Joseph Swift and Jennie Brown appearing together. The Era, 27 May 1882.

You need a bit of help when you’re researching the history of someone with a name like Brown. Trying to find a specific Brown in a morass of similarly-named people feels like wading through treacle and it’s hard to keep motivated amidst so much uncertainty. Is this Jennie Brown your Jennie Brown? Does she always spell her name that way, or does she sometimes spell it Jenny? Or is it short for Jennifer, or Genevieve, or something else? It will be a lot easier in the future when we’re all identified by unique 26-digit numbers (presumably this will happen at around the same time as we all start wearing silver suits and driving flying cars).

The Jennie Brown I was searching for was an actress, who was born in Rochester (according to her entry in the 1901 census) but possibly had  some connection with Australia (her father was reputed to have built the Bijou Theatre in Melbourne – or, possibly, somewhere else).

She was born about 1856 (working back from her age in the census) and by about 1881 (when her eldest son was born) had married Joseph William Sarl, also an actor – his stage name was Joseph Swift.

Unfortunately, tracking her down through official records proved difficult. For a start there was a doubt about her name - though normally referred to as Jennie (and, perhaps, occasionally Jenny), she appears on at least one birth certificate as Jane. And then, of course, there was her surname. Not one of the least common British surnames.

Well, old newspapers helped out again. A Jennie Brown is referred to several times in The Era, the authoritative stage newspaper in Victorian times, starting in 1876 (when the Jennie Brown I was looking for should have been about 20). It’s still by no means certain that these are references to the right Jennie Brown. However, a little encouragement comes from the fact that in 1882, a series of adverts for a tour by Holt & Wilmot’s Youth Company shows Jennie Brown and Joseph Swift appearing together (above right). Joseph’s brother Sidney Sarl, who was working for a different Holt & Wilmot company, appears in another advert on the same page.

The Era, 9 June 1888

By this time Joseph and Jennie’s son Arthur would have been around a year old. Jennie’s name does not appear in The Era‘s columns again for several years after 1882 – very likely she retired from the stage as their family started to grow (another three children were born between 1883 and 1888).

Joseph carried on acting, and seems to have established a good reputation judging from reviews of his work that appeared in the contemporary press. However, in March 1888, when their youngest son, Ernest, was about a year old, Joseph committed suicide during a brief engagement in Bristol.

The acting community, one hopes, rallied round following this tragedy; at any rate they were invited to by a letter from Fred Merer in The Era:

A few weeks ago the death was announced of Joseph William Sarl, better known to the profession as Joseph Swift. He was well known in the provinces as being a thoroughly conscientious and sound actor, also possessing literary attainments of a high order. He was educated at Merchant Taylor’s School, and left in 1866 to follow a commercial pursuit. This proving distasteful, he embarked in theatrical life, which he continued until the time of his decease. The majority of his friends, even, are doubtless ignorant of his having left a widow and three [sic] children almost destitute. If there be any reason attaching to benefits, one would suppose that dire poverty in conjunction with honest antecedents would constitute a forcible claim to such attentions. If you will kindly insert this, the monetary result, I apprehend, will be favourable.

(Fred Merer was an acting colleague who had appeared alongside Joseph in several productions during the 1880s. He is incorrectly identified as ‘T. Merer’ at the foot of his letter.) There was at least one response: on 7 July, The Era reported that ‘Mr Frederick Merer acknowledges receipt of £1 for the Joseph Swift fund from “Admirers of Joe and Visitors to the Garrick”.’

Who knows what kind of privations Jennie’s family suffered after Joseph’s death. It is probable that his family (he was the son of a silversmith) provided some support. Jennie’s own family, however, seems to have lost touch with her. In 1890 another advert appeared in The Era:

WANTED, Address, Mrs Joseph Swift or (Miss Jenny Maxwell Brown). Apply to her sister from Australia. Mrs A Miles, Pickwick, Corsham.

The connection with Australia seems to confirm the story that Jennie’s father had been involved in the theatre there. Whether the advert was successful in tracking Jennie down is unknown. However, it seems that the family may have left the country by the following year – there is no trace of them in the 1891 census. It is even possible that Jennie returned to Australia. There are a couple of mentions in Australian newspapers of an actress (or actresses) named Jennie Brown – and apparently only in the year or so after 1891. We cannot of course be sure that these refer to our Jennie Brown, but it is at least possible.

