WDYTYA? Series Finale - Jonnie Peacock

Last Monday's episode of Who Do You Think You Are? was the last in the series and featured Paralympian Jonnie Peacock.

I have to admit that I'm a big fan of Jonnie Peacock, so I was looking forward to this episode!

Jonnie's episode actually showed what a lot of the episodes this series have shown - that the poverty of the past, and the living conditions of many of our ancestors, were exceptionally poor.



One key frustrating note (for me at least,) that seems to crop up a lot is the celebrity being completely bemused when people sign with an X.

So, to clear this up and spread the word, let me explain:

If someone signs with an X it usually means they are illiterate. The only other explanation, really, would be if a disability affected someone's ability to write.

Early records, particularly among women, and among lower/working-class people, are usually signed with an X.

So now you know!



I think the interesting thing to me with this episode was the connection with anthrax, and its relative prevalence at the time.

Just goes to show that health and safety is there for a reason, I suppose!






So that was it for this series of Who Do You Think You Are? - I'll try to add some blogposts between series this time, but if I'm quiet it's because I'm busy researching your ancestors!

WDYTYA? - Marvin Hulmes + Robert Rinder

As I didn't have time to do my write-up of Marvin Hulmes' episode of Who Do You Think You Are? last week, I figured I'd combine that write-up with the write-up for this week's episode, featuring Robert Rinder.

Marvin Hulmes' episode showed the difficulty of coming to terms with the past from where we are in the present.

Slavery is, and was, wrong. But it was not only white people who owned slaves.

As Marvin learned during his time in Jamaica, free black people also often owned slaves. Coming to terms with that is not the easiest of things to do, especially from Marvin's position of being descended from both black slaves and black slave owners.

Marvin's episode also showed that it can be unfair to judge people - such as his mother's grandfather, known as 'Old Man Buckingham' and thought of as grumpy and standoffish - without knowing their stories.

Old Man Buckingham's story was one of the worst kinds of luck, encompassing workhouse stays, abandonment by his parents, a painful disease as a child, and being shipwrecked twice. Such a background is enough to make anyone a little standoffish.



Robert Rinder's episode explored a lot of the same themes, albeit from a completely different aspect of geography and history.

Judge Rinder's family story covered the horrors and uncertainties of the 20th Century, and their affects on the lives of those who lived through them.

The Holocaust, as his grandfather's old friend and fellow Holocaust-survivor told Robert Rinder, is something that should never be forgotten - what the Jewish people and other victims of the Holocaust suffered is something we should never let ourselves forget, so that we never, ever, repeat it.

It also showed, very clearly, that the rules are sometimes meant to be broken. Rinder's grandfather lied about his age in order to be allowed to move to the UK, and re-start his life. As uncomfortable as it made Rinder, it seems an exceptionally small sin when compared with those committed against him.

WDYTYA? - Shirley Ballas

Strictly Come Dancing's new head judge Shirley Ballas featured in Monday's episode of Who Do You Think You Are?

I have to say, it was one of the better episodes of recent years!

Rumors of possible Black ancestry took Shirley to South Africa and a complex history.

Her family were originally Muslim, probably brought into Cape Town, South Africa, as slaves before slavery was abolished.

I found it quite amusing that the Deacon of the Cathedral didn't mention Jesus at all when asked why the Muslim Caroline Otto and her family would convert to Christianity - he was refreshingly honest in admitting that their motives would likely have been an improvement in social status.

I did find this episode quite naïve when it came to the parentage of the Otto family.

There were several generations of the Otto family born to single mothers, no fathers being mentioned.

An  ex-slave-owner, Isaac DaCosta, left one of the generations of ladies named Caroline Otto an inheritance in his will, as well as her children, who were all named individually.

Esther DaCosta, Isaac's daughter, also witnessed an Otto marriage.

There's nothing invalid about the conclusion put forward on the programme, that the DaCosta family valued the Otto family as friends and excellent servants - but it seems impermissible to ignore another strong possibility.

Relationships that are this close between servants and their masters would be rare, especially when the servant was previously a slave, and in such a race-defined society as pre-21st-Century South Africa.

Where servants were that close to their master, I would expect the bequest in the will to contain the words 'to my servant' or something similar. An absence of this doesn't prove anything, but is interesting.

The whole set-up, to me, suggests more of an intimate obligation on the DaCosta family - possibly even a familial obligation, if one of the DaCosta family was the father of one or more of one of those fatherless Otto children.

Again, that's just my take on things, and just a theory at that!