Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2025 i Who Do You Think You Are?

I know I’m not alone in being nervous about the astronomical speed with which artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming a part of our lives (whether we realise it or not). But it’s also exciting. This technology will enable us to do new things (and old things) faster and better than ever before. As Debbie Kennett says in her article on page 14 the tools are improving and changing all the time, so this month we want to inspire you to try some out. Do tell us how you get on. This month, I also share my interest in forenames (page 19). Over the years of working on this magazine, I’ve heard lots of stories about the strange names that parents give their children. Hopefully more will land in my inbox…

Genealogical records website Ancestry (ancestry.co.uk) has teamed up with Historic England (historicengland.org.uk) to commemorate more women through the National Blue Plaque Scheme, and wants members of the public to nominate their ancestors. To be eligible, your forebear must be a woman or girl who is likely to appear in the 1921 census for England and Wales; must have died at least 20 years ago; must have made a significant contribution to human welfare or happiness in her field, community or society; and must have a building in England associated with her where the plaque can go. The news comes after Historic England and Ancestry unveiled a blue plaque in Bradford commemorating actor and theatre director Esmé Church (1893–1972). You can nominate your ancestor at ancestry.co.uk/c/historic-england-2025.…

The National Library of Scotland (NLS; nls.uk) has published a new collection of 137 historic maps of England, Wales, Ireland and overseas on its free website maps.nls.uk. The original maps are held by the Society of Writers to His Majesty’s Signet (wssociety.co.uk), a private society of Scottish solicitors in Edinburgh. The NLS digitised a set of 402 Signet Library maps of Scotland five years ago. The additions include 20 Ordnance Survey one-inch-to-the-mile Old Series maps of England and Wales. Other maps include Taylor’s 1816 two-inch-to-the-mile map of Dublin and its environs; Bye and Purdy’s 1813 map of the harbours and islands in the British Channel; and a 1751 map of Great Britain that illustrates military operations of the Jacobite Rising of 1745–1746 and the secret routes of Prince Charles, or…

CHATGPT w chatgpt.com ChatGPT currently dominates the market. It’s also one of the most useful AI tools for generating images. It operates on a freemium model with daily limits on the number of free messages and images, but subscription options for power users. Also Try GEMINI w gemini.google.com Google’s AI tool works well with Google Mail, Google Docs etc. COPILOT w copilot.microsoft.com Copilot will draft content, summarise documents, and generate images. If you have an active subscription to Office 365, the tool is also integrated into Word, PowerPoint and other Microsoft apps, and available through your web browser. Also Try PERPLEXITY w perplexity.ai Perplexity is good for research, providing up-to-date citations. GROK w x.ai/grok Grok is embedded into X (formerly Twitter), but is also available as a standalone app. It…

A chance remark on an outing with his parents kickstarted Jim Robson’s family history journey. Little did the IT consultant, who lives in Paisley, Renfrewshire, know what an epic route it would take, including tales of Temperance pioneers, military men, Scottish peers and royalty. “When I was 12, my parents took me to Kelvingrove Art Gallery in Glasgow to see an exhibition devoted to designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Half joking, my mum said, ‘Some of this furniture should belong to me’, because she had been told that she was related to the items’ owner, Miss Kate Cranston, proprietor of the Cranston tearooms.” Catherine Cranston (1849– 1934) was a leading figure in the creation of Glasgow’s tearooms during the late 19th century, against the backdrop of the city’s Temperance Movement and…

DUSTYDOCS w dustydocs.com Search for a town or parish and find links to registers on free websites like FreeREG (freereg.org.uk) and county archives’ sites. ENGLAND JURISDICTIONS 1851 w familysearch.org/mapp/ FamilySearch includes parish maps of the 40 English counties with the dates that the extant parish registers or Bishops’ Transcripts begin. FAMILYSEARCH WIKI w familysearch.org/en/wiki/Main_Page FamilySearch also has details of databases for specific parishes via this guide to birth, death, marriage and other genealogical resources.…

