Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2015 i Who Do You Think You Are?

The new series of Who Do You Think You Are? is in full swing and here in the office we’re really enjoying the mix of stories and historical periods – not to mention the fascinating documents the show’s researchers have unearthed. I spoke to Jane Seymour about the challenges and detective work involved in making her wonderful, if tragic, episode (see page 18). We also have advice on how to research your own Polish-Jewish ancestors (page 22). There are some great new data releases out there to explore. Findmypast has added 1.9 million records to its criminals collection (turn to page 52 to find out how to get the most from them), while those of you with merchant marines in your family tree will be glad to hear that a…

Man City player bit.ly/1L1aSYa Is there anyone out there who is related to, or knows about, William Smith (b1874 in Buxton), after 1902? He played football for Manchester City between 1897 and 1902. I cannot find him after he stopped playing. This is a team photo from The Golden Penny Magazine. He was known as William ‘Buxton’ Smith because another player in the team was also a William Smith. He came from Stockport and was known as S Smith for William ‘Stockport’ Smith. Smiffy gds14 WW1 final resting place bit.ly/1PajJ8k I am trying to find the final resting place or memorial for my great grandfather, William Wallace, based at the Royal Field Artillery in Victoria Barracks, Athlone, Ireland, in 1907. It is believed he was from Scotland, probably Dundee. His…

The dearly departed Alan looks at some of the touching tributes to family members found at churches and cathedrals across the land During the past few years I’ve visited many churches and cathedrals, and often find myself looking with amusement or sadness at the inscriptions on monuments and wall tablets. I enjoy the flattering prose of the tributes to the departed, composed to give the most positive and virtuous impression for posterity, and I’m touched by the sad stories that they often tell. For example, John Barker esquire, of Clare Priory in Suffolk, died in November 1804. His grieving wife Caroline penned an epitaph, which is inscribed on an elegant oval marble tablet in St Peter and Paul’s Church, Clare. She did this so that his “Infant Children” would be…

Plock Yizkor book Soon after the war Jewish survivors of the Holocaust began to record in Yizkor books what they remembered about the people from their community who were killed. The Yizkor book for Plock, where Jane’s family were from, revealed that Jane’s great uncle Herman Temerson hid outside the ghetto on the ‘Aryan’ side. This was a vital development in the search for what happened to him and his family. International Tracing Service The International Tracing Service Archive was essential to tracking the movements of Jane’s great aunt Jadwiga. We knew she survived the war, but didn’t know where she went. Letters from Jadwiga’s brother-in-law to the Red Cross showed him trying to get her to Geneva to be with her sister. Immigration papers We’d heard a family story…

• National Library of Ireland Kildare Street, Dublin 2 nli.ie + 353 1 603 0200 info@nli.ie The NLI Newspaper database will tell you the publication dates of a particular newspaper and if it is available on microfilm or hard copy. • National Archives of Ireland Bishop Street, Dublin 8 nationalarchives.ie +353 1 407 2300 mail@nationalarchives.ie • National Museum of Ireland Collins Barracks, Benburb Street, Dublin 7 museum.ie • The Military Archives Cathal Brugha Barracks, Rathmines, Dublin 6 militaryarchives@defenceforces.ie militaryarchives.ie • Dun Na Si Heritage Centre Knockdomney, Moate, County Westmeath dunnasimoate@tinet.ie WEBSITES • Accredited Genealogy Ireland apgi.ie Visit the Association of Professional Genealogists in Ireland’s website to find a professional genealogist. • Ask About Ireland askaboutireland.ie/griffith-valuation Search Griffith’s Valuation for free here. • Irish Genealogy irishgenealogy.ie BOOKS Directory of Irish Archives…

