Does Every Family Hold A Dark Past?

Summary

After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal

Episode: Does Every Family Hold A Dark Past?

Release Date: December 11, 2025
Hosts: Anthony Delaney & Maddy Pelling
Guests: Jen Utley (Ancestry), Joe Boogie (Ancestry), Christina (Ancestry)

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into the shadowy branches of family histories, exploring whether every family tree conceals a dark, mysterious, or even criminal secret. With help from professional genealogists from Ancestry, Anthony and Maddy uncover curious, quirky, and sometimes sinister stories in their own and each other’s family backgrounds. By bringing in expert perspectives and primary source investigations, the episode blends humor, intrigue, and genuine emotional connection as the hosts learn just how surprising family history can be.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Setting the Scene: The Dark Side of Family Trees

• The show invents “International Dark Side of Your Family Tree Day”—a playful excuse to explore nefarious ancestors and family secrets.
• Both hosts reveal their love for family history and the thrill of discovering ancestral stories (02:37).
• Collaboration with Ancestry allows for a professional deep dive into Anthony and Maddy’s roots, and listeners are promised revelations and a sense of curiosity about their own genealogy (04:01-04:43).

2. The Appeal of Ancestral Rascals

• Jen Utley explains that while people love to find noble ancestors, “everyone loves a rascal in their tree.” Criminals and troublemakers, just like the upper crust, tend to leave behind good paper trails—making them fascinating and findable (05:23).
• Quote:
  “Everyone loves a rascal in their tree, right?” – Jen Utley (05:23)
• Jen recounts her own family’s scandalous stories: a mysterious single mother, a dramatic journey, and a suspicious morphine overdose—proving that real family stories are rarely dull (09:05).

3. True Crime Connection: Palmer the Poisoner

• Maddy’s family history connects indirectly to the infamous Victorian poisoner, William Palmer, known for using poison to kill for insurance and gambling debts in 1850s Staffordshire.
• Maddy’s ancestor, Edwin Foulke, was a chemist’s assistant in Rugeley, likely selling Palmer the poisons he later used (17:06-18:23).
• The moral ambiguity of “killing adjacent” ancestors is explored with dark humor:
  “Your ancestors are definitely not guilty, killing by proxy, potentially.” – Anthony & Maddy (10:08)
• The Palmer case is recapped, including family murders, gambling addiction, insurance fraud, and Palmer’s eventual execution (13:31-23:44).

4. Irish Roots: The Delaney Family Shenanigans

• Anthony struggles with the challenge of tracing Irish ancestry due to lost records, but Joe Boogie manages to piece together a colorful narrative (28:22-29:20).
• Discovery: Anthony’s two-times-great-grandfather Patrick Delaney and his father James were charged in the 1850s with assaulting a neighbor and injuring his donkey—showing that delinquency sometimes repeats (31:03).
• Quote:
  “The Delaneys persist. I’ve never heard of the Quirks.” – Anthony (32:21)
• Another ancestral drama: the “Chatsworth Affray,” a violent 1872 brawl between families involving knives, scythes, and a Delaney ancestor wielding a stick (36:11-37:20).
• Quote:
  “He was centrally involved in this altercation…anything that was moving, he was hitting it.” – Joe Boogie (37:12)

5. Exploring Genetic Heritage and Surnames

• Discussion on DNA testing and its evolving accuracy (40:40-41:37).
• Anthony learns he is now considered “100% Irish”—an increasingly rare designation in a globalized world.
  • Quote:
    “It’s getting rarer and rarer to be able to claim you’re 100% Irish, so well done.” – Joe Boogie (41:37).

6. East End Mysteries: The Resilient Eliza

• Christina from Ancestry investigates the ancestry of Maddy’s paternal line, focusing on Eliza, a single mother in Victorian London’s East End (45:29-46:33).
• Eliza’s life is reconstructed through census and baptismal records, revealing a history of absent fathers, mystery surnames (Louvel/Monk), and resilience (47:35-51:24).
• Eliza raised three children alone, living in notorious poverty-ridden areas such as Sweet Apple Court and Bacon Street (52:40-53:33).
• Memorable Depiction:
  “The gutter in the centre of this court is very filthy ... a horrid odour of nastiness, like putrid paste, was found to pervade the room.” – Poverty Survey cited by Christina (53:33)
• Eliza eventually lived into her 90s and worked in textile trades, embodying perseverance despite social hardship (58:58).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Every family tree has a nefarious, twisted branch on it somewhere.” — Anthony (02:52)
• “We found axe murderers. We found embezzlers.” — Jen Utley (07:59)
• “There is a world in which Palmer has purchased poison ... from my ancestor.” — Maddy (18:12)
• “He wasn’t known as Palmer the Poisoner in his own way ... that was not the name above the door.” — Anthony, darkly humorous take on Victorian branding (15:02)
• “We’re not always able to do that in the same way [for Irish records] ... colonialism is the explanation for a lot.” — Anthony (18:23)
• “Did you ever see that episode of Who Do You Think You Are? ... I’m related to Jack the Ripper.” — Anthony recounting pop culture's comedic take on genealogy (25:31)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 01:21 — Maddy foreshadows Palmer case and the idea that “every family holds its secrets.”
• 04:43 — Introduction of Ancestry and their genealogists, setting up the expert-led investigations.
• 07:59 — Jen Utley describes infamous “rascals” found in genealogical research.
• 13:31 — Beginning of the true crime story of William Palmer.
• 17:06 — Maddy describes her family’s indirect tie to Palmer.
• 28:22 — Introduction to Anthony’s Irish ancestry and the challenges of Irish record loss.
• 31:03 — Discovery of Patrick and James Delaney’s brush with the law and a neighbor’s donkey.
• 36:11 — Recounting the “Chatsworth Affray,” an epic inter-family brawl.
• 40:40 — Anthony discusses DNA ethnicity shifts.
• 45:29 — Turn to Maddy’s East End roots and the story of Eliza and Lavinia.
• 53:33 — Descriptive reading of poverty in Victorian East End London.
• 58:58 — Christina reveals Eliza’s self-sufficiency and survival into old age.
• 59:57 — Reflections on the emotional and personal value of connecting with family history.

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Tone and Style

The hosts bring wit, gentle self-mockery, and warmth to the episode, maintaining a balance between irreverent curiosity and genuine historical empathy. The genealogists provide clear, engaging explanations, turning the process of archival research into an adventure, while the hosts consistently reinforce the idea that every listener may discover something extraordinary—or at least entertaining—in their own family past.

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Conclusion

This episode demonstrates that almost every family, noble or humble, harbors secrets, scandals, or shimmering tales of tenacity. Through expert research and personal anecdotes, After Dark reveals that genealogy isn’t just names in an old book—it's a rich tapestry of personalities, misdeeds, survival, and surprise, waiting to be rediscovered.

“History is for everyone ... The past is just people doing stuff, and everyone is involved.” – Maddie (24:42)

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Transcript

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[Maddie]

William Palmer was a psychopathic Victorian doctor who used poisons to kill men. Many victims. He even killed his own family for insurance claims. He poisoned people at horse races because he owed them money. He became the stuff of nightmares. Charles Dickens called him the greatest villain that ever stood in the old Bailey. But this monstrous doctor bought his deadly poisons from my ancestor. Every family holds its secrets.

Well.

[Anthony]

Hello and welcome to After Dark. I'm Anthony.

