After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - Does Every Family Hold A Dark Past?

Episode Date: December 11, 2025

Maddy and Anthony dig into their own family history in collaboration with Ancestry! They find stories from the darker side of the past in their own family trees. Huge thanks to Ancestry's genealogists and family historians Jenn Utley, Joe Buggy and Christina Copland.If you haven’t yet, head to here to start your own family history journey today for free. The AncestryDNA kit makes an amazing stocking stuffer. Be sure to subscribe to the Ancestry YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/@AncestryUS too!Edited by Tim Arstall. Produced by Freddy Chick, Peta Stamper and Charlotte Long.You can now watch After Dark on Youtube! www.youtube.com/@afterdarkhistoryhitSign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

William Palmer was a psychopathic Victorian doctor who used poisons to kill many victims. He even killed his own family for insurance claims. He poisoned people at horse races because he owed them money. He became the stuff of nightmares. Charles Dickens called him the greatest villain that ever stood in the old Bailey. But this monstrous doctor bought his deadly poison. from my ancestor. Every family holds its secrets.

Well, hello, and welcome to After Dark. I'm Anthony. And I'm Maddie. And today we are excited to be celebrating. Wait for it. International Dark Side of Your Family Tree Day. Yay. No, wait, that made it sound like it's a tree day.

I'm going to do it again. International Dark Side of Your Family Tree Day. Yay. We've made this up. We have made it up. It's not a real thing. But we do genuinely both love family history. We do.

And we are excited to do this. I'm very, very excited. Because what we have said this before, Maddie, but like it's about everyone. showing up into the history space when we're talking about family histories and people are innately interested in their own family history.

Not for everybody. No, wow. And we have some incredible stories. Well, Maddie particularly, I don't know about mine, have some incredible stories from your past and your family tree

and we're about to talk about that again. And after Dark is here to tell you that every family tree has a nefarious, twisted branch on it somewhere. And today, Maddie is going to share a story about her connection to the infamous figure of Palmer the poisoner, the Victorian doctor, we heard about in the intro.

I certainly am. Now, we have been collaborating on this episode with Ancestry. And if you don't know who Ancestry are, you're living under a rock. They are a global leader when it comes to researching your family history and getting DNA test done to find out your own genetic background. Now, you've had this done for this episode. I have, yes. I'm so excited. I have a sneaking suspicion there's going to be a dominance in certain areas. I think I'm Irish. I think you might be Irish. We will wait and see. The jury is still out, potentially.

At the end of this episode, after we've heard about Palmer the Poisoner and my own nefarious twisted branch of the family tree, we're going to be talking to genealogists from ancestry. How lucky are we? Oh my God, this is one of the highlights of my life. Yeah, this is what a privilege to be able to do this. They have been looking into my family tree, they've been looking into Anthony's family tree, and they tell us that they have some secrets to share.

Are you nervous for this? I'm not nervous, I'm excited. I'm really, I'm like, this is, I've always wanted to be famous enough to do who do you think you are. That's my dream to do who do you think you are. The only thing about this is we're not going to get to do this now. They won't be making it by the time we're famous enough. Well, that true, yeah, which is potentially never.

But this is the next best thing and I am genuinely so excited. I've tried to do this myself, but it's actually really hard to just go in alone. So the fact that we have had genealogists so excited. Yeah, and in my case, my family have done a lot of my family history, We've come up against some snags, and I'm hoping that Ancestry are going to be able to unpick some of those. But to kick things off, we're joined by Jen Utley, who is a family historian from Ancestry. And she's going to set the scene for us, explain how this all works. Jen, welcome to the show.

Oh, thank you for having me today. This should be fun. We're so happy to have you. Thank you for joining us. Now, of course, every family tree is full of unique stories. That's the joy of what you get to do. But how often do you find in your line of work that you could, across people who have, let's say, a darker side to their family history. Is this something

that you come across? Oh, well, we do all the time. As my job, what I do is find cool stories and family trees. And, you know, people are interested in finding, you know, the aspiring heroes and uplifting stories and inspirational. But I found that people are just as interested in finding the dark characters, the shaded characters. Everyone loves a rascal in their tree, right? So we find them all the time because there are two types of people that are easier to find in trees. The easiest to find are the people who are rich with maybe a little bit of nobility or royalty because they have money to leave a paper trail because they're buying and selling stuff. The other people that are easier to find are the rascals, the ones who maybe are on

the other side of the law and getting caught and leaving a trail that way. So we find those types of stories all the time. Well, now you've made me a little bit uneasy. because I know we weren't rich. So now, well, I'm assuming we weren't rich. And if we were, I want to know what went wrong. But now that means the only thing that's left for me is the other side. I feel like a child of Christmas for this story. But what I will ask you, Jen, and because it was a question Maddie and I were talking about,

what is the difference between a genealogist and a family historian? Are they the same thing? Does that cross over? Are you complementary fields and disciplines? Or what's the distinction there? Is there one? For some people, there isn't. a big difference. The reason I call myself a family historian is because my colleagues here who are

going to talk to you, Joe and Christina, they are from our section of ancestry called ancestry progeniologists. And this is what they're trained to do. The ancestry progenialologists have credentials. They are highly specialized. I learned how to do family history on the job, right? My background is I started at ancestry as the magazine editor. And so it's all about telling the stories. So I'm approaching family history from a very story-driven position where Christina and Joe have like the academic chops behind them, right? And so it's a little distinction that I make, but it's mostly just a nod to how great Joe and Christina are. Well, we are very excited to get into the work that they've done. Jen, you mentioned there that everyone loves to find a rascal in their

family history. And I know from the research that my family have already done, aside from the exciting new research that we're going to hear about today, that there are quite a few rascals in my family. But I'm just wondering, have you come across anyone who stood out for you in other people's stories that has been particularly naughty, problematic, exciting to research? Oh, boy, those are our favorite stories. It's really hard when you get excited about someone who's like done something maybe on the wrong side of the law or something that's tragic. Like you're wondering why you're cheering over stories like that. We've found actually, murderers. We found embezzlers. We found people who are enticing people to come to the Yukon