Back in the mid-19th century, tightrope walkers were the daredevils of the entertainment world. Top of the bill at circuses and variety shows, such acts would attract crowds from far and wide who gasped in amazement at their gymnastics on the high wire. Blondin, the famous funambulist, achieved worldwide fame by crossing Niagara Falls, sometimes blindfolded or carrying his manager on his back. The Frenchman may have dominated the headlines, but few people know that we had our very own ‘British Blondin’ who was equally daring. His name was Albert Morton and he is Vivien Concannon’s paternal great grandfather. “I read Roy Kneath’s article in Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine about his wife’s circus family with interest,” says Vivien. “I have been researching my Morton ancestors for some…

I have a photograph of my grandfather in military uniform – but what regiment did he serve in? Q I was told my grandfather Frederick Norton, who was born in 1881, joined the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) aged about 35 in 1916 and served until 1918-9. He was born and raised in Paddington, London. The only photo I have of him in uniform shows him looking very young. It was taken in Edgware Road, London, and is said to show him as a Rifle Brigade member. Derrick Norton, by email A It’s a lovely photo, but certainly not of a soldier from the Rifle Brigade, who were infantry. He’s wearing spurs so is clearly a horseman. It’s an ‘undress’ uniform, shown by the pillbox cap – a uniform not worn…

Sir Derek Jacobi was aware that his family had a French connection through his mother but knew little more. He discovered his maternal great great grandfather was called Armand la Plaigne, a name that strongly indicated French origins. Derek traced Armand and his family through census returns and located his sister, Hannah, in the 1891 census. She was resident at the French Hospital. Derek learned the French Hospital was incorporated in 1718 for French Protestants and their descendants. He also found her application to the hospital, which detailed her exact French descent from Joseph de la Plaigne, who was a “refuge” in 1702. are held by the Huguenot Society (huguenotsociety.org. uk). This society is a very important resource for those who are researching Huguenot ancestors as it is dedicated to…

Have a clear idea of the records that you need to see. Visit the online catalogue for preliminary research into what the archives hold. Search online catalogues either directly on the archive website, or via The National Archives’ Discovery catalogue, which now provides access to many other archives’ holdings. Use place name searches as well as surname searches, as only selected records will be name-indexed. Gather your research materials together and prepare a plan to remind you what you intend to look at. It is easy to get distracted in a new setting and forget what you came for. Avoid forgetting vital details of the people you are planning to research, by making a simple factsheet for each person or family you want to investigate. Find out the opening times,…

THE WOMEN’S LIBRARY The Women’s Library at the London School of Economics holds the archives of the National Federation of Women’s Institutes (NFWI). Search the catalogue at lse.ac.uk/library/collections/featuredCollections/ womensLibraryLSE.aspx. It’s a wide-ranging collection, particularly informative about the administration of the NFWI and its national officers. HOME AND COUNTRY / WI LIFE The WI’s monthly magazine, Home and Country, was published from 1919 until 2006, when it changed its name to WI Life. It’s a rich resource not just for researching the history of the WI, but for getting a sense of contemporary social history. The Bodleian Library in Oxford (bodleian.ox.ac.uk) holds an almost complete run. LOCAL ARCHIVES Local WIs are arranged into county federations; some of these hold their own archives, while others are deposited at county record offices. These collections…

In order for sailors to know exactly where they were at sea, it became increasingly vital to calculate longitude – the ship’s east/west position. Accurate pendulum clocks existed from the 17th century but the movement of the ship, air humidity and temperature badly affected the timepieces. In 1714, the British government issued a competition offering a £20,000 reward for anyone who could come up with a solution to the longitude problem and provide a portable clock accurate to within three seconds a day – unheard of at that time. Enter John Harrison (1693-1776), a joiner/clock maker from Yorkshire who had built his first longcase clock aged 20. The factual but quasi-fictionalised Longitude by Dava Sobel, published by Harper in 1995, depicts his endeavours and was filmed by Granada TV in…

How long have you been researching your family history? I began in 2011 after being introduced to this compelling pastime by my cousin. I didn’t think there would be much of interest to find. How wrong I was! It’s amazing what can be discovered with a little perseverance and hard work. The only starting points I had from my parents were some photographs and Army records. What had you uncovered before hitting your brick wall? I was a beginner, so I joined ancestry.co.uk believing it was the only way to start building my family tree. I have an annoying habit of not reading instructions before starting anything, so unknowingly I made my tree public straight away. However, this was perhaps the best decision I ‘made’. I also ticked the box…