[Maddie]

And I'm Maddie.

[Anthony]

And today we are excited to be celebrating. Wait for it. International Dark side of your family Tree Day. No, wait, that made it sound like it's a tree day. I'm going to do it again. International Dark side of your family Tree Day.

[Maddie]

Yay. We've made this up. We have made it up.

[Anthony]

It's not a real thing, but we do genuinely both love family history.

[Maddie]

We do.

[Anthony]

And we are excited to do this. I'm very, very excited because and we've said this before, Maddie, but like, it's about everyone showing up into the history space when we're talking about family histories and people are innately interested in their.

[Maddie]

Own family history is for everybody.

[Anthony]

Not for everybody. No I'm joking. It's for everybody. And we have some incredible stories. Well, Maddy, particularly, I don't know about mine, have some incredible stories from your past and your family tree. And we're about to talk about that again. And After Dark, he's here to tell you that every family tree has a nefarious, twisted branch on it somewhere. And today, Maddie is going to share a story about her connection to the infam of Palmer the Poisoner, the Victorian doctor we heard about in the intro.

[Maddie]

I certainly am. Now, we have been collaborating on this episode with Ancestry, and if you don't know who Ancestry are, you're living under a rock. They are a global leader when it comes to researching your family history and getting DNA tests done to find out your own genetic background. Now, you've had this done for this episode?

[Anthony]

I have, yes.

[Maddie]

I'm so excited. I have a sneaking suspicion there's gonna be a dominance in certain areas.

[Anthony]

I think I'm Irish.

[Maddie]

I think you might be Irish. We will wait and see. The jury is still out, potentially. At the end of this episod, after we've heard about Palmer the Poisoner and my own nefarious, twisted branch of the family tree, we're gonna be talking to genealogists from Ancestry. How lucky are we?

[Anthony]

Oh, my God. This is one of the highlights of my life.

[Maddie]

Yeah.

[Anthony]

I'm just gonna say it.

[Maddie]

What a privilege to be able to do this. They have been looking into my family tree, they've been looking into Anthony's family tree, and they tell us that they have some secrets to share. Are you nervous for this?

[Anthony]

I'm not nervous. I'm excited. I'm really. I'm like, this is always wanted to be famous enough to do who do you think you are?

[Maddie]

That's my dream to do. Who do you think you are?

[Anthony]

The only thing about this is we're not going to get to do this now, even if you're.

[Maddie]

They won't be making it by the time we're famous enough.

[Anthony]

Well, that true. Yeah, but which is potentially never. But this is the next best thing, and I am genuinely so excited. I've tried to do this myself, but it's actually really hard to just go in alone. So the fact that we have had genealogists, I'm so excited.

[Maddie]

Yeah. And in my case, my family have done a lot of my family history, but we've come up against some snags, and I'm hoping that Ancestry are going to be able to unpick some of those. But to kick things off, we're joined by Jen Utley, who is a family historian from ancestry, and she's going to set the scene for us, explain how this all works. Jen, welcome to the show.

[Jen Utley]

Oh, thank you for having me today. This should be fun.

[Maddie]

We're so happy to have you. Thank you for joining us. Now, of course, every family tree is full of unique stories. That's the joy of what you get to do. But how often do you find in your line of work that you come across people who have, let's say, a darker side to their family history? Is this something that you come across?

[Jen Utley]

Oh, well, we do all the time. As my job, what I do is find cool stories and family trees and, you know, people are interested in finding, you know, the aspiring heroes and uplifting stories and inspirational. But I found that people are just as interested in finding the dark characters, the shaded characters. Everyone loves a rascal in their tree, right? So we find them all the time because there are two types of people that are easier to find in trees. The easiest to find are the people who are rich with maybe a little bit of nobility or royalty because they have money to leave a paper trail because they're buying and selling stuff. The other people that are easier to find are the rascals, the ones who maybe are on the other side of the line, getting caught and leaving a trail that way. So we find those types of stories all the time.

[Anthony]

Well, now you've made me a little bit uneasy because I know we weren't rich. So now, well, I'm assuming we weren't rich. And if we were, I want to know what went wrong. But now that means the only thing that's left for me is the other side. I feel like a child of Christmas for this story. But what I will ask you, Jen, and because it was a question Maddie and I were talking about, what is the difference between a genealogist and a family historian? Are they the same thing? Does that cross over? Are you complimentary fields and disciplines, the distinction there? Is there one?

[Jen Utley]

For some people, there isn't a big difference. The reason I call myself a family historian is because my colleagues here who are going to talk to you, Joe and Christina, they are from our section of Ancestry called Ancestry Progeneologists. And this is what they're trained to do. The ancestry progeneologists have credentials. They are highly specialized. I learned how to do family history on the job. Right. My background is I started at Ancestry as the magazine editor, and so it was all about telling the story. So I'm approaching family history from a very story driven position where Christina and Jo have, like, the academic chops behind them. Right. And so it's a little distinction that I make, but it's mostly just a nod to how great Jo and Christina are.

[Maddie]

Well, we are very excited to get into the work that they've done. Jen, you mentioned there that everyone loves to find a rascal in their family history. And I know from the research that my family have already done, aside from the exciting new research that we're going to hear about today, that there are quite a few rascals in my family. But I'm just wondering, have you come across anyone who stood out for you in other people's stories that has been particularly naughty, problematic, exciting to research?

[Jen Utley]

Oh, boy. Those are our favorite stories. It's really hard when you get excited about someone who's done something maybe on the wrong side of the law or something. That's tragic. You're wondering why you're cheering over stories like that. We found axe murderers. We found embezzlers. We found people who, like, are enticing people to come to the Yukon Gold Rush. And maybe not being as upfront as they should be in my own family tree, I mean, I'm not sure that she's a complete rascal, but I have someone in my family tree who crossed the ocean at 19 with only an infant with her.

[Maddie]

Wow.

[Jen Utley]

And I have been trying for years to figure out who the father of this baby is. No idea. Still, I've got some cousins. I'm trying to convince them to maybe help let me use their DNA results to try and figure out who her. Who the father of this baby is. This woman comes to Utah. She's got a beautiful voice and she sings like I find her in newspapers all the time because she's like the first person to sing the Messiah west of the Mississippi.

[Maddie]

Wow.

[Jen Utley]

So I find her in these newspapers all over the place, and then I find her dying pretty young of a morphine overdose. Gosh. So it's a crazy story, and I jokingly refer to it as sex, drugs, and religious oratorios. And I'm hoping someday when, like, I meet her on the other side, she's not annoyed at me telling, like, all these seedy parts of her life. But, like, our ancestors made interesting choices. And looking at the records and reading between the lines and figuring it out is part of this, like, amazing journey to discover what's in your family tree.

[Anthony]

Well, speaking about what's in our family trees, Maddie, we have been promising Everybody, this story from your family tree, which, of course, is the Palmer the Poisoner story. A really big piece of true crime history and a story that you have a connection to.

[Maddie]

I certainly do.

[Anthony]

We're gonna talk about a poison or we're gonna talk about a murder, but actually, luckily, we're talking about me again. Not your ancestor that has killed anybody, though.

[Maddie]

No, thankfully.

[Anthony]

Killing adjacent.

[Maddie]

Killing by proxy, potentially.

[Anthony]

Well, no, no, no. Your ancestors are definitely not guilty in this scenario. So if you've heard before about Palmer the Poisoner, it's an earlier episode we did on After Dark, which is.

[Maddie]

It was one of our earliest episodes.

[Anthony]

Was it? I don't remember when it was, but we did it anyway. It's all in there and you can hear the whole details. But, Maddie, just give us a bit of a recap. Over. Okay, let's recap case first and then we'll talk about your personal.

[Maddie]

Yes, I will reveal my personal involvement. Okay, so this is the story of William Palmer, who was a doctor in Rugeley, which is a little town in Bethlehem.

[Christina]

Yes.

[Maddie]

No, in Staffordshire. And in the 19th century, it was a small market town between, sort of caught between the industry of Birmingham to the south and the pottery Stoke on Trent to the north. Ish. And it's a place where my family lived. My mum grew up there. My grandma used to live there, and we used to visit her all the time. So it's a place that I know very well. So we're in the 1850s. So I'm going to give you a little bit of After Dark context. Queen Victoria is on the throne, of course. She has been for a couple of decades. Britain is called the workshop of the world. So there's huge industrial change going on. The Great Exhibition happens in 1851 at Crystal Palace. Places are being connected like never before. We've got trains starting to connect places, but also telegraphs. People have been able to communicate like never before. In terms of medical history in this moment, there are repeated cholera out, which are going to be relevant to our story, actually. So there's a lot of need for medical attendance on people, but also medical innovation in this moment. And one of the big sort of icons of this moment is Florence Nightingale, who's working out during the Crimea War, and she is bringing in this idea or helping to bring in this idea of hygiene as being incredibly important in terms of treating people in a hospital situation. So that's the context. But William Palmer.

[Anthony]

Yes. There's a specific man now, isn't there?

[Maddie]

There is. So William Palmer, who I Just want to clarify, I am not related.

[Anthony]

This is not the link.

[Maddie]

This is not my ancestor.

[Anthony]

Jen has not revealed that in today's episode.

[Maddie]

Yeah, I have a murderer in my family. No. So he's a Staffordshire born boy. His father was a sawyer, so literally a sawer of wood. He probably worked in a mill or in some kind of small industrial setting. His father dies when he's 12 years old and he goes and becomes a chemist's assistant. Now, this is very important because the ancestor of mine that we're going to meet in this story is also a chemist. Yes. So this was an opportunity in, you know, a rural place like Rugeley in Staffordshire to educate yourself, to find employment, to really move up a little bit in the world. It was a secure thing. And if you're a chemist's apprentice as well, there's opportunity potentially for you to go and study medicine beyond the bounds of the chemist shop that you work in. And Palmer does just this, this. He goes to London and he qualifies as a doctor. In 1846, when he's around 22 years old, he has the world at his feet. He's a newly qualified doctor in this changing, exciting world that's rapidly evolving in all these different ways. But he comes back to Staffordshire, that's his decision. And there are some early red flags in his behavior, shall we say? He's fired from his first job as a chemist assistant. And this is, I think, before he goes to train as a doctor for stealing money.

[Anthony]

Okay.

[Maddie]

And this is going to be a running theme. Money is a running theme in his life. When he returns after training as a doctor to Staffordshire, he gets to Rugeley, the town he grew up in, and he goes into a pub and he has a drinking game with someone in there and he wins. But the man he's drinking with drops dead.

[Anthony]

Right?

[Maddie]

Yeah.

[Anthony]

Is he playing for money?

[Maddie]

Yes, presumably, yes. Is this man his first victim? We don't know, but he's dead.

[Anthony]

So now we're getting into the poisoning part of the palmary part.

[Maddie]

Yes. I mean, allegedly with this first. He could have just drunk himself to death. We don't know. Fair could have been his own decisions. But we are gonna get into some poison of Palmer the poisoner. So he is only found guilty of one poisoning. But when you look at the record of his life and the people who died around him, it's very clear that.

[Anthony]

Starts to branch out.

[Maddie]

Yeah, that's the cherry on top. His first suspected victim, and this is never proven, is his mother in law. So.

[Anthony]

Oh, yikes.

[Maddie]

He's come back to Rugeley. He marries a woman called Anne Thornton, and she is the wealthy stepdaughter of a deceased army colonel. Her mother is still alive. She has inherited the Colonel's wealth. Palmer needs money because he has a gambling addiction. This is something that's gonna recur throughout his time. So he says to his wife, should we invite your mum round and she can come and live in our house for a little bit? She's all alone.

[Anthony]

I would just like to point out at this particular moment in this story that he wasn't known as Palmer the Poisoner in his own way, because that.

[Maddie]

Was the name above the door of his doctor's office.

[Anthony]

I'm not gonna go to him.

[Maddie]

I think I might skip that appointment. Yes. No, he's just known as Dr. Palmer. So they invite the mother. The mother in law over, and she stays for a little while. She becomes ill, she dies. The Colonel's money passes to Ann Palmer's wife. So he's.

[Anthony]

So it's essentially part.

[Maddie]

It's essentially passed to William Palmer. Yes. Now he gets into debt with the gambling.

[Anthony]

Oh, my God.

[Maddie]

There's a man who has been lending him money, and he owes a significant amount to possibly up to £800, which in the 1840s, 50s, at this point, it's a lot of money. This guy, he also invites round to his house. There's a running theme here. Don't go round to Palmer's house. He invites him to dinner. The man collapses at dinner, and he dies a few hours later in the house.

[Anthony]

Okay.

[Maddie]

It's very suspicious. What's more suspicious is that the little book that the debt collector keeps on his person, which records who owes what to him, is missing from the body when he is laid to rest. And so the record of Palmer's details. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because we did this. Yeah. In quite a lot detail. So where does my family member come in?

[Anthony]

Okay, I.

[Maddie]

Do you remember this?

[Anthony]

Yes, I do, because you've also just said today. But I do also remember your ancestor is Palmer's assistant. Right.

[Maddie]

Not correct.

[Anthony]

Oh, crap. What? What is it?

[Maddie]

Okay, so my ancestor, and he's a relatively distant ancestor, was called Edwin Foulke. And he was a young boy at the time, a young man. Oh, and he is the assistant of the druggist. So the chemist in Rugeley. So he's had a very similar start to life.

[Anthony]

Wait, is he not. Is Palmer not the chemist? No, no.

[Maddie]

Palmer's the doctor.

[Anthony]

Oh, yeah. Wait, was he a chemist? Was he ever a chemist?

[Maddie]

No. So he Was a chemist's assistant.

[Anthony]

Oh, he was a chemist and then.

[Maddie]

He trained to be a doctor.

[Anthony]

So he didn't become a chemist, he became a doctor. Right, right, right, right, yes.

[Maddie]

So he's a doctor. He is working as a doctor in Rugeley. But where does the doctor go and get his drugs? His medicine?

[Anthony]

Your ancestor from the chemist.

[Maddie]

So Edwin. It's very likely sold.

[Anthony]

Hey, that's a nice name. Is it Edwin?

[Maddie]

Edwin's a lovely name. Yeah. I really like that. We don't know much about Edwin. He's illegitimate and he's sort of taken in by the chemist family. Now, the chemist himself is a man called William Fouke, and Edwin is called Edwin Foulke. And we've never quite been able to work out the connection between this William Falk and our family, but it's very likely that.

[Anthony]

So actually it could be related to him as well.