ARTICLE From Rose’s Bill to Rose’s Act: a Reappraisal of the 1812 Parish Register Act Stuart A Gietel-Basten Local Population Studies Vol. 76, Spring 2006 This assessment of the 1812 Act and its ramifications can be read for free on the website of the Local Population Studies Society: tinyurl.com/lps-basten. BOOKS Marriage Law and Practice in the Long Eighteenth Century: a Reassessment Rebecca Probert Cambridge University Press, 2009 Here a regular contributor to WDYTYA? Magazine examines the causes and effects of the 1753 Clandestine Marriages Act. The Parish Chest: a Study of the Records of Parochial Administration in England William E Tate Cambridge University Press, 1946 The 1969 third edition of this essential study can be borrowed for free from the Internet Archive (tinyurl.com/arch-tate-chest). Tracing Your Ancestors’ Parish Records Stuart A…

ANCESTRY w bit.ly/anc-ireland-famine-relief The collection ‘Ireland, Famine Relief Commission Papers, 1844–1847’ holds the names of committee members, often landlords, parish priests and ministers, plus local donors. DUNBRODY FAMINE SHIP w dunbrody.com The famine ship is a reproduction emigrant vessel moored at the quayside of New Ross, County Wexford. The website has a database of emigrants (downloading an entry costs €10). FITZWILLIAM TENANTS w tinyurl.com/fitzwilliam-tenants Emigrants from County Wicklow’s Fitzwilliam Estate (1847–1856) are listed on this free PDF. GREAT FAMINE VOICES: LIVERPOOL w greatfaminevoices.ie/liverpool/ This example of the aforementioned Great Famine Voices project features videos telling the story of Irish migrants who came to Liverpool. IMIRCE w https://imirce.universityofgalway.ie/p/ms Here you can search and view thousands of letters from Irish emigrants to North America. LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA w tinyurl.com/lac-grosse This database…

WEBSITES SCOTLANDSPEOPLE w www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/help-and-support/guides/registering-illegitimate-births This online guide explains how ‘illegitimate’ births were recorded, and when the use of the term was finally discontinued. SCOTTISH INDEXES w scottishindexes.com/learningcourt.aspx Here you can learn how to find paternity cases in sheriff-court records. Terms are explained, and you can download an example case. WDYTYA? MAGAZINE w whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com/tutorials/religious/kirk-session-records-scotland Alongside the civil courts, Church of Scotland kirk-session records are also useful when searching for the father of an illegitimate Scottish child. In this article on the magazine’s website Chris Paton explains how you can search them.…

DIRECTORIES w tinyurl.com/sco-berks On the University of Leicester’s website Special Collections Online you can browse a dozen trade directories from the county back to 1833. WILLS INDEX w tinyurl.com/rba-wills The county archive’s index to Archdeaconry of Berkshire wills, administrations and inventories (1480–1857) reveals the full name, occupation and archival reference. ENCLOSURE MAPS w berkshireenclosure.org.uk The enclosure maps and awards on this site provide the names of the landowners and occupiers in each parish between 1738 and 1883. PEDIGREES w tinyurl.com/fs-berks-ped FamilySearch’s digital library includes this 1837 volume of pedigrees from Berkshire compiled by the registering clerk of the College of Arms. SOLDIERS INDEX w tinyurl.com/ward-soldiers Here you can search for references to soldiers of both Berkshire and Wiltshire regiments found in militia records held by the Rifles’ museum in Salisbury.…

Many of us have enjoyed a day out at one of Britain’s country houses. They are both beautiful to look at, and fascinating landmarks to our history. Holland House, built in what was then countryside outside London and is now part of Kensington, was owned by some of Britain’s most prominent families, making it a centre of social life for the upper classes for centuries until it was destroyed in the Blitz. Sophia Hall, archivist at Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Local Studies and Archives, shares an account book that records life at the house from a ‘below stairs’ perspective. The book also tells the story of the ordinary people who worked the land CAN YOU DESCRIBE THE ACCOUNT BOOK? The ledger details life on the Holland Estate in…

SOCIAL HISTORY Michael Visontay Scribe, 266 pages, £16.99 In 1921 Gabriel Wells – a wealthy US dealer in antique books who had been born Gábor Weisz to a Hungarian Jewish family – bought a Gutenberg Bible, one of the rarest and most valuable books in existence, and broke it up into leaves, or collections of pages, known as the ‘Noble Fragments’. Australian journalist Michael Visontay’s father and grandparents were also Hungarian Jews, who like thousands of others were deported to the concentration camps in the Holocaust. Visontay’s father and grandfather survived, but his grandmother was killed at Auschwitz. After the Second World War, his grandfather remarried, to Wells’ niece. This family connection inspired Visontay to write this book, telling the story of both his family and the fate of the…

DEBBIE KENNETT Debbie regularly writes for us on DNA topics and one-name studies, but this month she turns her attention to AI and how we can use some of the latest free online tools (page 14). PAUL BLAKE Paul is a regular contributor to the magazine, with over 30 years’ experience in the world of family history. On page 28 he shares some tips on using parish registers. SIMON FOWLER Simon is a genealogist, tutor, speak and author as well as a regular contributor. This month, on page 56, he shares his passion for old cars and the golden age of driving.…

Email wdytyaeditorial@ourmedia.co.uk Write to WDYTYA? Magazine, Eagle House, Bristol BS1 4ST CIVIL-WAR RESOURCE I appreciated the ‘Best Websites’ article in the May issue about the English Civil War, and just thought that readers might like to know about another source. The Warwickshire Civil War Loss Accounts have been transcribed by volunteers, and there is a database too. The information available is very name-rich – a great potential source for researchers seeking ancestors who were living in Warwickshire during the Civil War. I was one of the volunteer transcribers, and thoroughly enjoyed the project. You can find out more about the project and the database via heritage.warwickshire.gov.uk/civilwaraccounts. It’s a wonderful resource for family historians – highly recommended! Lesley Plant, Kenilworth EDITOR REPLIES Thank you for writing in Lesley and pulling us up on…

FamilySearch expands its collections from Italy Free family history site FamilySearch (familysearch.org) has made a major upgrade to its civil birth, marriage and death registration records from Italy, transcribed by volunteers. In total, 33,758,130 records have been added to 83 collections. The record sets cover all parts of the country, including Genoa, Bologna, Naples, Sicily, Milan, Rome and Venice. Some of the records date back as far as the 16th and 17th centuries, with the most recent covering 1955. Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire Archives reopens to the public Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire Archives (tinyurl.com/aberdeen-arch) reopened on 29 April. The archive was closed for almost a year ahead of the move from Old Aberdeen House to the Town House on Broad Street, and more than 9,000 archive boxes and individual items…

A friend was telling me about her grandmother, who was born in 1897 in Cumberland in the north-west of England. She left school aged 13, and went into service as a below-stairs maid at the big house. But she realised that there was more to life than being a drudge in such a place, so she sought to ‘better herself’. On her days off, she would cycle 15 miles to Carlisle, and use her precious free time learning to type. Her aim was to become one of the new ‘lady clerks’, who were making a big impact upon office employment. When she was 17, the First World War broke out, giving her the opportunity she needed. On the opposite shore of the Solway Firth, immediately over the Scottish border, the…

1 First I searched for historical information about the image I wanted to create. I used ChatGPT to learn more about the SS Minnewaska, on which my great uncle sailed from London to New York in September 1923. 2 The prompt “Use the above information to create a photo-realistic image of the SS Minnewaska in September 1923. I would like a calm ocean and a sunny day with a blue sky” produced the above picture. 3 In the image the ship had three funnels instead of the correct number (one), so I refined it with a follow-up prompt. The new picture may still not be perfect, but you can always revise it with further prompts.…

FACEBOOK GROUPS AI HELP FOR GENEALOGY (UK) w facebook.com/groups/aiforgenealogyuk This Facebook Group focuses on developments in the UK. GENEALOGY AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) w facebook.com/groups/genealogyandai Join the 10,800 members of this very busy Facebook Group. GENERATIVE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TOOLS & TACTICS w facebook.com/groups/aitoolsandtactics Genealogists use this Group to discuss more general uses of AI. PODCAST THE FAMILY HISTORY AI SHOW w blubrry.com/3738800/ Genealogists Steve Little from the USA and Mark Thompson from Canada present this podcast. WEBSITES AI GENEALOGY INSIGHTS w aigenealogyinsights.com Steve Little’s site includes a blog and links to tools and resources. COALITION FOR RESPONSIBLE AI IN GENEALOGY w craigen.org/ This US group has defined basic principles for the responsible and ethical use of AI in genealogy. GENEA-MUSINGS w www.geneamusings.com/p/artificial-intelligence-posts.html US genealogist Randy Seaver’s blog includes this collection…

GENEALOGICAL CHRONICLES These are researched lineages that document the heritage of an individual or group of people, such as a clan, to prove their rights of succession. Angus MacKay’s The Book of MacKay (Norman MacLeod, 1906) is one such example, and on the Internet Archive (tinyurl.com/arch-book-mackay). You can find other chronicles online, or in local or national archives. GENERAL REGISTER OF SASINES w www.ros.gov.uk/our-registers/general-register-of-sasines In Scottish law, a sasine is a document that transfers ownership of land or property to another party. You can search sasines back to 1617 for a fee (£30 + VAT per property). Properties registered from the 1870s include a description, location details, and lists of deeds and previous owners. OLD PARISH REGISTERS w scotlandspeople.gov.uk Before the introduction of civil registration in Scotland in 1855, Old…

George Rose is best known, by family historians at least, as the politician who introduced the Bill for the standardisation of parish registers, which came into force from 1813. Rose was born at Woodside near Brechin in Angus, Scotland, on 17 June 1744, the second son of Rev. David Rose and his wife Margaret. At the age of four, he was sent to live with an uncle in Hampstead, North-West London. His early education was at Westminster School before he entered the Royal Navy as a midshipman c1758. After suffering a wound during an engagement in the West Indies, he left the Navy in 1762. From 1772 he was employed in several posts in the Civil Service. He was first elected to Parliament in 1784 representing Launceston in Cornwall. As…

Q My great great grandfather, John Rafferty, was born in Roscommon between 1818 and 1823 and married Sarah c1843. James Rafferty (born 1846), their eldest son, migrated to Birmingham. He married in 1866, and on the certificate John was recorded as a farmer, deceased. Sarah Rafferty, widow (born 1823) is on the 1871 census in Birmingham with son Michael William Rafferty (born 1852), my great grandfather; and daughter, Ellen Beatrice Rafferty (born 1860/1). Sarah is recorded as Head, so John must have died 1861–1866, I presume in Ireland, and Sarah came over with her children to join James in Birmingham. Where in Roscommon did John (and Sarah) come from? Josephine Goddard A The Primary Valuation of Ireland, commonly known as Griffith’s Valuation, was a nationwide survey of property undertaken between…

Q It’s thought that the man in this photo is my ancestor John Hoodless (born 1786 in Cumberland), who went to Canada in 1842 and died there in 1870. His wife, Sarah, died in 1832 in Cumberland, so the other photo is not her. However, I’m wondering if they might actually show John’s son or grandson and wife. Can you help? Adrian Hoodless A These pictures appear to be paired or ‘companion’ photographs created around the same time, although I cannot decipher the matching signatures they bear. These names should denote the photographer or studio, which with research could reveal approximately when these copies were made. For these are not original photos, but – going by their soft image quality – are subtly retouched enlargements of smaller originals. Although these…

Q The birth certificate of my great grandfather, John Frank Roye Foster, says that his mother and father were John Roye Foster and Selina Foster (née Williams). However, his 1905 marriage certificate says that his father was “William Foster, deceased”. On Selina’s death certificate, it also says that she was a widow of William Foster. I can’t find any record of a marriage for Selina to either John Roye Foster or William Foster, nor can I find any record of a John Roye Foster in the area at that time. Few problems bring as much chaos to the narrative as the unreliable witness I have found a family in the right timeframe with twin brothers called John and William Foster. I recently got a new DNA match who has John…

In the early days motoring was very much dominated by men, but there were a few female trailblazers. One of them was Dorothy Elizabeth Levitt, whom newspapers called “the Fastest Girl on Earth”. She was the first British woman racing driver, and held the women’s world land-speed record. In 1905, she drove a De Dion-Bouton from London to Liverpool and back over two days, establishing the record for the longest drive achieved by a female driver – a reported total distance of 410½ miles. She even taught Queen Alexandra, the wife of Edward VII, and the royal princesses to drive. Levitt also wrote a “little handbook” encouraging women to take to the road: The Woman and the Car (John Lane, 1909), which is available from the Internet Archive at tinyurl.com/arch-levitt.…

The creation of a quadrangle of Jacobean-style houses ignited enthusiasm in the British press in 1924. This hamlet of nine thatched homes was dubbed “the all-electric village” and stood in Grey Wood near East Hoathly in Sussex. Electricity was a life-changing luxury that few could afford at the time, and wouldn’t become standard in British homes until the 1930s and 1940s. The model village was the brainchild of Annabel Dott (née Hall), who designed 29 buildings in the UK that still stand today. In the early 20th century, when Annabel’s career flourished, female architects were extremely thin on the ground. I discovered Annabel while participating in a Shared Learning Project for the University of the Third Age (u3a.org.uk), a movement for retired people. I was told that she was a…

MEMORIAL INSCRIPTIONS Amanda Leedham Pen & Sword, 176 pages, £14.99 Pen & Sword has now published more than 100 guides and handbooks for family historians, a remarkable achievement, and there’s no sign that the series is coming to an end. This latest book, on using gravestones in family history, focuses on one of the most important potential physical reminders of our forebears, seeking to explain what lies behind the inscriptions and the carved decorations. Amanda Leedham draws on her own extensive experience of researching gravestones, particularly in and around the city of Leicester and in parts of Norfolk, so a fair bit of the book is about her personal findings and genealogical journey. The title is somewhat misleading. A good deal of the content is not about gravestones, but is…

SOCIAL HISTORY BEATY RUBENS Bodleian Library, 272 pages, £30 This compelling read, covering the early history of radio in Britain, reminds us of the lifeline that the ‘wireless’ was for millions. It transported me back to my 85-year-old grandfather’s front room during Christmas 1973. So disabled by arthritis was Granddad that he rarely went out – the radio was his constant companion. He asked me to listen to the Queen’s Speech with him. He insisted on wearing a jacket and tie and standing up for Her Majesty, wobbling precariously, supported by two flimsy-looking sticks. The book’s chronological flow highlights the major events that radio brought alive – into people’s homes. Beautifully written and peppered with humorous anecdotes, such as the BBC director-general John Reith’s insistence that evening announcers were formally…

Since we are looking at how to use AI this month, I wanted to thank Alaric Evans for his ChatGPT tip shared on page 7. As he says, ChatGPT can sometimes make things up, or ‘hallucinate’. To avoid this, it helps to give the tool as much information as possible so that it is just focusing on the precise information you are missing. Reading wills can be a tricky business and I’m intrigued by how AI is being used, not just by Alaric but also by the University of Exeter in its project to transcribe the Prerogative Court of Canterbury wills at The National Archives. Find out more in our AI feature (page 14).…

Email wdytyaeditorial@ourmedia.co.uk to feature your event here for free PICK OF THE MONTH Don’t miss this online event on Romany and Traveller heritage RESEARCHING ROMANY AND TRAVELLER ANCESTORS IN CONJUNCTION WITH R&TFHS 23 June w tinyurl.com/sog-researching-romany Have you ever wondered if you have Romany, Gypsy or Traveller roots? In this event from the Society of Genealogists and the Romany and Traveller Family History Society, you can learn how to research nomadic ancestors from a series of expert speakers. Discover how to find licences for hawkers and chimney sweeps, police records, newspaper reports and rare archival collections. You will also learn about the records of the Gypsy Lore Society (1888–1974) and explore the evocative photographs of Fred Shaw, held at the University of Liverpool. Plus, uncover unique insights from the National…