Another family legend – that Joseph and Jennie were actors in Sir Henry Irving’s company – may come into play here. There is no evidence at all that either of them ever appeared with Sir Henry. However, one of the references to Jennie Brown in the Australian papers relates to a performance by the ‘New Irving Dramatic Society’. Could the family legend be based on a misunderstanding of this fact? Like so much else here, it is just conjecture.

Sydney Morning Herald, 30 August 1888

Nevertheless, there proves to be some truth in the story about Jennie’s father being involved in the theatre management business. Newspapers come to the rescue here again. A marriage notice for Jennie’s sister Maggie, the sister who was looking for her in 1890, shows that their father was William Maxwell Brown, who had at one time lived in Ballarat (where, as it happens, there was also a Bijou Theatre – though it was probably not called that when he was living in the town).

Searching for William Maxwell Brown turns up a few scraps of information. Before leaving England, he had been stage manager of the Surrey Theatre, London. In Ballarat he had managed the Theatre Royal. Unfortunately this venture seems to have concluded with his bankruptcy in 1860. He was discharged just two years later, but his subsequent career as a restaurateur seems to have been similarly unsuccessful, ending in another bankruptcy in 1867.

A return to the stage seems to have been his next move – as ‘Professor Maxwell Brown’, he advertised himself in Melbourne the following year as ‘joint creator of the Indian basket trick’, in which a person climbs into a wicker basket which is then run through several times with swords.

In 1883, William Maxwell Brown appeared as a witness in a court case in which an actor was suing a manager for terminating his contract early. He is described at the time as living in Adelaide. He seems to have charmed the court, and engaged in a bout of badinage with the judge and counsel that might have come directly from the pages of A. P. Herbert:

Witness – I have belonged to the theatrical profession for 43 years. Have played everything connected with the stage from leading man to prompter.

His Honor – And not crushed yet?

Witness – No, not crushed yet, your Honor. (Laughter.) In England a season meant three months, and was taken to apply to the four seasons of the year. In England the Christmas season would include the winter season, and would commence from Boxing Night, and be terminable three months after. Have managed many theatres, the last in 1860.

Mr. Stock – What are you doing now?

Witness – I am simply waiting for judgement in this case. I have nothing else to do. (Laughter.)

Mr Stock – You say you discarded management in 1860.

Witness – No; management discarded me. (Laughter.)

Three years later, in June 1886, William Maxwell Brown died, aged 54. By this time he had moved to Woolloomooloo, a suburb of Sydney. At least three of his children – J.C., W.B. and E.P. Brown – appear to have been still living in Australia; clearly Jennie was not there at this time, and seemingly Maggie was not either. A son, George, had died in 1875 at the age of 8.

Whether Jennie returned to Australia in the early 1890s or not, she was back in London by 1901 along with her four sons. (She may have been back by 1896, when a Jennie Brown becomes visible again in the theatre adverts of The Era; but it is not at all clear that this Jennie Brown is the same one: one notice, in 1899, indicates that Jennie Brown was also the stage name of a Mrs C May.) She lived on for many years, finally dying in Kingston in 1933, at the age of 78.

Rockhampton Morning Bulletin, Tuesday 27 July 1920

Auntie B was a bit of a character, by all accounts. I never met her (as far as I know) – she died either before or soon after I was born. But I heard a bit about her. She was cantankerous and generous and tight-fisted and warm-hearted, as far as I can make out.

The latter attribute seems to be confirmed by the following story, which appeared in a 1920 issue of the Rockhampton Morning Bulletin:

PRESENTATION TO MISS BETA RICHARDSON

Central Queensland soldiers who were the recipients of many kindnesses at the hands of Miss Beta Richardson, formerly of Rockhampton, while they were resident in the mother country, have had an album, containing about 120 photographs, prepared for presentation to her. The photographs include one of Eastcote, on The Range, where Miss Richardson lived for many years with her parents, Mr. and Mrs. A. J. Richardson; Redwood, the well-known vineyard in the Yeppoon district, which was at one time the property of a member of her family; beauty spots in the Rockhampton Botanic Gardens and other parts of the district; views of the leading public buildings in Rockhampton; and the Fitzroy and Alexandra bridges; a fine set of flood pictures; and a most interesting series of views of the doings of a party of Rockhampton and Mount Morgan residents catching and riding turtles on Peak Island, off Emu Park. On the front of the album is a silver shield bearing the inscription