[Maddie]

Could be related to him as well. And it would seem likely. Why else would he take in an illegitimate child who has the same surname as him? He must have been part of the same family and somebody must have been surname Foukes. It was. And it's in this moment Fauke.

[Anthony]

So it isn't just this then. Oh, you're related to that guy?

[Maddie]

Yeah.

[Anthony]

I mean, I know I'm no gen, but like, you are 100% related to this. I didn't realize it was gonna be like a direct name thing. I thought you were gonna be like something else.

[Christina]

Oh.

[Maddie]

So there is a world in which Palmer has walked into the chemists. And you think about 19th century chemists, you know, you're thinking like big glass bottles, the brass scales. You know, you can picture the kind of. The kind of place. And there's a world in which Palmer has been into that shop and purchased poison that he is using to kill people from my ancestor or ancestors, depending.

[Anthony]

The reason I'm so jealous of this is that in Ireland, notoriously. And we'll talk about a little bit this in a little bit more detail as we go through this episode. Records are scant and we have people coming to Ireland from all over the world who want to know about their family history and who want to research their Irish roots. You know, America, uk, wherever it might be. But we had a records fire at the beginning of the 20th century and so much was destroyed, like significant amounts or also then like parish registers weren't kept in the same way or because then of plantations. There's all kinds of different things going on in colonialism and blah, blah, blah, and just say ant Colonialism is the explanation for a lot. But it's fascinating to me to hear you put all of this together because we're not always able to do that in the same way. Although 1850s is not as we can probably go back that far. But my question being, have you ever gone to ancestry yourself? Like, you know, the way like you do the online family tree or you send in the DNA or whatever it might be, have you done that? Because I have in desperation to be like, put this together, please make it make sense. Have you done this previously or.

[Maddie]

No, personally I have not done this because my parents are huge inter family history. So they have done everything they possibly can, which is why I'm so excited to do this episode because they've gone so far back and they are, I mean, it's like the thing they do together. They adore doing it together. They've been to archives everywhere. They sit for hours on their laptop. They are really into it. And they have been ever since I've been growing up, since I've been little. So I think that's probably, you know, a huge part of my interest in history. I owe to their interest in family history. So whilst I haven't done that because I haven't had to because my parents have done it for me, there are gaps in the family history where we haven't been able to prove things or we have hunches. And that's what I'm so excited about today.

[Anthony]

Okay, well, let's get back to Palmer specifically then. So we know Edwin's there in the background and he's fuchsing around, but see what it is. I'm listening. How does Palmer get caught? What's the. How does he have his downfall? I'm sure he has it.

[Maddie]

So Palmer poisons more members of his own family. Now, he's already done his mother in law, don't forget. In the first four years of their marriage, Palmer and Anne, his wife, have five children. This is really sad. Four of whom die very early on from what he describes as convulsions. Now, you know this is the 19th century, there is very poor rates of infant mortality. Like this is a bleak time. However, convulsions are a symptom potentially of strychnine poisoning.

[Anthony]

Has he got insurance policies on these children?

[Maddie]

Not on the children, but he's about to get one on Anne. So he is in debt again, even though he's killed off the debt collector. He's. He can't help with the gambling, he can't stop. So he takes out A policy, a life insurance policy on Anne for £13,000, which is ridiculous. Amazing. I mean, I'm sort of surprised. Yeah. I'm surprised a doctor's wife in Staffordshire was allowed to be. And he takes that out in January 1854. By September of the same year and dead.

[Anthony]

Just a new way around.

[Maddie]

Now, luckily for Palmer, there is a cholera epidemic at the same time. And so he's like, she's died of cholera.

[Jen Utley]

Yeah.

[Maddie]

And he's the doctor, so people, he'd know, people are like, yeah, sure, cool. It's not weird that your mother in law, all of your children but one and your wife are dead and people come to your house and die.

[Christina]

Like, that's. It's fine.

[Maddie]

We're not questioning it. He also still has so much debt, so he's got rid of his wife. Now he does the same to his brother. He takes life insurance heart on his brother and then invites him round to the house. These invites stop going to Palmer's house. He finally. And this is the one that he gets done for. Palmer invites a fellow gambler. This is someone he's met at the races and he's got chatting to him and he has inevitably borrowed some money off him. So he owes money to this guy, he invites him up to Staffordshire, to Rugeley. They meet in a pub and he's like, we're gonna have a lovely dinner, we'll have a nice time and I will pay you back what I owe you. Q2. He collapses. He's unwell. He's taken to the bed in the pub, which is called the Tulip Inn. I think it's still there. Usually you can still go and see it, he dies. But this time there is an inquest because people are like, come on now. And also because it hasn't happened in Palmer's house.

[Anthony]

Yes.

[Maddie]

People have witnessed this and they're like, that's a weird way to die. What was wrong with him, you know, at the inquest, among those presents is William Fouke, the chemist.

[Anthony]

Okay.

[Maddie]

And of course, Edwin's employer. And I imagine there's a world in which Edwin is also present with his employer. Relative. Sure.

[Anthony]

But it's also irrelevant because William Faux is clearly related to you as well.

[Maddie]

Yeah.

[Anthony]

I mean, even though I know we don't have an official link, but like, I would imagine that if he's taken in Edwin, Edwin's probably his nephew or something.

[Maddie]

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

[Anthony]

Right.

[Maddie]

Yeah. Especially because Edwin is illegitimate. There must have been a connection for that benevolence in this period. Yeah. So he has to be related. So he is in the room when this inquest happens. He examines the body, William does potentially with other chemists and doctors, so he's not solely responsible, but there is a world in which he is making the call or helping to make the call. They realise that he has been poisoned. They detect poison in his body. Palmer is guilty, he is arrested, he is taken to the Old Bailey, which is why it becomes a kind of national scandal. This isn't just a local crime anymore, you know, this is a huge, huge, big deal that a doctor, respectable, trained, middle class doctor, has killed at least one person that they can prove and he's eventually hanged for murder.

[Anthony]

So that's him caught. Yeah, it is interesting. You know what, again, it sums up that kind of family history thing, doesn't it, where it's so tantalizing. And then it's also frustrating because obviously the history books are not pointed towards our individual ancestors. And in some ways that's a good thing because it would probably mean something awful had happened to them or by them if they were. But you get these glimpses of peripheral stories such as we're not even 100% sure that William is related to you, but actually he probably is. And so then you move into this idea of, oh, your ancestor helped to perform a quasi autopsy on the victims of Palmer the poisoner, as opposed to what we know, which is they were a druggist assistant in the thing. So it's, mind you, then there's also, I suppose, the world in which Edwin takes on William's surname and that might be the origin of that surname coming into your family line.

[Maddie]

So I think we know he was definitely called Fouke before.

[Anthony]

Okay, well then, yeah, so it's like, you know, it's just all these.

[Maddie]

But I think that's what's so exciting about family history, right? That I think often it's thought of as if it's just you plot your family tree, it's just names and dates on a graph and that's it, and that's all you can know. But actually if you can put these people into the context of their time and color in some of their life with research that you're able to do yourself, it doesn't have to be related to a famous serial killer case, but it brings these people to life and I suppose it reminds us all that all of our ancestors are involved in history. You know, we always say on this show, history is for everyone. History, the past is just people doing stuff and everyone is involved. You know, we all have people who did stuff in the past, some of it incredibly important, some of it important to the people around them and not necessarily on a national scale, but it doesn't mean that it's any less interesting.

