A writer reluctantly delves into her family history and uncovers a surprising connection to a legendary figure from Fleet Street.
I always thought genealogy was as dull as looking at other people’s holiday snaps – until I found out about a 16th-century architect who transformed the stately homes of his era. Friends and family, back in the 1970s, would often aggravate each other with a lengthy holiday slideshow, presenting a string of identical beach views and nameless hillside vistas over the course of a dull evening.
Today, there is a new phrase that can freeze the heart just as easily as the sight of a slide projector, and it is: “I’ve done into my family history and you’ll never guess what I’ve found out!” A scroll bearing a family tree unrolls to reveal a roster of Jacks and Noreens, leading back to some Charleses and Marys, each perching on ever-more-distant branches and ultimately signifying little about the people who are actually living and breathing around you. For me, this became a domestic issue a while ago, because my husband, a history buff, takes genealogy quite seriously. To be fair, he was early to spot the wider growing public interest in as a hobby, even before the genetic element had truly taken hold with the arrival of rival commercial DNA-tracing services. But the big embarrassment for me is that I have finally been sucked in. I recently discovered something surprising enough – funny enough, even – about one of my own antecedents that the last laugh is on me. One evening this year, in an attempt to engage my interest, I was shown documentary proof that my paternal grandfather – who I always knew had grown up above Thorpe’s, a tobacconists and newsagents on Roman Road in east London – was immediately descended from a Fleet Street barber. This unexpected bulletin from the past did cause perhaps one of my eyebrows to rise a little, given the gruesome legend of Sweeney Todd, the fabled “demon barber” said to have operated so fatally from that London street. Mildly interestin
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