall by the Greenwich side of my family, despite their rough and ready ways. Long ago, when I was a student in London I would visit the Greenwich Park and I recall feeling something there, something otherworldly, maybe my ancestral spirits happy to see me, welcoming me (and I'd never known back then that I even had roots in that place). I found another newspaper article for my Greenwich ancestors, this time for John William Harrison, prior to his marriage to my ancestress Eleanor Caroline. He was at that time aged 21, working for a fishmonger at the Greenwich market, when he got into trouble for roughing up a policeman on Roan Street. He and his friend, a fellow fishmonger, attacked the police fellow, for whatever reason, this being unmentioned, and ripped his coat, for which they both got fines. John lived on Roan Street. These were rough parts of Greenwich, there where some of my ancestors lived out their lives. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. The British newspaper archives have opened up a whole new world. I keep on seeking articles relating to any of my family, and its not so easy, but I did find a story, this time on my Maxted line. It regarded the death of my ancestor George Maxted of Kent, whose native villages of Pluckley and Hothfield I have been to see (I have to see Westwell too). It was in Hothfield that George died, apparently falling from a haystack, which he was thatching, landing onto a big stick which pierced through his leg and into his bowels. I kept on looking through newspaper articles. Both my Irish Bartholomew Sugrue and his wife Catherine were partial to the bottle, I now read. Oh dear, this gets worse. I mean, here I am seeing drunkard Irish expats in my village, mirroring my own ancestors. It's a shock indeed. And yet another of their children had been caught stealing, James Sugrue, during the case of which it was mentioned that another of his brothers was already in prison. It's impossible to gloss any of this over, I have very dysfunctional family roots, part of a vast melange, from royal privilege to utter desolation. I had a browse for my friends genealogies too. For Akila I found family divorces, for Trebha, his grandfather being caught with stolen fish, Jeremy's drunkards, and Liz's posh side. To find all was so compelling. This is time consuming too, as genealogy is anyway. I sought more old family newspaper articles. So long one looks, coming up with nothing, and then a gem flashes up. I found the death inquest for one of my ancestresses, Maria Ann Harrison of Greenwich, already a widow, who had dropped dead after complaining of a bilious attack. Every organ in her body was said to be diseased. This, it was claimed, was in consequence of her intemperance. Oh dear, another one. A heart attack caused her death, such was the verdict. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. I buried myself into some genealogy, my quest being to try and find out at last what are the origins of my Greenwich waterman great great grandfather Thomas Seagrove. And although I have many times looked into this to no avail, this time I made the breakthrough, which was really quite amazing. My granny Isabelle did once tell me that the Seagrove surname may have been changed from something sounding like Shugrue. Previously I had looked at one character of the right time, name and place, Bartholomew Sugrue, who did indeed have a son called Thomas. But, on Thomas's marriage certificate he had written his fathers name was James Seagrove and that he was a fisherman, not a match then for this Bartholomew who was a labourer. I decided now, regardless of the contrary detail, to look again at this figure, Bartholomew Sugrue. He was an Irish immigrant from County Kerry, who had married another Irish immigrant, Catherine Sheehan. In later years he was in and out of the workhouse, every time being transferred from Greenwich to Poplar to do hard labour, a frequent way to get a small financial means to then send to his family. It was in looking up his workhouse admissions that I then saw it, the defining proof, the missing link. There it was, written on record that his next of kin was a son who lived at 9 Kitsons Terrace, exactly the time that I knew my ancestor Thomas Seagrove had been living there. In another workhouse entry I then saw the sons actual first name recorded, not with a surname: Thomas. So it is that I now know I have Irish ancestry, not only of Westmeath, but of County Kerry too, that part of the country famed for its friendly dolphin at Dingle. This was most exciting and I spent much of the rest of the day researching Bartholomew Sugrue. He lived on the marshy peninsula where now sits the Millenium Dome. It was his son then, Thomas, who married Maria Harrison, and their daughter Mary Ann who married D'Auvergne Bane, who had granny Isabelle, who had my mother, who had me. Returning to look at my newfound Irish Sugrue family, I discovered that not only was Bartholomew continually in and out of the workhouse, but that at one time his children were too, including his son Thomas, my great great grandfather, who at that time was 11 years old and still a Sugrue. And I discover why. At that time their mother, my very ancestress Catherine (neé Sheehan) had been put in prison for a year for stealing from someone. Her daughter Ann had helped her in this theft and had also been found guilty, punished with 14 days of prison followed by four years in a reformatory school. This was interesting to discover as I myself went through a phase of stealing as a child, and there it is in our family history. They lived in such desperate times, in which Bartholomew frequently subjected himself to stints of hard labour away from his family, to enable their survival. I do feel upset for these sentences imposed on Catherine and her daughter, who simply needed to survive and feed a whole brood of children, to keep all alive and healthy, in times of no modern social support system. Bartholomew died in the Greenwich workhouse. It was as much a home to him as anywhere else. He had been married to someone before Catherine, another Irish girl, Ellen Sullivan, but within three years of being together she had died. Maybe Thomas took the name Seagrove to distance himself from the sorry degradation of his Irish immigrant status; maybe Maria his wife had wished that. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. |
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