[Anthony]

Did you ever see that episode of the show I love, which is who do youo Think youk Are? And Gemma Collins, icon, the legend that is, was learning about her family history and the historian that was with her was like, what was happening in the East End of London around this time? And she was like, I'm related to Jack the Ripper. And I was like, amazing. Go with that. Doesn't matter what happens after this. It means we have found out who he was, done DNA testing and that DNA leads right to Gemma Collins.

[Maddie]

Sold yes.

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[Maddie]

So that was my history anyway. But let's hear a bit of yours because as you say, the records are scarce. It's hard to know and we've spoken so many times about how you, for a historian, know surprisingly little about your own history.

[Anthony]

So we're going into this slightly blind. We are going to be speaking to two amazing family historians that are going to explore some of these family histories with us. I don't know that much actually, because again, I've alluded to this already, haven't I, about the Irish records not being that great beyond the kind of mid 19th century. So we may struggle, I'm anticipating we'll struggle to get beyond that in this conversation. But one of the things. And we're gonna turn our attention to one of our guests. And this is so Irish as well. I looked at the name of the person who's gonna be communicating my history to me today, and his name is Joe Boogie. And Boogie is my mother's maiden name. And now I have a feeling that I'm going to be related in true Irish fashion to the only Irish person that's gonna be on the show called Joe Boogie. Joe, welcome to Irish.

[Joe Boogie]

Thank you very much, Anthony. Yes, that's correct. We share that excellent family name, Buggy.

[Anthony]

I'm intrigued. I'm intrigued to know what's going on. Right. This is what I know, or I think I know. And actually, I'll point out, I had tried to piece together. I've said this to you before, Matt. My family tree, myself, and using different tools and different archives and whatever. And there are definitely points at which I've gone wrong where I've thought this was. You know, Delany is quite a common surname in my area of Kilkenny, which is in the southeast around the Kilkenny leash border. And so what I know is essentially just names.

I'm Anthony. My dad's George. My granddad is Patrick, and his. Thank you. And his father is James. I think there was a John and then there was another Patrick. As far as I'm aware, that's about as much as I know. Again, Jo, you'll be able to speak to this better than me, obviously, but Irish records are notoriously difficult to piece together. But what have we been able to decipher about the Delany branch of the Chatsworth Delanys, shall I say?

[Joe Boogie]

Yeah, Well, I have to say, you did a really good job, Anthony. Like, there was an excellent starting point for me there. We always kind of, you know, we asked people to start with their own family. What do they know? You did that. Then we kind of focus on the core building blocks, the birth, the marriage and the death records. And they really help us to place an ancestor in a particular location in a particular time period. From marriage records, we get kind of father's names so we can kind of really start to build back the generations. And once we've done that, you know, once we've gone back to maybe the 1850s or a little bit earlier, that's when we can start looking for the interesting stories. Because as you touched on, the names can be very common. You talked about kind of Patrick Delaney, John Delany, James Delany. So we want to make sure we have the correct ancestors when we go look at the local newspapers and the court records.

[Anthony]

My family live in a very small village and there are maybe two or three Delaneys and we are not, as far as we know. I mean, sure, if we went back far enough, related somewhere, but we have no immediate relation. So it. And they've got Johns and Patrick's and James's as well. So it's like, are we this Delaney? So we used to be known, I know, as the Delaneys of the lawn gate. That was the very fancy, but it wasn't at all fancy, it was just a lawn with a gate. But it was. My dad recently told me that that's what we were known as. We lived down, and my family still lived down that very same lane. But I'm hearing tell that someone I should be a little bit more aware of is a Patrick Delaney from 1829. So we're in Georgian Georgian times now, which is my area of study. So tell me a little bit more about this Joe. What do we know about him and what he was getting up to?

[Joe Boogie]

Yeah, I hate to break it to you, Anthony, but there's definitely a lot of kind of rowdiness and shenanigans on your. On the Delaney branch of your tree.

[Anthony]

So I am not ready.

[Joe Boogie]

Yeah, you're two times great grandfather. So, yeah, as you mentioned, kind of born in the late 1820s, he lives through kind of all of the 1900s. So he married Julia Lawlor in 1873 and their marriage record was very helpful. It tells us then that his father's name is James. And from there then we looked at a very interesting collection of records, the petty session court record. So the petty sessions were local courts. They were kind of the lowest level of the kind of the court administrative administration system in Ireland today. They're the district courts in England and Wales are known as the magistrates courts. And they dealt with kind of the low, lower level kind of crime that would maybe happen day to day. So drunkenness, common assault, stealing, different things like that. So we do see your ancestors appear in these court records. So there's a quite an interesting story of Patrick and his father James. So this is from the early 1850s, so the tail end of the. The Irish famine. And there's a court case then where they are charged with the assault of their neighbour, John Quirk. And also they for some reason injured his donkey then as well. So there was a disagreement with John. But one of his animals was also involved.

[Anthony]

One of his animals was also involved.

[Joe Boogie]

They were fined six pence plus the cost of the court case.

[Anthony]

Now, I just want. I just want to say this. The Delaney's persist. I've never heard of the quirks.

[Maddie]

Oh.

[Anthony]

So if you're looking, if you're looking for people who have persisted in the thing in the area. You killed all these donkeys. He didn't have anything left. So now hold on. When you say there was a donkey, well, you probably don't. It'll probably just be this weird allusion to something in a court record. What exactly happened with the donkey? Do we know?

[Joe Boogie]

We don't know. It just says that the donkey was injured. So maybe the donkey was an innocent bystander. Maybe the donkey was centrally involved. Not fully sure.

[Anthony]

I bet you he was centrally involved.

[Joe Boogie]

The outcome was there was a fine for your ancestors. They had to pay sixpence plus the cost of the court case.

[Anthony]

The thing is, in the middle of the 19th century, post famine, donkeys are, you know, we're laughing here, but they're like important commodities. This is something that people are trying to eke out a living from a land that's not necessarily producing in the way that it once was. So this is why they're having. So what I'm intrigued by is why the father and son are involved in this particular dispute.

[Maddie]

Shall I say, will you be taking up this crime family tradition with your own dad?

[Anthony]

Yes. Me and my dad are now gonna carouse the countryside of Chatham.

[Maddie]

Shout donkeys.

[Anthony]

Of Kilkenny donkeys, bear yourselves with haste, because I am back and I'm going to avenge my family name. So that's Patrick. Okay, so he is my two times great grandfather. It's so interesting, isn't it? Because the house that we live. Well, no, the house that my grandparents lived in, the Delaney house that my grandparents lived in is still in Chatsworth, but I don't think it is. My parents live next door, but I don't think it's the same homestead. I think they didn't move around, but obviously still within the same village. You know, sixpence is a lot of money here as well. And the cost of the court, that's gonna be relatively substantial. It's. So do we have any idea. And I know you're gonna say no to this, Joe, because I understand the way these court records work, but we have no idea, do we, what the dispute is about, never mind the donkey specifically, but it's probably going to be about land or something. I'm imagining.

[Joe Boogie]

Typically that was often the case. Yeah. The petty session court records, they are brief. You know, they just kind of give US the core details and of who the complainant was, who the defendant was and kind of what the outcome of the judge's decision was. Then at the end of the case, sometimes, maybe if they were more prominent cases, they may be picked up by local newspapers. But other than that, then we kind of. We have to suppose. But like you say, land was very important at the time. Most of our ancestors were tenant farmers in Ireland. And as we mentioned, it was at the end of the famine as well. So a very difficult period in Irish history.