gold rush and maybe not being as up front as they should be. In my own family tree, I mean, I'm not sure that she's a complete rascal, but I have someone in my family tree who crossed the ocean at 19 with only an infant with her. And I have been trying for years to figure out who the father of this baby is? No idea. Still, I've got some cousins. I'm trying to convince them to maybe help let me use their DNA results to try and figure out who her, who the father of this baby is. This woman comes to Utah. She's got a beautiful voice and she sings, like I find her in newspapers all the time because she's like the first person to sing the Messiah west of the Mississippi. Wow. So I find her in these newspapers all over the place. And then I find her. I find

her dying pretty young of a morphine overdose. Gosh. So it's a crazy story, and I jokingly refer to it as sex drugs and religious oratorioes. And I'm hoping someday when, like, I meet her on the other side, she's not annoyed at me telling, like, all these seedy parts of her life. But, like, our ancestors made interesting choices and looking at the records and reading between the lines and figuring it out is part of this, like, a journey to discover what's in your family tree. Well, speaking about what's in our family trees, Maddie, we have been promising everybody this story from your family tree, which, of course, is the Palmer, the Poisoner

story, a really big piece of true crime history and a story that you have a connection to. I certainly do. We're going to talk about a poisoner, we're going to talk about a murder, but actually, luckily... We're talking about me again. Not your ancestor that has killed anybody, though. No, thankfully. But killing adjacent... Killing by proxy

Well, well, no, no. Your ancestors are definitely not guilty in this scenario. So if you've heard before about Palmer the Poisoner, it's an earlier episode we did and After Dark, which is... It was one of our earliest episodes, I think. I can't even remember when it was.

But we did it anyway. It's all in there and you can hear the whole details. But Maddie, just give us a bit of a recap over. Okay, let's recap the case first and then we'll talk about your personal... Yes, I will reveal my personal involvement. Okay, so this is the story of William Palmer, who was a doctor in Ruzli, which is a little town in...

Bethlehem. Yes. No. In Staffordshire. And in the 19th century, it was a small market town between, sort of caught between the industry of Birmingham to the south and the pottery, Stoke-on-Trent, to the north-ish. And it's a place where my family lived. My mum grew up there.

My grandma used to live there and we used to visit her all the time. So it's a place that I know very well. So we're in the 1850s, so we're going to give you a little bit of after-dark context. Queen Victoria is on the throne, of course. She has been for a couple of decades. Britain is called the Workshop of the World. So there's huge industrial change going on. The Great Exhibition happens in 1851 at Crystal Palace.

Places are being connected like never before. We've got trains starting to connect places, but also telegraphs. People are being able to communicate like never before. In terms of medical history in this moment, there are repeated cholera outbreaks, which are going to be relevant to our story. actually. So there's a lot of need for medical attendants on people, but also medical innovation in this moment. And one of the big sort of icons of this moment is Florence Nightingale who's working out during the Crimea War. And she is bringing in this idea or helping to bring

this idea of hygiene as being incredibly important in terms of treating people in a hospital situation. So that's the context. But William Palmer, I hear you ask. There's a specific man now, isn't it? There is. So, William Palmer, who I just want to clarify, I am not related to. This is not my ancestor. Jen has not revealed that in today's. I have a murderer in my family. No. So he's a Staffordia born boy. His father was a Sawyer, so literally a saura of wood. He probably worked in a mill or in some kind of small industrial setting. His father dies when he's 12 years old, and he goes and becomes a chemist's assistant. Now, this is very important because the ancestor of mine that we're going to meet in this story is also a chemist.

Is that, yes. So this was an opportunity in a rural place like Rusely and Staffordshire to educate yourself, to find employment, to really move up a little bit in the world. It was a secure thing. And if you're a chemist apprentice as well, there's opportunity potentially for you to go and study medicine beyond the bounds of the chemist shop you work in. And Palmer does just this. He goes to London and he qualifies as a doctor in 1846 when he's around 22 years old. He has the world at his feet. He's a newly qualified doctor in this changing, exciting world that's rapidly evolving in all these different ways.

But he comes back to Staffordshire. That's his decision. And there are some early red flags in his behaviour, shall we say. He's fired from his first job as a chemist assistant. And this is, I think, before he goes to train as a doctor, for stealing money. Okay. And this is going to be a running theme. Money is a running theme in his life.

When he returns after training as a doctor to Staffordshire, he gets to Roogeley, the town he grew up in, and he goes into a pub. And he has a drinking game with someone in there. And he wins. But the man he's drinking with drops dead. Right. Yeah. Is he playing for money? Yes.

Presumably. Yes. Is this man his first victim? We don't know. But he's dead. So now we're getting into the poisoning part of the pond. Marmary part. Yes.

I mean, allegedly with this first. He could have just drunk himself to death. We don't know. Fair. Could have been his own decisions. Right. But we are going to get into some poison of palm of the poisoner.

So he has only found guilty of one poisoning. But when you look at the record of his life and the people who died around him, it's very clear that that was. Sort of branch out. Yeah, that's the cherry on top. His first suspected victim, and this is never proven, is his mother-in-law. Oh, yikes. He's come back to Ruggially. he marries a woman called Anne Thornton

and she is the wealthy stepdaughter of a deceased army colonel. Her mother is still alive. She has inherited the colonel's wealth. Palmer needs money because he has a gambling addiction. This is something that's going to recur through his time.

So he says to his wife, should we invite your mum round and she can come and live in our house for a little bit? She's all alone. I would just like to point out at this particular moment in this story that he wasn't known as Palmer the Poisoner

in his own day. That was the name above the door of his doctor's practice. I'm not going to go to him. I think I might skip that appointment. Yes, no, he's just known as Dr. Palmer. So they invite the mother, the mother-in-law over, and she stays for a little while. She becomes ill.

She dies. The colonel's money passes to Anne Palmer's wife. So it's essentially passed to William Palmer, yes. Now, he gets into debt with the gambling. Oh, my God. There's a man who has been lending him money and he owes a significant amount to, possibly up to 800 pounds, which in the 1840s, 50s at this point, it's a lot of money. This guy, he also invites around to his house.

There's a running theme here. Don't go around to Palmer's house. He invites him to dinner. The man collapses at dinner and he dies a few hours later in the house. It's very suspicious. What's more suspicious is that the little book that the debt collected, keeps on his person, which records who owes what to him, is missing from the body when he is laid to rest. And so the record of Palmer's...

Yeah, yeah, yeah, because we did this in quite a lot of detail. So, where does my family member come in? Okay. Do you remember this? Yes, I do, because you've also just said today, but I do also remember. Your ancestor is Palmer's assistant, right? Not correct. Oh, crap. What is it? Okay, so my ancestor, and he's a relatively distant ancestor, was called Edwin Falk. And he was a young boy at the time, a young man. Oh. And he's the assistant of the druggist, so the chemist in Rugeley. So he's had a very similar start to life.

Wait, is he not, is Palmer not the chemist? No. No, Palmer's the doctor. Oh, yeah. Wait, was he a chemist? Was he ever a chemist? No, so he was a chemist assistant. Oh, he was a chemist.

And then he trained to be a doctor. So he didn't become a chemist, he became a doctor. Right, right, right, right. So he's a doctor. He's working as a doctor, irrucially. But where does a doctor go and get his drugs, his medicine? From your ancestor. From the chemist.

So Edwin, it's very likely sold. Hey, that's a nice name, is it? Edwin. Edwin's a lovely name. Yeah, I really like that. We don't know much about Edwin. He's illegitimate. And he's sort of taken in by the chemist family.

Now, the chemist himself is a man called William Falk. And Edwin is called Edwin Falk. and we've never quite been able to work out the connection between this William Falk and our family but it's very likely that... So actually you could be related to him as well could be related to him as well and it would seem likely

why else would he take in an illegitimate child who has the same surname as him he must have been part of the same family and someone must be like a cousin's surname. Falks it was and it's in this moment is Falk so it isn't just this then oh you're related to that guy

I mean I know I'm no Jen but like you are 100% related to this I didn't realize it was going to be like a direct name thing. I thought you're going to be like something else. Oh. So there is a world in which Palmer has walked into the chemist. And you think about 19th century chemists, you know, you're thinking like big glass bottles, the brass scales. You know, you can picture the kind of the kind of place.

And there's a world in which Palmer has been into that shop and purchased poison that he is using to kill people from my ancestor or ancestors, depending. The reason I'm so jealous of this is that in Ireland, And notoriously, and we'll talk about a little bit, this in a little bit more detail as we go through this episode, records are scant. And we have people coming to Ireland from all over the world who want to know about their family history and who want to research their Irish roots, you know, America, the UK, wherever it might be. But we had a records fire at the beginning of the 20th century and so much was destroyed, like significant amounts. Or also then like parish registers weren't kept in the same way or because then of plantations. There's all kinds of different things going on in colonialism and blah, blah, blah. And just say, and colonialism is the explanation for a lot. But it's fascinating to me to hear you put all of this together because we're not always able to do that in the same. Although 1850s is not as we can probably go back that far. But my question being, have you ever gone to ancestry yourself? Like, you know the way like you do the online family tree or you send in the DNA or whatever it might be. Have you done that? Because

I have in desperation to be like, put this together, please, make it make sense. Have you done this previously or no? Personally, I have not done this because my parents are huge into family history. So they have done everything they possibly can, which is why I'm so excited to do this episode, because they've gone so far back and they are, I mean, it's like the thing they do together, they adore doing it together, they've been to archives everywhere, they sit for hours on their laptop, they are really into it. And they have been, ever since I've been growing up since I've been little, so I think that's probably, you know, a huge part of my interest in history, I owe to their interest in family history. So whilst I,

haven't done that because I haven't had to because my parents have done it for me there are gaps in the family history where we haven't been able to prove things or we have hunches and that's what I'm so excited about today okay well let's get back to Palmer specifically then so we know Edwin's

there in the background and he's footsing around but see what I'm listening how does Palmer get caught what's the how does he have his downfall I'm sure he has one so Palmer poisons more members of his own family now he's already done his mother-in-law don't forget in the first four years of their marriage, Parma and Anne, his wife, have five children.

This is really sad, four of whom die very early on from what he describes as convulsions. Now, you know, this is the 19th century, there is very poor rates of infant mortality. Like this is, you know, it's a bleak time. However, convulsions are a symptom, potentially, of strict nine poisoning. Has he got insurance policies on these children? Not on the children, but he's about to get one on Anne. So he is in debt again, even though he's killed off the debt collector. He can't help with the gambling. He can't stop.

So he takes out a policy, a life insurance policy on Anne for £13,000, which is... Ridiculous. Amazing. I mean, I'm sort of surprised... She'd the Queen? Yeah, I'm surprised a doctor's wife in Staffordshire was allowed to be... And he takes that out in January 1854 by September of the same year, and's dead. does no way around.

Now, luckily for Palmer, there is a cholera epidemic at the same time. And so he's like, she's died of cholera. Yeah. And he's the doctor. So people, people are like, yeah, sure, cool. It's not weird that your mother-in-law, all of your children but one and your wife are dead. And people come to your house and die. Like, that's, it's fine.

We're not questioning it. He also still has so much debt. So he's got rid of his wife now. He does the same to his brother. He takes life insurance on his brother. And then invites him around to the house. These invites. Stop going to Palmer's house.

He finally, and this is the one that he gets done for, Parma invites a fellow gambler. This is someone he's met at the races, and he's got chatting to him, and he has inevitably borrowed some money off him, so he owes money to this guy. He invites him up to Staffordshire to Rooschley. They meet in a pub, and he's like,

we're going to have a lovely dinner. We'll have a nice time, and I will pay you back what I owe you. Q2. He collapses. He's unwell. He's taken to the bed in the pub, which is called the Talbot Inn,

and I think is still there. you can still go and see it. He dies, but this time there is an inquest because people are like, come on now. And also because it hasn't happened in Palmer's house, people have witnessed this and they're like, that's a weird way to die what was wrong with him. At the inquest, among those presence is William Falk, the chemist. And of course, Edwin's employer. And I imagine there's a world in which Edwin is also present with his employer slash relative. Sure, but it's also irrelevant because William Foux is clearly related to you as well. even though I know we don't have an official link

I would imagine that if he's taken in Edwin Edwin's probably his nephew or something Exactly, yeah, yeah. Especially because Edwin is illegitimate there must have been a connection for that benevolence in this period. Yeah, so he has to be related. So he is in the room when this inquest happens,

he examines the body, William does, potentially with other chemists and doctors. So he's not solely responsible, but there is a world in which he is making the call or helping to make the call. They realize that he has been, been poisoned. They detect poison in his body. Palmer is guilty. He is arrested. He is taken to the old Bailey, which is why it becomes a kind of national scandal. This isn't just a local

crime anymore. This is a huge, huge big deal that a doctor, respectable, trained middle-class doctor has killed at least one person that they can prove. And he's eventually hanged for murder. That's him caught? Yeah. It is interesting. You know what? Again, it sums up that kind of family history thing, doesn't it, where it's so tantalizing and then it's also frustrating because obviously the history books are not pointed towards our individual ancestors and in some ways that's a good thing because it would probably mean something awful

had happened to them or by them if they were. But you get these glimpses of peripheral stories such as we're not even 100% sure that William is related to you, but actually he probably is. And so then you move into this idea of oh, your ancestor helped to perform quasi-otopsy on the victims of Palm of the Poisoner as opposed to what we know, which is

they were a drugist assistant. in the thing. So it's, mind you, then, there's also, I suppose, the world in which Edwin takes on William's surname, and that might be the origin of that surname coming into your family line. So I think we know he was definitely called Falk before. Before. Okay. Well, then. Yeah. So it's like, you know, it's just all these. But I think that's what's so exciting about family history, right, that I think often it's thought of is if it's just, you plot your family tree. It's just names and dates on a graph. And that's it. And that's all you can know. But actually, if you can put these people into the context of their time

and color in some of their life with research that you're able to do yourself, it doesn't have to be related to a famous serial killer case. But it brings these people to life. And I suppose it reminds us all that all of our ancestors are involved in history. You know, we always say on this show, history is for everyone, history. The past is just people doing stuff and everyone is involved. You know, we all have people who did stuff in the past. some of it incredibly important

some of it important to the people around them and not necessarily on a national scale but it doesn't mean that it's any less interesting Did you ever see that episode of the show I love which is who do you think you are and Gemma Collins' icon the legend that is was learning about her family history

and the historian that was with it was like what was happening in the east end of London around this time and she was like I'm related to Jack the Ripper and I was like amazing go with that doesn't matter what happens after this It means we have found out who he was, done DNA testing, and that DNA leads right to Gemma Collins. Sold, yes.

So that was my history. So that was my history anyway, but let's hear a bit of your because, as you say, the records are scarce, it's hard to know. And we've spoken so many times about how you, for a historian, know surprisingly little about your own history. So we're going into this slightly blind. We are going to be speaking to two amazing family historians that are going to explore some of these family histories with us.

I don't know that much, actually, because again, I've alluded to this already, haven't I? But the Irish records not being that great beyond the kind of mid-19th century. So we may struggle. I'm anticipating we'll struggle to get beyond. that in this conversation. But one of the things, and we're going to turn our attention to one of our guests, and this is so Irish as well, I looked at the name of the person who's going to be communicating my history to me today, and his name is Joe Buggy. And Buggy is my mother's maiden

name. And now I have a feeling that I'm going to be related in true Irish fashion to the genealogist on the show called Joe Buggy. Joe, welcome to AfterDar. Thank you very much, Anthony. Yes, that's correct. We share that excellent family name, I'm intrigued. I'm intrigued to know what's going on. Right. This is what I know or I think I know. And actually, I'll point out, I had tried to piece together, I've said this year before, my family tree myself, and using different tools and different archives and whatever. And there were definitely points at which I've gone wrong, where I've thought this was, you know, Delaney is quite a common surname in my area of Clokeney, which is in the southeast, around the Kikeney-leash border. And so what I know is essentially just names, really. I have my, my, my, I'm Anthony, my dad's George, my great. granddad is Patrick and his, thank you, and his father is James. I think there was a John and then there was another Patrick. As far as I'm aware, that that's about as much as I know. Again, Joe, you'll be able to speak to this better than me, obviously, but Irish records are notoriously difficult to piece together. But what have we been able to decipher about the Delaney

branch of the Chatsworth Delaney's, shall I say? Yeah, well, I have to say you did a really good job, Anthony. Like there was an excellent starting point for me there. always kind of, you know, we ask people to start with their own family. What do they know? You did that. Then we kind of focus on the core building blocks, the birth, the marriage and the death records. And they really help us to place an ancestor in a particular location, in a particular time period. From marriage records, we get kind of father's names. So we can kind of really start to build back the generations. And once we've done that, you know, once we've gone back to maybe the 1850s or a little bit earlier, that's when we can start looking for the interesting stories.

as you touched on, the names can be very common. You talked about Patrick Delaney, John Delaney, James Delaney. So we want to make sure we have the correct ancestors when we go look at the local newspapers and the court records. My family live in a very small village and there are maybe two or three Delaney's and we are not as far as we know. I'm sure if we went back far enough related somewhere, but we have no immediate relations. And there they've got Johns and Patrick's and Jameses as well. So it's like, are we this delay? So we used to be known. I know. And I know. as the Delaney's of the lawn gate. That was the...

Very fancy. But it wasn't at all fancy. It was just a lawn with a gate. But it was, that's, my dad recently told me that that's what we were known as. We lived down and my family still lived down that very same lane. But I'm hearing tell that someone I should be a little bit more aware of is a Patrick Delaney from 1829. So we're in Georgian, Georgian Times now, which is my area of study.

So tell me a little bit more about this, Joe. What do we know about him and what he was getting? getting up to. Yeah, I hate to break it to you, Anthony, but there's definitely a lot of kind of rowdiness and shenanigans on your, on the Delaney branch of your tree. I am not rowdy or shenanogany. Yeah, you're two times great-grandfather. So, yeah, as you mentioned, kind of born in the late 1820s, he lives through kind of all of the 1900s. So he married Julia Lawler in 1873, and their marriage record was very helpful. It tells us then that his father's name is James. And from there, then, we looked at a very interesting collection of record.

the Petty Session Court Records. So the petty sessions were local courts. They were kind of the lowest level of the kind of the court administration system. In Ireland today, the district courts in England and Wales are known as the magistrates courts. And they dealt with kind of the lower level kind of crime that would maybe happen day to day. So drunkenness, common assault, stealing, different things like that. So we do see your ancestors appear in these court records. So there's a Quite an interesting story of Patrick and his father, James. So this is from the early 1850, so the tail end of the Irish famine. And there's a court case then where they are charged with the assault of their neighbor, John Quirk. And also they, for some reason, injured his donkey then as well. So there was a disagreement with John, but one of his animals was also involved. One of his animals was also involved. And they were fined six pence plus the cost of the court case.

Now, I just want to say this. the Delaney's persist. I've never heard of the quirks. Oh. So if you're looking for people who have persisted in the area, we have. We didn't have anything left. So now, hold on, when you say there was a dunk,

well, you probably don't, it'll probably just be this weird allusion to something in a court record. What exactly happened with the donkey? Do we know? We don't know. It just says that the donkey was injured. So maybe the donkey was an innocent bystander. Maybe the donkey was centrally involved.

Not fully sure. I bet you he was sent to me involved. The other comment was there was a fine for your ancestors. They had to pay sixpence plus the cost of the court case. The thing is, in the middle of the 19th century, post-fammon, donkeys are, you know, we're laughing here, but they're like important commodities. This is something that people are trying to eke out a living from a land that's not necessarily producing in the way that it once was. So this is why they're having. So what I'm intrigued by is why the father and son are involved in this particular dispute.

shall I say. And will you be taking up this crime family tradition with your own dad? Yes. Me and my dad are now going to carouse the countryside of Chathford. Watch out donkeys of Kilkeye. Donkeys bear yourselves with haste because I am back and I'm going to avenge my family name. So that's Patrick. Okay. So he is my two times great grandfather. It's so interesting, isn't it? Because the house that we live, well, no, the house that my grandparents lived in, the Delaney House that my grandparents lived in, is still in Chatsworth, but I don't think it is, and my parents live next door, but I don't think it's the same homestead.

I think they didn't move around, but obviously still now within the same village. You know, sixpence is a lot of money here as well, and the cost of the court, that's going to be relatively substantial. It's so, do we have any idea? And I know you're going to say no to this show because I understand the way these court records work, but we have no idea, do we, what the dispute is about,

never mind the donkey specifically, but it's probably going to be about land or something I'm imagining. Typically, that was often the case. Yeah, the petty session court records, they are brief. You know, they just kind of give us the core details of who the complainant was, who the defendant was and kind of what the outcome of the judge's decision was then at the end of the case. Sometimes maybe if they were more prominent cases, they may be picked up by local newspapers. But other than that, then we kind of, we have to suppose. But like you say, land was very important at the time. Most of our ancestors were tenant farmers in Ireland. And as we mentioned, it was at the end of the famine as well. well. So a very difficult period in Irish history. That's key, isn't it, that this is a very difficult period in Irish history. We're talking about the 1850s. You've already mentioned, Joe, this is post-Great Irish famine, not the potato famine. The potatoes were not starving. So we're always go to great lengths on After Dark to show that it's not called the potato famine. It's called the Great Irish famine. But also the idea that this is, or the fact, that this is part of colonial

Great Britain. So it is, when we talk about the United Kingdom, Ireland is at this point part of those United Kingdoms, however united they might have not been. Before we talk a little bit about DNA, so this is interesting. I've heard that some kind of a local skirmish happened that my family was involved in, another fight, great, called the Chatsworth Afray. I've never heard it called that before, and I'm here for the drama of it. I actually don't know what the Chatsworth Afray is, and what were you able to find out about this? Yeah, so it's a very grandiose title for something. I thought it might be the game. So we mentioned earlier about the court case of the 1850s.

So we come forward to the summer of 1872. And a couple of the local newspapers in County Kilkenny, yes, they referred to what was the Chatsworth phrase. So this was essentially a large scale fight between two families in Chatsworth Townland. So there were the Hennessy family and the Nolan family. And there was a dispute over who could farm a particular piece of land in Chatsworth. The Nolans had cattle on the land. the Hennesies weren't happy about this

and it descended into a very serious brawl. So the newspaper article is really informative. It talks about some of the weapons that were used, butchers knives, sides, a sprong which is essentially a three-pointed long fork, shovels, a wattle which is a long stick. So it was pretty serious and as you're probably familiar with

newspapers of this era, lots of great detail about the injuries, really deep lacerations and cuts down to the liver in one person, Somebody experienced a rib that was cut through, lacerations down to the spine. So really, really serious injuries. The doctor gave evidence in the court case about all of the injuries. But lo and behold, in the middle of this skirmish, there's a Delaney. Now, unfortunately, it doesn't mention what his first name was, but he was on the sign of the Hennesseys.