The Durham County Record Office website (www.durhamrecordoffice.org.uk), while rather dated, has lots of useful of information, including detailed guides to local sources. There are plans to move to a new platform in the next couple of years – one that will include an online payment system for research enquiries and ordering copies of documents and publications. The local registration service (www.durham.gov.uk/article/2256/Order-a-copy-of-a-certificate) has 1.2 million records of birth, marriage and death registrations relating to the current geographical boundaries of County Durham. The site includes a searchable online marriage index from 1837-2012. You should also try the latest version of the FreeREG website (freereg2.freereg.org.uk) along with its sister sites FreeBMD and FreeCEN. The Durham Genealogy wiki is at familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/Durham_ Genealogy, and FamilySearch also has the likes of the Durham Bishop’s Transcripts Collection –…

I was interested to read the article on unusual marital records by Rebecca Probert in your July issue, as it has reminded me of a marriage in my own family tree. My paternal grandfather had three sisters, who were born in 1859, 1861 and 1863 in Kinross-shire. The first sister married a rather mysterious character, the son of a Scottish blacksmith, whose career lay in Burma, where he was prominent in Masonic activities. The man later married another of the sisters but family lore was adamant neither wife ever accompanied him to foreign parts. I can’t find a record for the death of his first wife but it must have been before December 1908, because that is when (correctly described as “brother-in-law”), he married the second sister in Scotland. He…

342,282 records of merchant navy apprentices who served between 1824 and 1910 have been added to ancestry.co.uk 4 skeletons unearthed in Virginia have been identified as belonging to some of the earliest English settlers in the New World. Full story at bbc.in/1Oz0Zi2 190,233 people are recorded in a free online index of records held at Ireland’s Registry of Deeds at irish deedsindex.net £11.7m has been awarded to Cornwall Council from the Heritage Lottery Fund to create a new archive centre in Redruth 8,324 people now receive updates about the brand-new series of WDYTYA? at facebook.com/ whodoyouthink youaremagazine…

Poland was at the epicentre of the Second World War in September 1939. Within a month the Nazis had established the first Jewish ghetto in Piotrków Trybunalski, forcibly segregating Jewish citizens from their non-Jewish neighbours. Jane Seymour’s great aunt lived in Europe’s largest ghetto in Warsaw, but as conditions deteriorated she enlisted the help of friends outside the ghetto to escape the persecution that would result in Hitler’s Final Solution. Those who didn’t make it safely into hiding had only a very slim chance of survival. Another great aunt moved to France before the war, and papers scattered among several countries’ archives enabled Jane to trace her relatives’ exodus from Paris and migration across Europe as they desperately fled the Nazi advance. The location of any remaining documents depends on…

In trying to establish the details of Peg’s life for my book, I first turned to her memoirs – her direct words and her own version of her life. Peg wrote very little about her family but names her father as Matthew Plunkett. She refers to her mother only as ‘A O’Reilly’, which left me without even a full name to go on. I only knew that she was a distant cousin of the Earl of Cavan. Her mother was closely related to the Plunketts (Peg tells us that her parents were ‘Cousin Germans’ or first cousins), which means her paternal grandfather and maternal grandmother were brother and sister. This meant that her grandmother must have married into the O’Reilly family. Of 22 children borne by Peg’s mother, only eight…

Much of the leisure time of late-18th-century people was taken up with open-air amusements. The main locations for outdoor entertainment between May and August were pleasure gardens and Vauxhall in London was the most famous. There had been a pleasure garden on the south of the Thames since 1661 but in 1732, Jonathan Tyers, called ‘the master builder of delight’, opened a transformed 12-acre site. It was the favourite meeting place for Londoners of all social classes who could afford the shilling entrance fee. There was music to be heard everywhere, a series of picturesque ‘walks’ illuminated with many small lanterns spanned by triumphal arches, grottoes, statues, temples and waterfalls by day; with music, lights, fireworks, balls and masquerades by night. With a nod to fashionable Orientalism, there was a…