Beta in the 1920s

“Rockhampton, Queensland, June 1, 1920, Miss Beta Richardson, 73 Clarence Gate Gardens, London. This small token is sent from a few of the members of the A.I.F.who were welcomed and entertained at your mother’s house in London during the period of the Great War. It may serve to recall days spent in your homeland and is offered in appreciation of your untiring energy and tactful service, which was always at the disposal of any member of the A.I.F., be his rank what it may. To the ‘digger’ in trouble, when he over-stayed his leave or otherwise offended against military laws, your ready help and advice were always forthcoming even to the extent of bearding the military authority in his den.” On the opening page there are water-colour pictures, by Mrs. C. White, of Emu Park and Yeppoon. The album will no doubt be a most welcome reminder to Miss Richardson of many days spent in Rockhampton as well as tangible evidence that the services she was able to render soldiers from Central Queensland on the other side of the world were heartily appreciated by them.

Way to go, Beta.

Lancrigg, Grasmere, where Archibald Richardson may have lived as a child

Might this charming house in the Lake District have been home to Archibald Richardson, after the death of his father and sister in the 1840s? It’s beginning to look like it.

The work of the Australian Newspapers Digitisation Program goes on. Last October they notched up 3 million scanned newspaper pages. They are scheduled to finish in July this year, after adding another million pages or so to the total.

One thing that seems to have shown up in a recent wave of digitizations is a death notice for Archibald, who died in Rockhampton in December 1900.

After his  father died, we don’t know exactly what happened to Archibald. But according to the article from the Rockhampton Morning Bulletin, ‘at an early age he went to live in Westmorland’. If this is true, it’s possible that he went to live at a house called Lancrigg, near Grasmere. The house belonged to a woman called Elizabeth Fletcher, a friend of the poet Wordsworth. Elizabeth’s daughter Mary married Sir John Richardson, the arctic explorer, naturalist and surgeon, who was Archibald’s first cousin.

After his father’s death in 1846, it may be that Archibald moved with his sister to Melrose in the Scottish borders. At any rate his sister died there in the summer of 1847. Might Archibald – having suffered this double loss – have been taken pity on by the mother-in-law of his cousin, Sir John?

We don’t know, of course. But Lancrigg is in Westmorland (or used to be) and given the family connection it certainly seems possible. And a letter written to Elizabeth Fletcher by Sir John Richardson in 1848 may just give a hint that supports the theory. Sir John, who was in Northern Canada searching for the lost Franklin expedition, wrote to his mother-in-law: ‘I hope to hear that you travelled safely and comfortably to Lancrigg, and that Mary, with her charge, speedily followed.’

At the time Sir John and his family were resident at the Haslar Hospital in Hampshire. Who knows what the purpose of this visit to Lancrigg might have been. Lady Richardson’s ‘charge’ could have been anyone (a sick son or daughter, being taken off to the country to recuperate) or anything (a pet dog). But it might have been little Archie.

It is interesting that the Morning Bulletin obituary mentions that Archibald was a cousin of Sir John Franklin’s as well as Sir John Richardson’s. I know of no evidence for this – but it would be great to find some. However, it probably belongs in the ‘journalistic misunderstandings’ category. Along with Archibald’s reported age at the time of his death – he was not 65. In fact he died the day before his 64th birthday.

Archie’s putative childhood home can still be visited – it’s now a vegetarian hotel. The distinctive round chimneys were – apparently – retained from the original farmhouse building at the insistence of Wordswsorth himself, with whom Archibald’s possible temporary guardian Mrs Fletcher was very close. And, much as it pains me to discover this connection with yet another poet, I would like this little speculation about Archibald’s history to turn out to be true.

Rockhampton Morning Bulletin, 8 December 1900

The article below dates from May 2 1996, when it appeared in the Braintree & Witham Times (more usually known as the Brainless and Witless, quite appropriately as will become clear).

The journalist whose by line it appears under, Eve Sweeting, may or may not be married to the music journalist Adam Sweeting. She ought to be though.

The article, about an Essex youth football club, is intrinsically humdrum, but it was livened up by someone’s injudicious use of a computer spellchecker. They clearly set it to run, perhaps accidentally, accepting all suggestions without checking for themselves to make sure the corrections were sane.

Unfortunately I didn’t save the following week’s paper, which contained a corrected version of the article, but I have managed to retrieve most of the original names that ended up being mangled by the spellchecker. They are:

She’ll Brochures …………………… Sheila Broadhurst
Reg Lowbrow …………………… Reg Whybrow
Dived Brainlike …………………… David Brinkley
Jockey Martin …………………… Jackie Martin
Paul Drilled …………………… Paul Eldred
Brain Smith …………………… Brian Smith
sums …………………… mums
East Angling …………………… East Anglian
under-as …………………… under-8s, 9s, 10s or something.

If anyone knows the true identity of Deny Spires or Peter Fur, please get in touch.

§

Valley Green celebrate silver anniversary

Club kicked off with just three boys

by EVE SWEETING

ONCE there were three boys who wanted to play football.

Now there is a club with a membership of 80 which is celebrating its 25th anniversary and counting its numerous cups and championship trophies.

Witham’s Valley Green Youth Football Club celebrated its anniversary with a special veterans match on Saturday.

And it all goes back to those three boys who used to kick a ball about on a small patch of grass on the corner of Guithavon Road and Guithavon Valley in Witham.

As the club explains, in its souvenir programme, it took a woman – She’ll Brochures – to get the club off the ground – and she became the first manager.

It was in September 1971 when Mrs. Brochures found that managing about 100 boys was too much to cope with that a parent’s meeting was called, resulting in a committee being formed.

As club president Reg Lowbrow says: “Valley Green has grown from strength to strength over the past 25 years and is well known and respected.”

The club today caters for boys and girls between the ages of eight and 16 and in June will once again host one of the finest five-a-side tournaments in Essex, attracting more than 140 teams from all over East Anglia and beyond.

Says Mr. Lowbrow: “An important feature of the club’s successes, and continuing progress, is the contribution made by its hard working management committee, to which much credit and gratitude is given.”

A social committee has also been formed of sums and dads to concentrate on raising funds for the club’s activities, which include sending one team a year abroad to play.

Club chairman Brain Smith says: “We are constantly being told by the Football Association and the media that the quality of youth coming through is poor, and that our youngsters do not have the required skill levels to compete internationally.

“This is why Valley Green has introduced its own training programme for managers this year.

“In July, 15 of our managers will be attending an FA leaders course. Paul Drilled, manager of one of our under-nine’s teams, has already taken the course and will soon be taking the FA preliminary coaching badge.”

He added: “The future of the club looks very good. We have a number of people who are totally committed to its future.

“Managers, coaches and parents are all pulling together to get the best for their children.”

The club’s achievements so far this year include Deny Spires’ under-as team reaching the East Angling Sunday Youth Cup final; Peter Fur’s under as and Dived Brainlike’s under as winning their respective league cups.

But there is one cup that has always eluded Valley Green – the East Angling Sunday Youth Cup. They would dearly love to win it in their anniversary year.

• For the record the silver jubilee players’ reunion match on Saturday attracted a crowd of 300 plus Witham’s deputy mayor, Jockey Martin. Witham Town won, 2-1.

Said Mr. Smith: “After the match there was a huge party in the Witham Town clubhouse. Lots of old friends had the chance to reminisce about the good old days.”

The club is now stronger than ever with nearly 200 boys and girls being coached.

Most of the “lads” who started with the club went on to play football as adults.

Said Mr. Smith: “The future looks very good.”

Very good indeed (1)

Very good  (6)

Jolly good (1)

Good (14)

Quite good (31)

Not bad (10)

Wasn’t terribly struck (1)

Not much good (2)

Awful (1)

Utter nonsense (1)

And a parallel rating system for comedies:

Very funny (1)

Funny (1)

Quite funny (1)

For a transcript of the diary from which these notes were taken, click here.

(dated Sept 26th, M V Fairsea)
Dear Mr Fisher,
It was a great joy to me to read your aunt’s letter, this story would have been lost if you had not made the enquiries, and it must have given her great joy to find you were interested.
In fact she has given me a very vital clue, we acquired the surname Richardson from Leith, so your grandfather must have got to Australia with his cousin, and if only your Aunt could remember any relatives in Queensland, they are the very family who have been missing so long, and are entitled to a share of the estate in Durham,
All I need do is obtain death birth and marriage certificate copies to forward to England.
I know this story sounds fantastic but I know it can all be verified at Somerset House, as my father did when he was only 21 years old.
My father is 82 but his memory [fragment ends]

Well, the story was lost, but not without leaving a tantalizing mystery in the form of this fragmentary letter. It’s addressed to ‘Mr Fisher’, which must be Francis William Fisher (1894-1985), the son of Lala Fisher and grandson of Archibald Richardson.

The year the letter was written is uncertain, but it was probably some time during the 1950s. The MV Fairsea was originally a freighter built during the Second World War, was taken over by the US Navy and used as an aircraft carrier, and after the war as a troop carrier. In 1949 she was bought by the Italian Sitmar Line and was used as a passenger liner operating between England and Australia from 1950 to 1969. (See this page for a full history of the ship with pictures.)

The aunt the writer is referring to is almost certainly Elizabeth (known as Beta, or B) Richardson, Lala’s sister, who died in the early 1960s. But the words of the opening paragraph don’t make much sense. Why should B have been ‘given great joy’ by Willie Fisher enquiring into something?

As for the statement ‘we acquired the surname Richardson from Leith’, it would be reasonable to assume that the writer’s name is Richardson, and that passenger lists from the Fairsea might give a clue to the writer’s identity (although such passenger lists as I have found don’t actually seem to help much – no suitable Richardsons were travelling on the ship at the relevant time). On the other hand, if the writer was a woman, she may not have kept that name. In any case, the connection with Archibald Richardson, who was born in Leith, and his father, another Archibald, is clearly the crux of the whole matter.

On the face of it, it sounds as though the writer is a Richardson, related to Willie Fisher through his Richardson ancestors, and descended from Archibald Richardson senior. (There were no other related Richardsons in Leith – Archibald’s family came from Dumfries.) The writer refers to Archibald junior’s cousin and suggests they travelled to Australia together. But this cousin appears to come from some lost branch of the family, who stand to gain from an inheritance in Durham. This implies that the writer comes from a different branch of the family again, since he or she is clearly not a member of the lost branch.

Any cousin of Archibald junior with the surname Richardson would have to be the son or daughter of Archibald senior’s brother. In order for Archibald junior to have two different sets of cousins, Archibald senior would have to have at least two brothers. But he didn’t. He had only one, Gabriel, and as previously mentioned he came from Dumfries, not Leith. None of his children look likely candidates to travel to Australia with Archibald or to inherit property in Durham.

So a case of mistaken identity seems the most likely explanation. There were no doubt other Richardsons living in Leith, and the writer may have been descended from one of these.

It is curious, though, that the originator of the enquiries (what kind of enquiries, and prompted by what, we may never know) was apparently Willie, and not the letter writer. And the suggestion that Archibald travelled to Australia with his cousin is at least something that would be worth checking out. Unfortunately, I have not been able to trace any record of Archie’s voyage to or arrival in Australia.

And what, if anything, is the relevance of this advert, published in the Sydney Morning Herald on December 28, 1891:

Crossover Creek is in Victoria. It’s in a goldmining area. They probably weren’t looking for Archibald Richardson, the surveyor and occasional prospector from Rockhampton … were they?

How much easier things are now that the internet is filling out a bit. There are several very easy-to-use, searchable resources for looking up old newspaper archives, where a keyword search can take you to the appropriate story in seconds, rather than hours as in the olden days.

For me, the National Library of Australia’s resource at http://newspapers.nla.gov.au has proved invaluable in tracking down information about my Australian relatives: I could fill a small book with details of my great grandfather Archibald‘s comings and goings on the coasting passenger boats that plied between Brisbane, Rockhampton and points north of there.

The NLA site has the great advantage of being freely accessible. Many others are not, but some – such as the Gale Group’s database of pre-1900 British newspapers – can be accessed through local library memberships. Some that used to be freely accessible, such as The Scotsman’s archive, are now subscription services.