Family history website Ancestry (ancestry.co.uk) has added a set of postal establishment books from the British Post Office. They contain 1,655,863 employment records, particularly high-ranking clerical staff. They date from 1691–1979, but most of the records cover the 19th century. They include novelist Anthony Trollope, who was hired as a clerk with a salary of £100 per annum in Ireland in 1841. The original records are preserved by The Postal Museum in London (postalmuseum.org).…

1 Define the role you want the tool to assume such as a professional genealogist, a genetic genealogist, an ethicist or an academic historian. 2 Describe what you want the tool to do in simple, straightforward language. You will get better results from verbs such as find, transcribe, calculate, summarise, analyse, translate and format. 3 Give the tool all of the background information you have available, such as the date of the document or image, and the names and places involved. 4 Be careful about sharing any private information with an AI tool. You run the risk that your personal details could be incorporated into the training model that the developer is using. 5 Practice makes perfect. Experiment to find out how to get the best out of the tools.…

Before the introduction of civil registration of births, marriages and deaths in England and Wales in 1837, it is the parochial registers recording the baptisms, marriages and burials of our ancestors that are the mainstay for discovering the details of our family’s heritage. Although many parishes were regularly recording the baptisms, burials and marriages that were performed in the local church, it was not until 1538 that there was any national directive that this should be done on a regular basis, with the records so created being preserved in a parish chest. However, there was no guidance as to exactly what particulars should be recorded for each event. As a consequence many such details, in countless parishes, are scant to say the least. Such was the situation for the next…

The website Ask About Ireland (askaboutireland.ie), published by the Irish agency Libraries Development, hosts one of the most important genealogical sources for the immediate post-Famine period. Griffith’s Valuation was a nationwide survey of property undertaken between 1847 and 1864. Due to the loss of the records of the 1841, 1851 and 1861 Irish census, it acts as a valuable census substitute. It is the only comprehensive nationwide record that documents the location of a family during and just after the Great Famine. The valuation includes nearly all households, from those in a single-room cottage to large landed estates, but is missing the occupiers of urban tenements and shepherds who were accommodated by their employer. The records provide the name of the head of household, their landlord and a description of…

As far back as medieval times, unmarried women in Scotland could take the fathers of their children to court to force them to pay maintenance towards the expenses incurred during birth and her subsequent care of their children. Historically, the term ‘illegitimate’ was used to describe children born out of wedlock; you may see the phrase ‘natural child’ too. Illegitimacy was common in 19th-century Scotland – as many as 10 per cent of the births between 1861 and 1865 were illegitimate – so the records are very useful for family historians. In the 19th century, paternity cases were predominantly heard at sheriff courts Note that these are effectively debt cases. If a private arrangement was made to care for the child, there would be no need for a court case…

Q I’m looking for Phoebe Eames’ birth record. Census records (1871–1911) give her birth year as 1848–1852 born in: Missenden; Lambeth; Dover; London and Great Missenden, with mother’s name Sarah. She gives two different fathers’ names on her three marriage records (James Eames and William Lark), and provides three different maiden names on her children’s birth registrations (Lark, Philbey and also Eames). I’ve found three possible birth records: Phoebe Filby in 1848, St Pancras; Phabe Filby Eames in 1848, Uxbridge Union; or Phoebe Philbey 1855, Amersham. Which is correct? Dawn Tucker A Phoebe seems unsure of details of her birth and father. She may have moved frequently in childhood, while uncertainty about her father’s name may indicate a stepfather, but could be an attempt to hide illegitimacy. The various spellings…

Q My ancestor Mary Ward, born c1768 in Norfolk, had two children with Thomas Prior: Susannah and Robert Prior, both born in Beetley, Norfolk. I need help with finding the parents of both Thomas and Mary, their baptisms and marriage record. Wendy Catchpole A Fortunately, the parish records for Beetley are very well covered: Ancestry (ancestry.co.uk), Findmypast (findmypast.co.uk), FreeREG (freereg.org.uk) and TheGenealogist (thegenealogist.co.uk) all hold not only the original parish records, but also the transcripts sent to the local archdeacon six years out of seven, and given to the bishop on his visitation in the seventh year. The baptism records show that Susannah Prior, the daughter of Thomas Prior and Mary his wife (née Ward), was born on 6 September and baptised on 14 September in 1788. Their son Robert…