I knew it would be. This Delaney man was there with his wattle, his long stick, and anything that was moving, he was hitting it. So he was, he was centrally involved in this altercation. We are still friends with families of Hennessy's now. Wow. So I'm telling you now. You must have been on their side. We must, well, we were on their side.

And I was going, I was nearly about to say, I bet you were on the Hennessy side. And I'm glad that we were, if that's the case. Not that there's anything wrong with the Nolans, if any of the Nolans are watching this. Now, this is so interesting because, and you know what? I do know that that's definitely one of my ancestors because I've been told by family members that he took part in that. So I'm sure if we, like, match up the dates, I'll be able to know which, Delaney it was. I was told, see, it's interesting, isn't it, because families invent their own histories, and we've talked about this, I was told it was something about, and, you know, it just

gets lost in the generations, something about reclaiming land from a landlord, but actually it's not at all. It's, again, these local skirmishes between Irish people on the ground that they're just kind of inventing this side of thing. And it's family rivalries. And it's family rivalries, yeah. So that's really interesting. I feel like I need to represent my mother's side of the family here and talk a little bit about the buggies scenes, though. You two are a buggy, and I am 50% 1. I feel this is weird. I don't go around asking people if we're related, but are we related? I would say almost certainly at some point we must be Anthony. Oh my God, I knew it. As you know, the name, Buggy and your listeners wouldn't be familiar, but Buggy is a name that's found in County County Leach in Ireland, two neighboring counties in the southeast and South Midlands. So my buggies, my dad was actually born in County Leash. Now, that sounds like it's really far away, but the place where my buggies are from,

it's only about 10 miles away from where your mother's family is from. So there's no documented connection between us and records, but like we've talked about already, that kind of ends in the early 1800s. But I would not be surprised at all if there's some connection between us going back a little bit further. It's a rare name. We're within 10 miles of each other.

So there has to be some common ancestor at some point in history. Yeah, even if you're going back to the 17th century or something, I'm sure we'd kind of get there. Well, it's a delight to have you share my own history, with me from a family member, essentially. Joe, talk to me about this. Now, this has been fascinating for me and particularly on the ancestry side of things

because I signed up to the website. Years ago, I would talk to my buggy grandmother about this. She was great for, like, you know, you'd get your DNA matches and I'd be like, who's this and who's this, and she'd be able to tell me who they were and they're mostly in America. And so that's really been interesting

to do that with her when she was still alive. It's something I really think of her when I think about this DNA analysis. But when I did this first, because I know the technology, is always updating. And as a result, and this is a great thing about the ancestry DNA analysis, is they update as the field progresses. And when I joined first, I remember seeing that I was, you know, vast, vast, vast majority of the breakdown was Irish. And then I had 2% Scottish, which I was

very proud of because I was living in Edinburgh at the time. And I was like, yes, this is what I want. And there was maybe like 1%, a tiny, tiny percentage that was Scandinavian. I was like, Vikings. here we go. This is my rightful lineage. And now if I go in there, it says, not that this is a problem, I'm very proud of this, of course, but it says that I am now 100% Irish, like nothing else in there. How is that even possible, Joe? I have to know where all my Scandinavian and Scottish ancestry went. Your family tree is a great example, Anthony. Like when we research all of your lines, like every single one of your ancestral lines are within such a small park. of one particular county in Ireland.

And when you get that, it's intensely Irish, essentially. That's with the way you could look at it. So I'll contrast that with my family tree where I mentioned already, I'm a buggy, but my dad is from County Leach, but my mother is from County Mayo on the Western Seaboard. So if you go back, you know,

three, four, five hundred years, migration, warfare, seafaring, people moved around to a certain degree. So all of that kind of influence, and especially if you look at the UK in Ireland, how close they are kind of on a world scale, the links between Scotland and Ireland.

So that filters down into our DNA when we're kind of looking back in our family tree over kind of many hundreds of years. But I would wear it as a badge of honour, Anthony. It's getting rare and rare to be able to claim you're 100% Irish, so well done. Congratulations. Thank you. I will take it as

a personal achievement up until this point as I am the end of my own line. A medal for this? Big 100. Yeah, somebody, I would appeal to the new president of Ireland. You can be the new president now. Yes. Yeah, actually, yeah, when I run for president, we can replay this clip and just be like, he's a hundred percent Irish. Who else could do the job? Joe, thank you so much for this. This is honestly, like, truly, I know it sounds glib, but I don't mean it like that. This is so important to me and to so many people, and this is why

what you guys do is so interesting and I think so difficult, actually, and it's so easy to underestimate how difficult it is to try and get into these archives. Again, as we said, particularly in the Irish context. So thank you so much for doing that. Can I just ask, just out of pure curiosity, do you know where in County Leish that your dad is from? Yes, so if you've heard of Timahoe, it's about 10 miles or so north of Castlecomber.

Yes, it is literally, because my family don't live in Castlecomber. They live about six miles outside. I would say it takes about five minutes for us to get to Timmer from my house. So you're probably a third cousin or something. Well, you're probably not because you also probably have my DNA results and they probably don't match up. But at the same time, it is literally within five minutes of the house. So without a shadow of doubt, we are related.

going to hand over now to Maddie. So Maddie, over to you to find out a little bit more about what's going on in the Pelling side. Well, wait and see. I am so excited about this. My family have been able to trace quite a lot of my family history. As we've talked about before, several times on the show, and I'm always relating any episode we do back to someone of my ancestors who lived in whatever place or era we're talking about. And this is something that my parents have done for certainly as long as I can remember. It's one of the reasons why I'm interested in history. It's a huge part of their life. It's a huge part of their relationship. They're always sat at the table together doing family history or out looking at archives, you know,

before everything was digitised. I am intrigued to find what Christina has been able to come up with because we have some stumbling blocks in this vast amount of work that my parents have done. And there are little things that we haven't been able to work out or little avenues that we haven't been able to go down because the record's simply on available to us anyway. So, Christina, first of all, welcome to After Dark, and tell me what part of my family are we going to be looking at? I feel a bit giddy after yours. I know, I know, I know. I genuinely do. So, okay, so spoiler alert, there's no donkeys involved, and I'm pretty sure we're not related. So just, you might as well stop now.

