Researching your past can be very shocking ...

[maggie]

Horrific: After researching her family tree, Penninah Asher discovered her great-great-aunt was a murderess:

While I suspected some members of my father's side of the family were pretty colourful, nothing prepared me for what I discovered when, out of the blue, I received an email from a man through the website ancestry.co.uk, who asked if I was aware I was related to 'a notorious lady' called Amelia Sach.

Sach, explained my correspondent, was a murderess better known as the Finchley 'baby farmer'.

On a bitter winter's morning in 1903, she became one of the first two women to be executed at Holloway Prison - along with her colleague Annie Walters.

And Amelia Sach, convicted as an infamous killer of babies, was the sister of my great-grandmother, so she was my great-great-aunt.

My first reaction was confusion, then shock and then disbelief. Did I really have a murderess in the family? And if I did, then why did I know nothing about it?

More here:

The baby killer in my family: Researching your background has never been so popular... but the past can hide horrific secrets


How shocking! Has anyone else researched into their family tree and found something awful or scandaous?

My brother researched ours and found that in Victorian times a member of our family was in court for "keeping a bawdy house"!!

[mouse]

so far nothing shocking has turned up although my grandmother did create a social and family scandal by marrying a farmers son and was cut out of wills because of it

[Deleted]

On the British genealogical series, Who Do You Think You Are?, Patsy Kensit was quite disturbed to find out that she had a number of criminals and murderers in her family. Colin Jackson, the Welsh athlete, was stunned to find out that one of his ancestors was a slave owner.

We all have skeletons in our family closets.

On the other hand, genealogy is a fascinating subject.

A friend of Lin's father was so fascinated by his own family history that it became the basis of his new book which is due to be publsihed this month. Not a work of family history, but the social history of London.

[Scottish Lassie]

Jun 5, 2011 8:28:20 GMT -5 maggie said:

Horrific: After researching her family tree, Penninah Asher discovered her great-great-aunt was a murderess:

While I suspected some members of my father's side of the family were pretty colourful, nothing prepared me for what I discovered when, out of the blue, I received an email from a man through the website ancestry.co.uk, who asked if I was aware I was related to 'a notorious lady' called Amelia Sach.

Sach, explained my correspondent, was a murderess better known as the Finchley 'baby farmer'.

On a bitter winter's morning in 1903, she became one of the first two women to be executed at Holloway Prison - along with her colleague Annie Walters.

And Amelia Sach, convicted as an infamous killer of babies, was the sister of my great-grandmother, so she was my great-great-aunt.

My first reaction was confusion, then shock and then disbelief. Did I really have a murderess in the family? And if I did, then why did I know nothing about it?

More here:

The baby killer in my family: Researching your background has never been so popular... but the past can hide horrific secrets


How shocking! Has anyone else researched into their family tree and found something awful or scandaous?

My brother researched ours and found that in Victorian times a member of our family was in court for "keeping a bawdy house"!!

These facts are obviously nothing to be proud of, so are not passed on, that is logical thinking. Sometimes Silence is Golden.!!!