Book Review - Tracing Your Criminal Ancestors - A Guide for Family Historians

Tracing Your Criminal Ancestors - A Guide for Family Historians
by Stephen Wade
176 pp. Glossy card covers. Illustrations. ISBN 978 1 84884 057 7 : Pen & Sword Books : £12.99
Available from Pen & Sword Books Ltd, 47 Church St, Barnsley, South Yorkshire, England, S20 2AS

If you had criminal ancestors in England, Wales, or Ireland, or people that were involved in court cases (as witnesses or victims) and want to find more about them, then this is the book for you.

The conditions in which they lived, crimes they committed, and the criminal justice system are all described in this very readable book, and there are a number of interesting illustrations.

The author begins with a look at the sources, different types of document, the different courts, with suggestions of the research process that should be followed.
Subsequent chapters deal in detail with the different types of offences: homicide, other crimes against the person, social protest, theft and robbery, rural crime, fraud and deception, sexual offences, and treason.

Each chapter describes the offences in detail, gives examples of punishments, suggests where you should look for records and sometimes provides references to records. As well as this research process there is a detailed review of one or more cases in the Case Studies section at the end of each chapter. Some of the cases are rather gruesome.

Chapter 9 deals with the destinations of the convicted criminal; prisons, asylums, hulks and transportation.

The last chapter is a survey of the relevant sources; however there is also a bibliography, a list of websites, a short glossary, and an index.

Very oddly, the author almost totally ignores Scotland, and does not make it clear whether his text includes conditions, offences, courts, processes, or records in Scotland. Apart from a few references to Glasgow, it's only on page 156 that he mentions the Scottish Legal System, and that it has different terms, functions, and processes to that of England.

This seems a strange omission in an otherwise comprehensive and easy to read book.

The only other gripe I have is that there are a number of typos in the text, as if it hadn't been properly proof-read.

All in all, if your ancestors were criminals, debtors, or drunks, or otherwise involved in a court case in England or Wales, then I strongly recommend this book.

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One man's 67 illegitimate children, deaths and Guyana

The third 'Digging up Your Roots' programme started with the account of Gilbert Innes of Stow who lived in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, who rose to become deputy governor of the Royal Bank of Scotland. He had an amazing 67 illegitimate children, with many different women. He never married, and died aged 81.

His colossal estate included £750,000 in foreign stocks and bonds, and £140,000 in Scottish property, including the barony of Stow. Jane, his sister, inherited his fortune. Actually, I've assumed they meant pounds sterling, but even 890,000 pounds Scots would be a lot. (Scots money wasn't used for spending after 1820, and there was an exchange rate of £12 Scots to £1 sterling. In spite of its having being withdrawn in 1820, some Scots coins continued in circulation in rural Scotland even till the 1890s.)

They mentioned the difference between moveable property (cash, stocks, and anything that could be moved) and heritable property (land and buildings).
Moveable property is mentioned in wills (till 1901 on Scotland's People and after 1901 in the National Archives of Scotland). Bruce Durie suggested checking the Register of Deeds at the National Archives of Scotland.

Heritable property is mentioned in transfers of ownership in the Register of Sasines and the heir proving the right to inherit in the Retours, both in the National Archives of Scotland.

The next article that interested me was about Humphrey Ewing Crum Ewing Junior who died in Demerara in 1878. Demerara (after which brown sugar is named) was in British Guiana (now the Republic of Guyana) in South America.
His body was put into a lead-lined coffin, which was then filled with rum, and transported back to Glasgow. Humphrey's father was the owner of a sugar plantation in Jamaica, and an MP for Paisley.

There's a Guyana Genealogical Society.

(I visited Guyana in 1993. A lot of Scots went to Guyana, many as overseers, managers, or owners of plantations but others as labourers; and it's remarkable how many estates and some villages are named after Scottish (mostly Highlands) towns and villages, for example Alness, Tain, Fearn, Nigg. There were two small estates named Glasgow, and Edinburgh, though when I was there, they seemed to be long abandoned. There seem to be a lot of Gaelic words in the spoken English language).

An article about military deaths mentioned good sources - the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, Pension records in the National Archives at Kew, England, