This series of Who Do You Think You Are? finished off with the story of actress Lesley Manville's family.
Though a solid enough episode, given how many excellent episodes this series has had, it would perhaps have been better situated in the middle of the series. But that's just my opinion, of course.
Lesley's family tended to border on the non-conventional - on both maternal and paternal sides of the family, there were stories of couples who lived together but were actually still married to someone else.
Perhaps it's a sign of the upheaval of the times that they lived in - the period during and after the First World War for one couple, for example - that they felt able to live as man and wife, despite not legally being man and wife.
Divorce was, of course, still strictly regulated, and inaccessible to many people.
Most of the episode, though, focussed on the life and fate of Aaron Harding, a participant in the Swing Riots that spread across the country in 1830.
The Swing Rioters protested poor pay and working conditions for agricultural labourers, as well as being staunchly anti-mechanisation, and often destroying farm equipment such as threshing machinery which they saw as a threat to their jobs.
The riots that Aaron Harding participated in seemed to be more about conditions and pay, rather than any real shift towards automation, and the ire of his group of rioters was directed primarily at the local workhouses, then known as poor houses, which represented the failing poor relief system at the time.
Due to the value placed on property over people in this period, the destruction of a house was actually a capital offense.
That meant that the penalty was death.
Luckily, Aaron's sentence was commuted... to transportation for life in Australia. And it's to here that Lesley follows his story.
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