[Anthony]

That's key, isn't it, that this is a very difficult period in Irish history. We're talking about the 1850s. You've already mentioned, Joe. This is post Great Irish Famine, not the Potato Famine. The potatoes were not starving. So we always go to great lengths on After Dark to show that. It's not called the Potato Famine, it's called the Great Irish Famine. But also the idea that this is, or the fact that this is part of colonial Great Britain. So it is. When we talk about the United Kingdom, Ireland is at this point part of those united kingdoms, however united they might have not been. Before we talk a little bit about DNA. So this is interesting. I've heard that some kind of a local skirmish happened, that my family was involved in another fight. Great. Called the Chatsworth Affray. I've never heard it called that before and I'm here for the drama of it. I actually don't know what the Chatsworth Affray is. And what were you able to find out about this?

[Joe Boogie]

Yeah, so it's a very grandiose title for something.

[Anthony]

I thought it might be the case.

[Joe Boogie]

So we mentioned earlier about the court case in the 1850s. So we come forward to the summer of 1872 and a couple of the local newspapers in County Kilkenny. Yes, they referred to what was the Chatsworth Affrays. So this was essentially a large scale fight between two families in Chatsworth townland. So there were the Hennessey family and the Nolan family. And there was a dispute over who could farm a particular piece of land in Chatsworth. The Nolans had cattle on the land, the Hennessys weren't happy about this and it descended into a very serious brawl. So the newspaper article is really informative. It talks about some of the weapons that were used. Butcher's knives, scythes, a sprong, which is essentially, you know, a three pointed long fork, shovels, a wattle, which is a long stick. So it was pretty serious. And as you're probably familiar with newspapers of this era, lots of great detail about the injuries. Really deep lacerations and cuts down to the liver. In one person, somebody experienced a rib that was cut through, lacerations down to the spine. So really, really serious injuries. The doctor gave evidence in the court case about all of the injuries, but lo and behold, in the middle of this skirmish, there's a Delaney. Now, unfortunately, it doesn't mention what his first name was, but he was on the side of the Hennessy side.

[Anthony]

I knew it would be.

[Joe Boogie]

This Delaney man was there with his wattle, his long stick and anything that was moving, he was hitting it. So he was centrally involved in this altercation.

[Anthony]

We are still friends with families of Hennessys now.

[Maddie]

Wow.

[Anthony]

So I'm telling you now, you must.

[Maddie]

Have been on their side.

[Anthony]

Well, we were on their side. And I was going. I was nearly about to say, I bet you were on the Hennessy side. And I'm glad that we were, if that's the case. Not that there's anything wrong with the Nolans, if any of the Nolans are watching this. Now, this is so interesting because. And you know what? I do know that that's definitely one of my ancestors, because I've been told by family members that he took part in that. So I'm sure if we, like, match up the dates, I'll be able to know which Delaney it was. I was tossed. See, it's interesting, isn't it, because. Cause families invent their own histories. And we've talked about this. I was told it was something about. And, you know, it just gets lost in the generations. Something about reclaiming land from a landlord. But actually, it's not at all. It's, again, these local skirmishes between Irish people on the ground that they're just kind of inventing.

[Maddie]

And it's family rivalries.

[Anthony]

And it's family rivalries. Yeah. So that's really interesting. I feel like I need to represent my mother's side of the family here and talk a little bit about the Boogies scenes, though. You, too are a Boogie and I am 50%1. I feel this is weird. I don't go around asking people if we're related, but are we related?

[Joe Boogie]

I would say almost certainly at some point we must be. Anthony.

[Anthony]

Oh, my God. I knew it.

[Joe Boogie]

As you know, the name Boogie and your listeners wouldn't be familiar, but Boogie is a name that's found in County Kilkenny and County Leash in Ireland, two neighbouring counties in the Southeast and South Midlands. So my buggies. My dad was actually born in County Leash. Now, that sounds like it's really far away.

[Jen Utley]

But.

[Joe Boogie]

But the place where my buggies are from, it's only about 10 miles away from where your mother's family is from. So there's no documented connection between us and records. But like we've talked about already, that kind of ends in the early 1800s. But I would not be surprised at all if there's some connection between us. Going back a little bit further. It's a rare name. We're within, you know, 10 miles of each other. So there has to be some common ancestor at some point in history.

[Maddie]

Yeah.

[Anthony]

Even if you're going back to, you know, the 17th century or something, I'm sure we'd kind of get there. Well, it's a delight to have you share my own with me from a family member, essentially. Jo, talk to me about this. Now, this has been fascinating for me, and particularly on the ancestry side of things, because I signed up to the website years ago. I would talk to my boogie grandmother about this. She was great for like, you know, you'd get your DNA matches and I'd be like, who's this? And who's this and who's this? And she'd be able to tell me who they were. And they're mostly in America. And so that's really been interesting to do that with her when she was still alive. It's something I really think of her when I think about this DNA analysis. But. But when I did this first, because I know the technology is always updating. And as a result, and this is the great thing about the ancestry DNA analysis is they update as the field progresses. And when I joined first, I remember seeing that I was, you know, vast, vast, vast majority of the breakdown was Irish. And then I had 2% Scottish, which I was very proud of. Cause I was living in Edinburgh at the time. And I was like, yes, this is what I want. And there was maybe like 1%. A tiny, tiny, tiny percentage that was Scandinavian. I was like, vikings, here we go. This is my rightful lineage. And now if I go in there, it says, not that this is a problem. I'm very proud of this, of course, but it says that I am now 100% Irish, like nothing else in there. How is that even possible, Jo? I have to know where all my Scandinavian and Scottish ancestry went.

[Joe Boogie]

Your family tree is a great example, Anthony. Like, when we researched all of your lions, like every single one of your ancestral lions are within such a small part, part of one particular county in Ireland. And when you get that it's intensely Irish, essentially, that's with the way you could look at it. So I'll contrast that with my family tree where I mentioned already I'm a boogie, but my dad is from County Leash, but my mother is from County Mayo on the western seaboard. So if you go back 3, 4, 500 years, migration, warfare, seafaring, people moved around to a certain degree. So all of that kind of influence, and especially if you look at the UK and Ireland, how close they are, kind of on a world scale, the links between Scotland and Ireland. So that filters down into our DNA when we're kind of looking back in our family tree over kind of many hundreds of years. But I would wear it as a badge of honor. Anthony, it's getting rarer and rarer to be able to claim you're 100% Irish, so well done. Congratulations.

[Anthony]

Thank you. I will take it as a personal achievement up until this point, as I am the end of my own line.

[Maddie]

For this big 100%. Yeah.

[Anthony]

Somebody I would appeal to. The new president of Ireland.

[Maddie]

You can be president now.

[Christina]

Yes.

[Anthony]

Yeah. Actually, yeah. When I run for president, we can replay this clip and just be like, he's 100% Irish. Who else could do the job? Joe, thank you so much for this. This is honestly, like, truly. I know it sounds glib, but I don't mean it like that. This is so important to me and to so many people. And this is why what you guys do is so interesting and I think so difficult, actually. And it's so easy to underestimate how difficult it is to try and get into these archives again, as we said, particularly in the Irish Conte. So thank you so much for doing that. Can I just ask, just out of pure curiosity, do you know where in County Leash that your dad is from?