Yeah, I know, I'm sorry. Like, that's it. That's actually my section's over now. No. So we focused on part of your dad's side of the family. And you gave us kind of like a few, like you said, you had a few questions about different ancestors of yours that you've had kind of hit a bit of a brick wall with. So we really looked into one of those, Lavinia Lavelle, who's also known as Louvel. I'll tell you a little bit about Lavinia and maybe why you had some difficulties with her and then kind of like what we found after. For the listeners, can you give us a sense of where she sits in my family tree as well? Sure, definitely. Lovina was born about 1845, just kind of for some context, and she is your great, great grandmother, I'm going to say, actually two times great-grandmother. She possibly might be all three times. So we're talking, you know, quite a few generations back here. And she married actually a Jewish, she married into a Jewish immigrant family, which kind of ties into kind of like the bigger East End story. So that's kind of where the story begins. And as I said, she was born in the 1840s in kind of the Bethnal Green area. And I think you kind of knew that much. She knew about her marriage, knew about kind of like her subsequent life. But what you didn't know was who had. her parents were. And possibly the reason for this was she should have had a birth certificate. That was the law at the time. Did she have an official birth certificate? No. And so that was kind of

the first little mystery that we had to kind of overcome. But even though she didn't have an official birth record, we did find her baptism. So from there we were able to say, okay, we know who her parents were, possibly, and I'll get on to that. This is so exciting. Big reveal. According to her baptism, her parents were Eliza and Samuel Louvel, wonderful. Case closed, you know, like, we can crack on. And do we know where the name Louvel comes from? Because it doesn't sound English, does it? And obviously, you know, you've alluded to the fact

that the East End in this moment is a melting part of all different kinds of immigrants. We know that she marries into an immigrant Jewish family, and that's, you know, a big part of my family history. But the name Louvel, it doesn't sound Jewish and it doesn't sound English. Where is it coming from? Okay. So I'm going to hazard a guess that it does have French connections at some point, which may or may not be relevant. And you're excellent French. And the reason for that is we can find absolutely no sign of this alleged father slash husband, Samuel Louvel.

Right. Yes. So, yeah. Yeah. We have a surprising amount of this in my family on both sides of my mom and dad's family tree. There's a lot of fictional dads who come into play. It's so interesting. Okay, good, because we've got not one but two possibly fictional dads going on here.

Yeah. Right. So, yeah, let's talk a little bit about Eliza. So she was born probably about 1814, probably in Spittal, And so for anybody who kind of like doesn't know the geography of the east end of London, so kind of Bethnal Green, Spittal Fields, Whitechapel, they're all pretty much in the same neighbourhoods, you know, they're distinct neighbourhoods, but they're all right next to each other. When she's maybe about 20, she has a daughter, who she calls Eliza, helpfully.

So we've got another Elizer in the mix. Apparently with this Samuel Lubell character, so this is in 1833. Then by 1841, we can find Eliza with her daughter in the census. No sign of dad. There's no record of any marriage to a Samuel Louvel. For all intents and purposes, he may actually not exist. So, Christina, can we assume then that Eliza, Mama Eliza, who's using the name Louvel, can we assume that that is her family name? Well, that's the thing. She might have had the maiden name Eliza Louvel. She might have had informal relationship with a Louvel and decided to take that name on. At this point, we just don't know. So that's a maybe answer to that question. We do know that in 1843, she has a son named William. William is not apparently a Louvel. He's named William Monk.

Oh, wow. You knew about this or no? Oh. Eliza then several times kind of throughout her later life will use the monk surname. Other times she's using the Louvel surname. She's back on the Louvel track by 1845 when she has Lavinia. So she apparently has child number one and child number three with a Louvel, a child in the middle with this monk person. again, there is no record of any marriage to a man with surname monk.

There is no record of any marriages to any man at any point along the line. All we can say is Eliza is consistently recorded on her own. So in every census record, she's heading her own household, supporting her children. There's never any partner or husband listed with her. And that's kind of all we can say from the records that we've got in front of us. I mean, I find that fascinating in the fact that she's, as you say, heading her own household is so, I mean, probably not that unusual in the reality of the period that we're talking about. But I can't help but warm to her that she, you know, she's still living her life. She's having, obviously, some relationships, whether they're working out in the way that she hopes, maybe she's happy with the arrangements, we will probably never know the answer to this or whether she is, you know, in fact, beginning relationships with men on the understanding that that is going to end in marriage.

and they don't show up or she pulls out of that situation. You know, we will never know, I suppose. But there's something resourceful about her. She seems to me to be someone resilient and someone who is continuing on her path, regardless, three children in. I mean, good for her. Absolutely. And kind of if you look at the places where she's living at the time,

she's living in them, I think that kind of resilience really, that sense of resilience really comes through. And that's kind of one of the things that you can do about, ancestors who are kind of maybe they're poorer, but they're living in a place like London in the late 19th century. You can really kind of zoom in on where they lived and get kind of an insight into what their life might have been like. And that's kind of a way of getting around the fact that, you know, we don't have, we don't have diaries for these people. We don't have letters that they wrote, even if they were able to write. You know, we just don't have those

kind of records. But by looking at kind of what was their kind of lived situation on the ground, so to speak, that can actually tell us quite a bit. So what I did was I kind of traced Eliza through her life where I did kind of have a specific address or street where she lived in. And I think that was quite illuminating. So for example, in 1841, she was living in Bethanyl Green at this address called Sweet Apple Court, which, you know, it sounds good. It sounds lovely, you know. It sounds like a beautiful place, possibly with some trees. But according to kind of one of these contemporary kind of poverty surveys that was done at the time, there was a specific description of that location. I've got a quote here. It was, the gutter in the center of this