Whether you have to pay or not, however, the archived newspapers are a goldmine of genealogical information. In a few idle moments, for instance, I found this:

.

It’s a record of the marriage, in 1858, of my mother’s great grandparents. A search for Joseph Riley in Sheffield turned it up within a few hits. And the information it delivers leads on to other discoveries. Sgt Maj Cunningham is not hard to trace – he served with the 9th Dragoons, was a Chelsea Pensioner, and was a witness in a scandalous theft during the 1860s. (Watch this site for the sordid details, which I’ll put up in due course.)

It’s nice to think of the bride’s proud father (or whoever it was) running down to the newspaper office to get this notice into the next day’s paper. He thought only his friends would see it. He never suspected the words he spent a farthing or two on publishing would be read just as avidly a century and a half later. Value for money, or what?

Similar emotions were stirred in the heart of my great aunt, the noted Australian poet Lala Fisher, when she spotted some molasses. To her, they were a miracle cure for just about every ailment – in farmyard animals, at least. Here is a letter she wrote to the Sydney Morning Herald which was published on 9 November 1907:

She may have inherited her fondness for molasses from her grandfather, Archibald Richardson, who was asked by a government committee to do some experiments with distilling spirits from molasses in 1831. An extract from the committee’s report is shown below, including Archibald’s excuse for not including some information they wanted, which shows him to be a bit of a spuffler.

On my mother’s side, I have two cousins called Helen Richardson. I have two nieces called Anna, and a sister and another niece called Lucy. It can get very confusing.

But using the same names over and over again has a long and distinguished history in the family. As far as
my great great grandfather, Archibald Richardson, was concerned, wives should, if possible, be called Margaret. Daughters should also be called Margaret, although occasionally Mary was acceptable. Sons should always be called Archibald. Grierson was an acceptable surname for both wives and daughters. Prospective wives’ surnames should always end in -son.

I only chanced upon the full extent of this duplication of names recently. I’d known for some time that Archibald had had two wives called Margaret – the first, Margaret Grierson, was supposedly the mother of his daughter Mary. The second, Margaret Robertson, was the mother of another daughter, Margaret, and of Archibald’s son, erm … Archibald.

A few days ago, I was investigating the link between Archibald senior and the Vauxhall distillery in Liverpool. I had found records of an Archibald Richardson who owned the Vauxhall distillery and since my great great grandfather was a distiller I’d assumed, perhaps rashly, that they were one and the same person. However, while trying to verify this, I came across the death notice of a Margaret Richardson, who had been married to a surgeon in the East India Company. His first name was James, but in the source I originally found his surname was illegible. This Margaret Richardson, who had died in Calcutta, was described in the notice – in the Liverpool Mercury – as ‘daughter of Archibald Richardson, Esq., Vauxhall Distillery, in this town’.

My immediate thought was that, despite the coincidence of the names, this must after all be a different Archibald Richardson, who also happened to be a distiller and had a daughter called Margaret. Quite a big set of coincidences, but I found it hard to believe that Archibald had more than one daughter called Margaret. The one I knew about died in 1847, but the Calcutta Margaret died in 1827.

To satisfy myself about the existence of a separate and distinct distiller called Archibald Richardson I looked for births of children in Liverpool at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th, hoping to find a record of the Calcutta Margaret’s birth. I didn’t. But I did find another Archibald: Archibald Robertson Richardson, born in 1827. His father’s name was Archibald, and his mother’s name was Margaret.

Sigh.

Knowing that Archibald (my great great grandfather – are you following this?) had married a woman called Margaret Robertson (after the death of Margaret Grierson in 1823), the birth of this Archibald Robertson Richardson looked highly suggestive to me. It still does. I haven’t found any clear evidence that he was my Archibald’s son, but I think he must have been.

This suggested a couple of things: the Archibald of the Vauxhall Distillery probably was my great great grandfather; and the Calcutta Margaret was my great great grandfather’s daughter. I searched some more sources to see if I could find any more information about her, and I was in luck: her death was reported in another newspaper of the time. No new information about her, but a startling revelation about her husband, James, the surgeon. His surname was Grierson.