[Joe Boogie]

Yes. So if you've heard of timahoe, it's about 10 miles or so north of. Or north of Castlecomber.

[Anthony]

Yes, it is. Literally. My family don't live in Castlecomo. They live about six miles outside. I would say it takes about five minutes for us to get to Timo from my house. So you're probably a third cousin or something. Well, you're probably not, because you also probably have my DNA results, and they probably don't match up, but at the same time, is literally within five minutes of the house. So we, without a shadow of a doubt, we are related.

[Maddie]

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[Anthony]

Enough about the Delanys, although never enough about the Delanys. But we're gonna hand over now to Maddy. So Maddy, over to you to find out a little bit more about what's going on in the Pelling side. Oh, well, maybe not the Pelling side.

[Maddie]

Wait and see. I am so excited about this. My family have been able to trace quite a lot of my family history, as we've talked about before several times on the show. And I'm always relating any episode we do back to someone of my ancestors who lived in whatever place or era we're talking about. And this is something that my parents have done for, for certainly as long as I can remember. It's one of the reasons why I'm interested in history. It's a huge part of their life. It's a huge part of their relationship. They're always sat at the table together doing family history or out looking at archives, you know, before everything was digitised. I am intrigued to find what Christina has been able to come up with because we have some stumbling blocks in this vast amount of work that my parents have done and there are little things that we haven't been able to work out or little avenues that we haven't been able to go down because the records simply aren't available to us anyway. So, Christina, first of all, welcome to After Dark and tell me, what part of my family are we going to be looking at? I feel a bit giddy after you.

[Anthony]

I know, I know, I know.

[Maddie]

I genuinely do.

[Christina]

So, okay, so spoiler alert. There's no donkeys involved and I'm pretty sure we're not related. So Just.

[Anthony]

We might as well stop now.

[Christina]

Yeah, I know. I'm sorry. Like, that's it. That's actually my sex actions over now.

So we focused on part of your dad's side of the family, and you gave us kind of like a few. Like you said you had a few questions about different ancestors of yours that you've had kind of hit a bit of a brick wall with. So we really looked into one of those, Lavinia Lovell, who's also known as Louvel. I'll tell you a little bit about Lavinia and maybe why you had some difficulties with her, and then kind of like what we found afterwards for the listeners.

[Maddie]

Can you give us a sense of where she sits in my family tree as well?

[Christina]

Sure, Definitely. Lavinia was born about 1845. Just kind of.

[Maddie]

For.

[Christina]

For some context. And she is your great great grandmother. I'm gonna say, actually two times great grandmother.

[Maddie]

She possibly might be your three times.

[Christina]

So we're talking, you know, quite a few generations back here year. And she married, actually a Jewish. She married into a Jewish immigrant family, which kind of ties into kind of like the bigger East End story. So that's kind of where the. Where the story begins. And as I said, she was born in the 1840s in kind of the Bethnal Green area. And I think you kind of knew. Knew that much, knew about her marriage, knew about kind of like her subsequent life. But what you didn't know was who her parents were. And possibly the reason for this was she should have had a birth certificate. That was the law at the time. Did she have an official birth certificate? No. And so that was kind of the first little mystery that we had to kind of overcome. But even though she didn't have an official birth record, we did find her baptism. So from there we were able to say, okay, we know who her parents were, possibly. And I'll get onto that.

[Maddie]

This is so exciting.

[Christina]

Big reveal. According to her baptism, her parents were Eliza and Samuel Louvel. Wonderful. Case closed. You know, like, we can crack on.

[Maddie]

And do we know. Do we know where the name Louvel comes from? Because it doesn't sound English, does it? And obviously, you know, you've alluded to the fact that the East End in this moment is a melting pot of all different kinds of immigrants. We know that she marries into an immigrant Jewish family. And the. And that's, you know, a big part of my family history. But the name Louvel, it doesn't sound Jewish and it doesn't sound English. Where is it coming From.

[Christina]

Okay, so I'm going to hazard a guess that it does have French connections at some point, which may or may not be relevant.

[Anthony]

And you're excellent French.

[Christina]

And the reason for that is we can find absolutely no sign of this alleged father slash husband, Samuel Louvel.

Right, yes.

[Maddie]

Yeah. Yeah, we have a surprising amount of this in my family. On both sides of my mum and dad's family tree, there's a lot of fictional dads who come into play. It's so interesting.

[Christina]

Okay, good, because we've got not one, but two possibly fictional dads going on here. Yeah.

[Maddie]

Right.

[Christina]

So, yeah, let's talk a little bit about Eliza. So she was born probably about 1814, probably in Spitalfields. And so for anybody who kind of, like, doesn't know the geography of the East End of London, so kind of Bethnal Green, Spitalfields, Whitechapel, they're all pretty much in the same neighbourhood. You know, they're distinct neighborhoods, but they're all right next to each other. When she's maybe about 20, she has a daughter who she calls Eliza, helpfully. So we've got another Eliza in the mix, apparently with this Samuel Louvel character. So this is in 1833. Then by 1841, we can find Eliza with her daughter in the census. No sign of dad. There's no record of any marriage to a Samuel Louvel. Like, for all intents and purposes, he may actually not exist.

[Maddie]

So, Christina, can we assume then that Eliza, Mum. Eliza, who's using the name Louvel, can we assume that that is her family name?

[Christina]

Well, that's the thing. She might have had the maiden name Eliza Louvel. She might have had informal relationship with Alluvel and decided to take that name on. At this point, we just don't know. So that's a maybe answer to that question. We do know that in 1843, she has a son named William. William is not apparently a Louvel. He's named William Monk.

[Maddie]

Oh, wow.

[Anthony]

You knew about this or. No, no.

[Christina]

Eliza then, several times, kind of throughout her later life, will use the Monk surname. Other times she's using the Louvel surname. She's back on the louvel track by 1845 when she has Lavinia. So she apparently has child number one and child number three with a Louvel. A child in the middle with this Monk person. Again, there is no record of any marriage to a man with surname Monk. There is no record of any marriages to any man at any point along the line. All we can say is Eliza is consistently recorded on her Own. So in every census record, she's heading her own household, supporting her children. There's never any partner or husband listed with her. And that's kind of all we can say from the records that we've got in front of us.

[Maddie]

I mean, I find that fascinating. The fact that she's, as you say, heading her own household is so. I mean, probably not that unusual in the reality of the period that we're talking about. But I can't help but warm to her that she, you know, she's still living her life. She's having, obviously, some relationships, whether they're working out in the way that she hopes, hopes, maybe she's happy with the arrangements. We will probably never know the answer to this, or whether she is, you know, in fact, beginning relationships with men on the understanding that that is going to end in marriage and they don't show up or she pulls out of that situation. You know, we will never know, I suppose. But there's something resourceful about her. She seems to me to be someone resilient and someone who is continuing on her path regardless. Three children in. I mean, good for her.

[Christina]

Absolutely.

[Maddie]

And.

[Christina]

And kind of, if you look at the places where she's living at the time she's living in them, I think that kind of resilience really. That sense of resilience really comes through. And that's kind of one of the things that you can do about ancestors who are kind of. Maybe they're poorer, but they're living in a place like London in the late 19th century. You can really kind of zoom in on where they lived and get kind of an insight into what their life might have been like. And that's kind of a way of getting around the fact that, you know, we don't have.

[Maddie]

Have.