PAUL BLAKE co-wrote Discover Your Roots and is a fellow of the Society of Genealogists. JANET DEMPSEY is a Records Specialist at The National Archives, concentrating on maritime and transport records. ROGER KERSHAW is head of Military, Maritime, Transport and Family History (and Head of ARK Editorial team) at TNA. SARA KHAN is the lead researcher on the Who Do You Think You Are? BBC television series. RUTH SYMES is a freelance writer and historian living in the Manchester area. PHIL TOMASELLI is a military family history expert and the author of Tracing Your Air Force Ancestors. ALISON TOPLIS writes on the history of clothing and is an honorary fellow at the University of Wolverhampton.…

“The Royal Museums Greenwich website is a must. Firstly, the Caird Library pages contain a catalogue of its rich book and manuscript collections, and also a set of research guides (rmg.co.uk/researchers/library/ research-guides) covering ships’ registers, crew lists and certification of captains, mates and engineers. These are as useful as any available online, though they do underplay the fact that the regulations for fishing vessels were slightly different to merchant ships, or were introduced at different times. “At some point, most researchers will need to consult original documents, and the ‘Aeon’ catalogue system is a comprehensive and fairly user-friendly means of identifying and ordering those held by the museum. “However, more records are being placed online, a trend the museum has joined by digitising all of its crew lists for 1915 in…

ARCHIVES The National Archives Ruskin Avenue, Kew TW9 4DU nationalarchives.gov.uk The biggest collection of criminal records. London Metropolitan Archives 40 Northampton Road, Clerkenwell, London EC1R 0HB www.lma.gov.uk Useful for London and Middlesex quarter sessions, as well as Old Bailey records before 1834. The Society of Genealogists 14 Charterhouse Buildings, Goswell Road, London EC1M 7BA sog.org.uk Regional records and more unusual crime material. The National Archives of Scotland 2 Princes Street, Edinburgh EH1 3YY www. nas.gov.uk The main repository for Scottish court records. WEBSITES Court of Great Sessions in Wales  llgc.org.uk/sesiwn_fawr/index_s.htm A database of Welsh gaol records from 1730 to 1830. Old Bailey Online  www.oldbaileyonline.org Search this court’s proceedings for free from 1674-1913. BOOKS Tracing Your Criminal Ancestors: A Guide for Family Historians by Stephen Wade (Pen & Sword, 2009) Criminal…

• Worshipful Company of Clockmakers clockmakers.org The Worshipful Company of Clockmakers website has useful information about the history of clocks. A useful bibliography can be found at clockmakers. org/horology/horological-bibliography. • Clock and Watch Makers database freepages.genealogy.  rootsweb.ancestry. com/~blacksmiths/clockmakers-1.htm A clock and watchmakers database compiled by Ann Spiro is hosted on Rootsweb. • Watchmakers and Clockmakers of the World search.ancestry.co.uk/ search/db.aspx?dbid=34587 GH Baillie’s 1947 Watchmakers and Clockmakers of the World is available under the occupations section of Ancestry. The Society of Genealogists in London also holds a printed copy. • Clockmakers and Watchmakers of Northamptonshire edintone.com/watchmakers A list of counties which have online databases of local watch and clockmakers.…

ANCESTRY SEARCHES When typing in your ancestor’s name in the Ancestry website, be aware that many names are misspelt so try slightly different spellings, for instance, Dennis instead of Dinnis. STREET DIRECTORIES Find the occupations of other members of the street to build a picture of an ancestor’s world. MyHouseMyStreet (mhms.org.uk) gave Jackie her breakthrough. BLOGGING Make yourself visible so that others can get in touch and share discoveries. Jackie’s blog is at jackiedinnis.com.…