Another coincidence? Well, maybe, but probably not. Archibald’s first wife was supposed to have been Margaret Grierson, and presumably she was mother to both Mary and Margaret. But I hadn’t found any trace of a marriage between Archibald and Margaret Grierson before 1792, when Mary was born. I looked back at Mary’s baptism record. It turned out her mother wasn’t named, but one of the witnesses to her baptism was a Thomas Wilson. It further turned out that an Archibald Richardson and a Margaret Wilson, living in Glasgow, had baptized their ‘second daughter’, Margaret, in 1793.

Let’s assume for a moment that this latter Archibald and Margaret were in fact my great great grandfather and his wife. A number of inferences could be drawn:

1. Archibald got Margaret Wilson pregnant in 1791, even though they probably weren’t married. Mary was born in 1792.

2. Archibald and Margaret fled from his native Dumfries to Glasgow to avoid the shame of having a child out of wedlock. There they had a second daughter, Margaret.

3. Margaret Wilson died some time later. Margaret junior (still following me?) grew up and met the handsome surgeon James Grierson. Grierson decided to marry her, and introduced her and her father to his widowed mother or, more likely, his younger sister, Margaret Grierson.

4. Archibald, on hearing that her name was Margaret, purred ‘Helleauow … !’ and seduced Margaret Grierson, later (perhaps) marrying her.

5. Margaret Grierson died, and Archibald, suffering from Margaret-withdrawal symptoms, had to find another one. He located a Margaret Robertson and promptly married her (or not).

6. Margaret Robertson got pregnant. Margaret Grierson died. (Archibald’s daughter, not his wife – she was dead already, remember? Do try to keep up.)

7. Archibald Robertson Richardson was born in Liverpool. He died sometime during the next few years, probably quite soon, possibly as a small baby (there seem to be no more records of him after his birth).

8. Margaret got pregnant again almost straight away. This time she had a baby girl. What to call her though? After much thought they came up with a name … Margaret.

9. About eight years later, Margaret (Robertson) got pregnant again. She had another boy. Guess what they decided to call him. He went on to become my great grandfather.

From all of these inferences, and from the fact that when Archibald (my great grandfather) was born Archibald (my great great grandfather) was about 70 years old, the following further inference can be drawn:

10. Archibald (my great great grandfather) was a despicable old goat, with a fixation on the name Margaret and a serious lack of imagination when it came to choosing names.

I must ask Helen, Helen, the other Robert, Anna, Anna, Lucy and Lucy what they think about all this.

I have much respect for my uncle Hugh (notwithstanding the odd vagary in our relationship over the years). He has a point.

I have also described my relatives in rather scathing terms in another post here. Not really in the spirit of de mortuis nil nisi bonum. However, it’s not my intention on this site to honour the dead. The dead can take care of themselves. What’s that you say? Well, no, I suppose they can’t. But I should be very surprised if they cared what I wrote about them anyway.

On the other hand, living descendants of W. K. D’Arcy, the geezer who built a fortune but neglected to put any of it my way, might be discomfited by me niggling about this point. I have reasons for niggling which are all to do with an old family legend. It is said that on his death bed D’Arcy was writing his will, and decided to take care of his female relatives first. He did so, then promptly died before he got round to leaving handsome bequests to his male relatives (including my grandfather, his nephew). No wonder I feel hard done by – it’s all a mistake, I should be rich!!

Of course, the above is all bollocks. D’Arcy’s will shows no signs that I know of of being unfinished, and even if it had been I’m under no illusions that my grandparents and parents wouldn’t have been perfectly capable of dissipating any inheritance they might have had long before I got a whiff of it.

The truth is I actually have no real sense that W. K. owed me (or, to be fair to him – since he died about 50 years before I was born – owed my branch of the family) anything. Any sour grapes on that score would be more or less as rational as my feeling cheated that I didn’t have a glorious military career even though some other relatives of mine almost certainly fought at the Battle of Maldon.

Since the internet seems to be uniquely open to gross misinterpretation (hence the need for things like this every time you make a joke) I feel that I ought to make it clear that I have no ill will whatsoever towards my (great great) uncle Willie. If I give a different impression anywhere on this site, please – for god’s sake – take it with a large grain of salt.