court is very filthy, garbage was strewn about. The privies were quite full and dilapidated. From the dripping of the water pipe, the place to become damp. And on opening the door, a horrid odour of nastiness, night putrid paste, was found to pervade the room. Wow. I mean, now I'm even more impressed with her. Because she, you know, living in these circumstances as a mother of these three children, she's, I mean, she's living in the heart of East End poverty from what you're saying. Yeah, exactly. And that account was written, I think it was 1848. So it was just like a few years after she had been living there. And actually it's where the family lived when Lavinia was baptized. So it was right around that time. And we know that Eliza kind of, she moved to several

different addresses kind of like over the decades following that point, but always within kind of the same, that kind of Spittal Fields, White Chapel area. And another really good resource you can use if you have an ancestor who lived in that kind of part of London is the Charles Booth, poverty maps and survey. And I kind of had a look at a couple of the addresses where she lived. And for example, at one point she's living at a place called Bacon Street. Again, it's like, okay, well, that sounds very pleasant. But unfortunately, yeah, I was like, sorry, like just to disabuse everybody of like what Bacon Street might look like. It's described by Charles Booth, who did the survey kind of just a few decades later as an area of chronic want with some areas.

is described, and this is using the Victorian language at the time, as vicious or semi-criminal. So this is kind of the environment that she lived in. And of course, this is where she lived kind of in the late 1880s, which I know you've covered before in your podcast. I'm sure a lot of listeners are going to be familiar with. This is the area of London that the Jack the Ripper murders happened in. So I zoomed in on kind of that period of, yeah, the late 1880s. And actually between 1881 and 1891, Eliza lived on the same street. So we can kind of be reasonably confident that she probably lived at that address for that entire period of time. And it was Buxton Street. And then if you look on a map of where Buxton Street is, it's about a five-minute

walk from Hanbury Street. which is where one of the victims of Jack the Ripper was found. So given the kind of notoriety, yeah, like there is, I think, zero chance that Eliza would not have been aware of the Whitechapel murders taking place, kind of literally where she lived, on the streets where she lived. Yeah, and also that she no doubt would have feared for herself and her two daughters, and indeed her son, you know, in that circumstance that, you know, when we've covered Jack the Ripper on this podcast before,

I've talked about some of my Jewish ancestors in the East End, and there was at least one suspect, supposed suspect, for the Ripper, who was arrested at the time, who was a Jew, living in and around the East End, and that there was a lot of fear and suspicion of anyone who was foreign or different, which, you know, is sort of everybody in the East End in this moment. And it's so fascinating to think of Lavinia and Eliza, both sister and mother, you know, living in this environment with this fear, when this is taking place and it's you know we know as historians this is a phenomenon of panic that

completely took over this part of london and indeed the whole of london the whole of britain and to think that i have an ancestor who is another ancestor now who is at the heart of this and was a woman living in this environment i mean it's frightening to think of yeah and as i said it i just think that like eliza have lived her whole life in this area and i think it's it's difficult to get a sense of exactly kind of like what her situation was she could have you know there were people who lived in this area who were desperately poor who had absolutely nothing and then there were people who had some more kind of means they you know they had a better quality of life there was some kind of more mixed areas so you know we can't we can't say that you know Eliza was absolutely living

in desperate poverty and this was terrible for her entire life but this was the that she lived in for the absolute vast majority of her life. And what I think kind of getting back to that point about resilience, though, is that she actually made it into her 90s, you know, which is a pretty good age for somebody now, you know, somebody who's obviously grown up, probably grown up and lived in probably relative poverty their entire lives. I think that's pretty amazing. I agree. I agree. And Christina, do we know how Eliza made any money? just thinking about how she survived, you know, obviously on the sort of poverty line in this moment, but thinking about how much we know about the East End in this period throughout the 19th century

and just how dire things were for people. Do we know how she was supporting her three children as a single parent? Yeah, we do. The census does tell us that. So she's pretty consistently working in some aspect of kind of the textile industry. I guess you would say broadly, but more specifically, she's either listed as a weaver. At one point, I believe she has a hosiery shop. So she's also listed, I think it's a silk winder. So these are all textile trades that are kind of like quite closely linked to the east end of London at this time and probably does point to that ultimate Huguenot linkage that you suspected at the beginning. And yeah, so she is somebody who was able to make her own money and support herself and her children when she needed to. And as I said, she actually made it out of the East End in the end. She died in her 90s in Essex. So she, like by the end of her life, she'd kind of made it out of that situation. I just think that has been one of the most rewarding for us. And I hope listeners

at home have also seen this and maybe been inspired to look into their own family history. Because honestly, as you, as you said about your parents, they get so much joy out of it. And I have definitely found this really fascinating. And I know for Shane, my husband, he has done the same. And he's not aware of much of his family because he's not in touch with one side of his family. So to be able to draw in some of those elements has been a real gift as well. But I just want to say thank you so, so much to Jen and Christina and Joe from ancestry for all their hard work on this. Because, you know, usually we come here and we're prepped, but we were the ones with all the questions.

and we deliberately knew nothing coming into this. So it really has been an absolute joy to talk through this with you. And I know we have a million more questions. We could stay here forever. But, you know, we have a finite amount of time. Be sure to subscribe to Ancestry's YouTube channel as well as ours, of course. Ancestry DNA tests are, and I mean this because I've given this as gifts, they are the perfect stocking stuff for this Christmas.

And you can find out more at Ancestry.com. If you've enjoyed this episode, please get in touch with the show at afterdark at historyhit.com. Thank you and happy international Dark Side of the Family History Day that we made up. Rolls off the tongue, rolls off the tongue. Ho, ho.