County Durham has a rich industrial heritage, particularly coal, iron and lead mining and steel production. At its height in the 1920s, it is estimated that about 170,000 coal miners worked in the county. It was also home to the world’s first public railway to use steam locomotives – the Stockton and Darlington Railway, which opened in 1825. Today, tourism and other trades have replaced much of the heavy industry, but you can still research evidence of the county’s working past through the record office. The records that survive at Durham County Record Office document not only processes and production, but also the workforce. The coal mining collections, for example, contain information on the production, statistics, opening and closure of mines, alongside trade union material and other records relating to…

Why doesn’t the code that’s printed in the magazine work correctly? Each bonus content code applies only to the issue of the magazine in which it’s printed. Make sure that you’ve clicked on the red ‘View content’ button next to the cover of the correct issue. Why isn’t the code box appearing? If nothing happens when you click the red ‘View content’ button, it’s possible that firewall or virus-checking software is stopping the website from running JavaScript. You can check to see if this is the case by temporarily halting these programs and then reloading the website. Why is the data only available for a period of six months? Due to the terms and conditions agreed with some of the firms that provide the bonus content for our magazine, we…

OUR PICK Oxfordshire Family History Fair 3 October THE MARLBOROUGH SCHOOL, WOODSTOCK ofhs.org.uk/fair.html fair@ofhs.org.uk Oxfordshire Family History Society (OFHS) is once again hosting its annual fair, featuring stands from an assortment of societies, publishers and dealers in second-hand books and postcards. OFHS will offer a range of transcripts and search services for visitors to consult, as well as providing advice on the best software packages for genealogists and how to use the internet for family history research. With free on-site parking and admission, it’s an event not to be missed. Visit the society’s website at ofhs.org.uk/fair.html for more details. Rosanna Quigley LONDON Kent Family History - Including Emigration from Kent in the 19th Century 5 September SOCIETY OF GENEALOGISTS  sog.org.uk 020 7553 3920 This afternoon talk will examine how to…

Ancestry unveils new-look website An enhanced version of the genealogy subscription site has been made available to members, offering a new-look interface and several additional features An updated version of ancestry.co.uk has been unveiled to family historians on the web. The revamped genealogy site, launched on Friday 7 August, offers a new-look user interface and a number of extra tools and features. Among the major changes is the addition of a ‘LifeStory’ to each ancestor’s profile, which collates all information about an individual into a single, chronological timeline. As well as maps, documents and photographs, the feature is enhanced by automatically-generated ‘Historical Insights’ – key events from history intended to provide wider context to a person’s life. To make source citations quicker to view, each profile also includes an updated…

BRIDEGROOM’S MISTAKE A few days ago a party went to the manse of one of our Alloa ministers to get the marriage ceremony performed. The bridegroom, in the fulness of hope and joy, stood ready to pay his vows at the hymeneal shrine, and handed to the minister what he fancied was the marriage lines. The reverend gentleman carefully looked them over, but was at a loss to discover anything in them relating to the important rite they had come to celebrate; and turning round to the bridegroom, asked him if he had no other lines in his possession. The man, in great surprise, answered that he had not, when the minister informed him that he had actually placed in his hands an account for unpaid poor rates. The unlucky…

The ORT was founded in 1880 in St Petersburg, Russia by a group of prominent Jewish intellectuals, financiers and industrialists, who petitioned Tsar Alexander II for permission to provide relief to impoverished Russian Jews through vocational training. ORT’s name is an acronym of the Russian Obshestvo Remeslennogo zemledelcheskogo Truda, meaning the Society for Trades and Agricultural Work. It’s now one of the world’s oldest and largest non-profit, vocational training organisations. Agricultural and manual skills were fundamental to gaining employment in the Pale of Settlement region of Russia, so ORT established agricultural schools and model farms, offering handicraft and agricultural training, also providing financial help to artisans and farmers. ORT saved many thousands from starvation and helped others find work through practical training in glass-blowing, sewing, gardening, cabinet making and mechanics.…