[Christina]

We don't have diaries for these people. We don't have letters that they wrote, even if they were able to write. You know, we just don't have those kinds of records. But by looking at kind of what was their kind of lived situation on the ground, so to speak, that can actually tell us quite a bit. So what I did was I kind of traced Eliza through her life, where I did kind of have a specific address or street where she lived in. And. And I think that was quite illuminating. So, for example, in 1841, she was living in Bethnal Green at this address called Sweet Apple Court, which, you know, sounds lovely. It sounds lovely. You know, it sounds like a beautiful place, possibly with some trees, but according to kind of one of these contemporary kind of poverty Surveys that was done at the time.

[Maddie]

There was a.

[Christina]

A specific description of that location. I've got a quote here. It was, the gutter in the centre of this court is very filthy. Garbage was strewn about. The privies were quite full and dilapidated. From the dripping of the water pipe, the place had become damp. And on opening the door, a horrid odour of nastiness, like putrid paste, was found to pervade the room.

[Maddie]

Wow. I mean, now I'm even more impressed with her because she, you know, living in these circumstances as a mother of these three children. Children. She's. I mean, she's living in the heart of East End poverty, from what you're saying.

[Christina]

Yeah, exactly. And that account was written, I think it was 1848. So it was just like a few years after she had been living there. And actually it's where the family lived when Lavinia was baptized. So it was right around that time. And we know that Eliza kind of, she moved to several different addresses, kind of like over the decades following that point, but always within kind of the same, that kind of Spitalfields, Whitechapel area. And another really good resource you can use if you have an ancestor who lived in that kind of part of London is the Charles Booth Poverty Maps and Survey. And I kind of had a look at a couple of the addresses that. Where she lived. And for example, at one point she's living at a place called Bacon Street. Again, it's like, okay, well, that sounds very pleasant, but unfortunately, yeah, it's like, sorry, I just did disabuse everybody of like, what Beacon street might look like. It's described by Charles Booth, who did the survey kind of just a few decades later as an area of chronic want, with some areas described kind of, and this is using the Victorian language at the time as vicious or semi criminal. So this is kind of the. The environment that she lived in. And of course, this is where she lived kind of in the late 1880s, which I know you've covered before in your podcast. I'm sure a lot of listeners are going to be familiar with. This is the area of London that the Jack the Ripper murders happened in. So I zoomed in on kind of that period of. Yeah, the late. The 1880s. And actually between 1881 and 1891, Eliza lived on the same street. So we can kind of be reasonably confident that she probably lived at that address for that entire period of time. And it was Buxton Street. And then if you look on a map of where Buxton street is. It's about a five minute walk from Hanbury street, which is where one of the victims of Jack the Ripper was found. So given the kind of notoriety. Yeah, like there is, I think, zero chance that Eliza would not have been aware of the Whitechapel murders taking place kind of literally where she lived, on the streets, where she lived.

[Maddie]

Yeah. And also that she no doubt would have feared for herself and her two daughters and indeed her son, you know, in that circumstance that, you know, when we've covered Jack the Ripper on this podcast before, I've talked about some of my Jewish ancestors in the East End, and there was at least one suspect, supposed suspect for the Ripper who was arrested at the time, who was a Jew living in and around the East End. And that there was a lot of fear and suspicion of anyone who was foreign or different, which, you know, is sort of everybody in the East End in this moment. And it's so fascinating to think of Lavinia and Eliza, both sister and mother, you know, living in this environment with this fear when this is taking place. And it's, you know, we know as historians, this is a phenomenon of panic that completely took over this part of London and indeed the whole of London, the whole of Britain. And to think that I have an ancestor who is another ancestor now who is at the heart of this and was a woman living in this environment. I mean, it's frightening to think of.

[Christina]

Yeah. And as I said, I just think that, like, Eliza had lived her whole life in this area, and I think it's, it's difficult to get a sense of exactly kind of like what her situation was. She could have, you know, there were people who lived in this area who were desperately poor, who had absolutely nothing. And then there were people who had some more kind of means. They, you know, they had a, a better quality of life. There were some kind of more mixed areas. So, you know, we can't, we can't say that, you know, Eliza was absolutely living in desperate poverty and this was terrible for her entire life, but this was the environment that she lived in for the absolute vast majority of her life. And what I think, kind of getting back to that point about, about resilience, though, is that she actually made it into her 90s, you know, which is a pretty good age for somebody now, you know, somebody who's obviously grown up, probably grown up and lived in probably relative poverty their entire lives. I think that's pretty amazing.

[Maddie]

I agree, I agree. And Christina, do we know how Eliza made any money? Just Thinking about how she survived, you know, obviously on the sort of poverty line in this moment, but thinking about how much we know about the East End in this period throughout the 19th century and just how dire things were for people. Do we know how she was supporting her three children as a single parent?

[Christina]

Yeah, we do. The census does tell us that. So she's pretty consistently working in some aspect of kind of the textile industry, I guess you would say, broadly. But more specifically, she's either listed as a weaver at one point, I believe, believe she has a hosiery. Hosiery shop. So she's also listed, I think it's a silk winder. So these are all textile trades that are kind of like quite closely linked to the East End of London at this time and probably does point to that ultimate Huguenot linkage that you suspected at the beginning. And. Yeah, so she is somebody who was able to make her own money and support herself and her children when she needed to. And as I said, she actually made it out of the East End in the end. She died in her 90s in Essex. So she, like, by the end of her life, she had kind of made it out of that situation.

[Anthony]

I just think that has been one of the most rewarding for us. And I hope listeners at home have also seen this and maybe been inspired to look into their own family history. Because honestly, as you have said about your parents, they get so much joy out of it. And I have definitely found this really fascinating. And I know for Shane, my husband, he has done the same and he's not aware of much of his family. Cause he's not in touch with one side of his family. So to be able to draw in some of those elements has been a real gift as well. But I just want to say thank you so, so much to Jen and Christina and Joe from Ancestry for all their hard work on this. Because, you know, usually we come here and we're prepped, but we were the ones with all the questions and we deliberately knew nothing coming into this. So it really has been an absolute joy to talk through this with you. And I know we have a million more questions. We could stay here forever, but, you know, we have a finite amount of time. Be sure to subscribe to Ancestry's YouTube channel as well as ours. Of course, Ancestry DNA tests are. And I mean this because I've given this as gifts. They are the perfect stocking stuffer this Christmas. And you can find out [e-mail] if.

[Maddie]

You'Ve enjoyed this episode, please get in touch with the show at after [e-mail] thank you and happy International Dark side of the Family History Day that we.

[Anthony]

Made up Rolls off the tongue Rolls off the tongue.

[Maddie]

Ho ho ho.

[Joe Boogie]

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[Anthony]

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[Maddie]

You think makes the perfect snack?

[Anthony]

Hmm, it's gotta be when I'm really craving it and it's convenient.

[Maddie]

Could you be more specific?

[Anthony]

When it's cray venient. Okay, like a freshly baked cookie made with real butter, available right down the street at am, pm. Or a savory breakfast sandwich I can.

[Maddie]

Grab in just a second at a.m. pM. I'm seeing a pattern here.

[Anthony]

Well yeah, we're talking about what I.

[Maddie]

Crave, which is anything from am, pm.

[Anthony]

What more could you want? Stop by AMPM where the snacks and drinks are perfectly craveable and convenient. That's cravenience am, pm Too much good stuff.