When it comes to sharing our research into our tree, it can be hard to interest our relations in their own family history. The obvious solution is to present our forebears’ stories as fully formed, lively biographies, but how do you go about translating your discoveries into a compelling narrative? The answer lies in a storytelling tool like Quoll Writer, which is completely free to use. Although it’s geared towards writing fiction, you can easily adapt it for factual accounts. In this article we’ll show you how to do just that. Start by downloading Quoll Writer for Windows, Mac or Linux from quollwriter.com – in the case of Windows, simply double-click the installer and follow the prompts. If a ‘Windows protected your PC’ message appears, click ‘More info’ followed by…

BOOK The Motoring Age: The Automobile and Britain 1896–1939 Peter Thorold Profile, 2003 This guide to the social history of motoring can be freely borrowed from the Internet Archive at tinyurl.com/arch-thorold. MUSEUMS BRITISH MOTOR MUSEUM a Banbury Road, Gaydon CV35 0BJ t 01926 895300 w britishmotormuseum.co.uk The museum claims to own the world’s largest collection of historic British cars. There’s also the Brooklands Museum in Weybridge, Surrey (brooklandsmuseum.com), Coventry Transport Museum (transport-museum.com) and the National Motor Museum in Beaulieu, Hampshire (nationalmotormuseum.org.uk). WEBSITES BRITISH NEWSPAPER ARCHIVE w britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk This is a great source of news stories about early motorists and accidents, and advertisements. FINDMYPAST w bit.ly/fmp-cov-veh The collection ‘Warwickshire, Coventry, Vehicle Registrations 1921–1944’ contains more than 143,000 records. Local archives also hold registration records. GRACE’S GUIDE w gracesguide.co.uk This excellent website…

Three of the best history and family history podcasts we’ve listened to recently HUMAN RESOURCES Podcast services In this podcast, which ran between 2021 and 2023, journalist Moya Lothian-McLean explores the role of slavery in the history of both her family and that of the UK, tracing its impact on everything from country houses to major cities. SPEAKING WITH SHADOWS english-heritage.org.uk/speakingwithshadows This podcast from English Heritage explores the stories of some of the ordinary people who are connected to the historic sites in the organisation’s care. Recent episodes include The Polish Special Forces Soldiers of Audley End, a 17th-century country house near Saffron Walden, Essex, and The Patients of Chiswick House Asylum in London which first opened its doors in 1892. ABSOLUTE UNITS merl.reading.ac.uk/explore/absolute-units/ On 9 April 2018, the Museum…

TITANIC: OUR SECRET HISTORIES Channel 4 Now streaming Oceanographer Robert Ballard discovered the wreck of RMS Titanic in 1985. Since then our collective fascination with the great liner has, if anything, grown, alongside our interest in those who were aboard when Titanic hit an iceberg in the Atlantic. This one-off documentary puts the passengers and crew at the centre of the story as it traces the impact of the disaster on families across the world. There’s a strong genealogy theme as living descendants learn about the experiences of their relatives, in a programme that presents shocking details and tragic tales that should be better known. OUTRAGEOUS U&Drama and streaming Thursday 19 June Glamorous, aristocratic and clever, the Mitfords were the brightest of bright young things, six unconventional sisters who came…

On 5 September 1914, HMS Pathfinder was cruising off St Abb’s Head in Berwickshire, Scotland. Stalking its course was the German submarine U-21, which opened fire at around 3.50pm. Pathfinder tragically became the first warship to be sunk by a self-propelled torpedo fired by a U-boat. Among the crew was 18-year-old Ernest Rockley, the great uncle of Sue Harper. “Ernest was born in Leicester in 1896, the eldest son of workingclass couple Joseph and Hannah Rockley,” explains Sue who lives on Hayling Island, Hampshire. The torpedo slammed into Pathfinder and caused a massive explosion “The family later moved to Sherwood, Nottingham, the city where I grew up. Joseph was a carpenter by trade, but became a coal miner and sadly lost a leg in a pit accident.” Hannah worked as…