Peg Plunkett was one of the most notorious Irish courtesans of the 18th century, a woman of extraordinary perseverance and intriguing allure. A celebrated brothel-keeper who entertained many of the elite men of Dublin, her affairs with aristocrats such as the Duke of Rutland, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, made the national newspapers, and it was common knowledge among her friends that she kept her bed warm for the Duke of Leinster. She caused scandal and uproar wherever she went and on one occasion stormed a theatre when the manager banned entrance to women of ill repute. Many of the most important and wealthy men of Dublin attended her soirées, and soldiers from the British army were her constant visitors. Peg became mistress to a string of men and ran a…

Made in England Travellers’ rest This remarkable photograph, taken in 1875, depicts the Oxford Arms Inn, a 16th-century galleried coaching inn sited in London’s Warwick Lane, which was rebuilt after the Great Fire of London in 1666. The building was demolished just a year after this picture was taken. Soaking up the sun The beach at Hastings has long attracted families and holidaymakers. In this photograph from the early 1890s people enjoy a host of holiday activities – from a trip around the bay on a pleasure yacht, to listening to two female squeezebox players who are providing musical entertainment. Roll up, roll up Visitors to St Giles’ Fair, Oxford, in 1905, soak up the atmosphere and tuck into fish and chips outside Taylor’s Royal Electric Coliseum. Cracking a smile…

THE ERA This weekly national newspaper was published from 1838 to 1939. It’s a great potential source of information about theatrical ancestors and is available to search at local libraries as well as at britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk and findmypast.co.uk. FAMILY PAPERS Vivien discovered more about the whereabouts of her nomadic ancestors by going through her family papers and finding a notebook that one of them had kept. LOCAL HISTORY SOCIETIES Contacting such groups can give access to specific knowledge and help keep the costs of researching down. These societies stretch across the length and breadth of the country and are a fantastic resource for researchers.…

Letter describing a Croydon air raid, 1915 Croydon Borough archivist Lindsay Ould talks to Jon Bauckham about a letter that provides a vivid account of a First World War Zeppelin attack Although air raids are something we normally associate with the 1940s, the first bombings of mainland Britain were actually carried out during the First World War. With East Anglia taking the first direct hits in January 1915, it wasn’t long before German Zeppelins – colossal flying airships filled with hydrogen gas – began unleashing their cargo closer to the capital. An account of an attack can be found at the Museum of Croydon, as Borough Archivist Lindsay Ould explains. Which document have you chosen? I have chosen a letter written by the Reverend Alexander Sandison on 18 October 1915.…

You can search the aforementioned CLIP database at Findmypast’s Merchant Navy Crew Lists page (search.findmypast.co.uk/search-world-records/england-and-wales-merchant-navycrew-lists-1861-1913). Crew lists from Dorset History Centre and the Liverpool City Record Office are available via Ancestry (search.ancestry.co.uk/search/category.aspx?cat=113). Other useful sources include Lloyd’s Captains Registers (history. ac.uk/gh/capintro.htm) and the Guernsey Crew Lists index (history.foote-family.com/maritime/index.php). Via the Irish Marines website (irishmariners. ie), you can search the names of 24,000 Irish seamen taken from the C10 record cards (for 1918 to 1921) held at Southampton City Records Office, and there’s information on 23,500 Welsh Master Mariners available at welshmariners.org.uk. There are also the Cardiff Mariners (cardiffmariners.org.uk) and Swansea Mariners (swanseamariners.org.uk) websites. Alongside the Hull History Centre website mentioned on page 49, there’s this labour of love: hulltrawler.net. Produced “in remembrance of and dedicated to all Hull Trawlermen, their families…

From the early 1600s transportation was used as a means of punishment, with the shipping of convicts originally from the British Isles to the West Indies and America. In the late-18th and 19th centuries, overcrowding in British prisons led to the reintroduction of transportation, with the first prisoners travelling on the First Fleet of Convicts to Australia in 1787. Some 160,000 convicts were transported to Australia between 1787 and 1867, including during the Swing Riots of 1830-1831. Prisoners awaiting transportation were housed in prison hulks, which were decommissioned wooden ships initially moored in the River Thames. Transportation was largely replaced by penal servitude in 1853 and it ended completely in 1868. The National Archives holds the transportation records, including quarterly returns of convicts in prisons and prison hulks in HO…

Do you feel that you’ve exhausted all of the possible online avenues in your family history research and become stuck? Don’t worry, what you need to break down your brick wall is still likely to be available – just not on the internet. In reality, less than half of the records that exist are online. In fact, you have an exciting time ahead of you planning a trip to the county record office in the area where your kin lived to begin the fascinating task of poring over original documents and finding your ancestors’ names in them. An archive or record office for each county was gradually established after the county councils came into being at the end of the 19th century. Other local authority archive offices also exist –…

In 1966, some nine million crew lists were due to be transferred from the Register General of Shipping and Seamen to the then Public Record Office. The sheer scale of the collection led to the decision being made by the Public Record Office to preserve just a 10 per cent sample with the remainder being scheduled for destruction. Needless to say this decision was met with considerable opposition from maritime, social and labour historians as no collection existed containing such comprehensive information on working men’s lives. In the face of this growing opposition, the National Maritime Museum agreed to take a further 10 per cent. Among the selection was the remainder of the years ending in ‘5’ that had not already gone to the Public Record Office. This was to…

Edith Rigby was the founder of Lancashire’s first Women’s Institute, opened at Hutton and Howick in 1918. At first glance she would appear to be utterly conventional. She was a doctor’s wife from Preston, elegant, stylish and comfortably off. But Edith stood apart from her middle-class peers: she developed an interest in the social conditions of local mill-workers and was an ardent suffragette. In fact, she became a notorious public menace, whose offences included sprinkling acid on a golf course; setting fire to the industrialist Lord Leverhulme’s bungalow at Rivington Pike and to the Blackburn Rovers’ football ground; and hurling first black puddings and then bombs (both commendably home-made) at Winston Churchill when he visited the Liverpool Cotton Exchange in 1913. Edith was imprisoned seven times, went on hunger strike…

ALBERT A long gold chain which securely linked the pocket watch to the waistcoat was named after Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s consort. FULL HUNTER POCKET WATCH A Full Hunter pocket watch had a cover, often gold and elaborately engraved, over the watch face. It had to be opened to tell the time. HALF HUNTER POCKET WATCH This included a hole or pane of glass or crystal enabling the owner to more easily read the time. It became more popular in the 19th century than the fiddly Full Hunter. LEVER ESCAPEMENT The escapement is the device in mechanical watches and non-pendulum clocks to advance the movement of the timepiece and is responsible for the tick. The lever escapement was invented by English watchmaker Thomas Mudge (1715-1794) and is still found in…

1170 Hermit, merchant and popular medieval saint Godric of Finchale dies in Finchale. 1733 English surveyor Jeremiah Dixon is born in Cockfield. He is best known for the Mason-Dixon line, which resolved a border dispute involving Maryland, Pennsylvania and Delaware in Colonial America. 1825 The Stockton and Darlington Railway opens, connecting collieries near Shildon with Stockton-on-Tees and Darlington. It is the world’s first public railway to use steam locomotives. 1840 Durham Castle, a Norman castle originally constructed in the city of Durham in the 11th century, becomes the home of University College. 1873 The trial begins of the country’s most prolific murderess, Mary Ann Cotton. She is hanged at Durham County Gaol in March of the same year. Most of her victims died of arsenic poisoning. 1890 Stan Laurel is…

The Ryerson Index Those with Australian heritage may be interested to learn about the Ryerson Index (ryersonindex.org). This is a free index to death notices in Australian newspapers from 1803 to the present day. Its main focus is on papers from New South Wales. 1 Navigate to the homepage and click on the ‘Search Ryerson’ button on the top right-hand side of the website to begin the search. 2 Now enter the details of the person you are searching for. In our example here we are looking for a notice for a William Aird who died in Sydney in the 1850s. Enter those details and click ‘Search’. 3 All relevant results will appear. Here, there is one result for William Aird from two different newspapers. You will not be able…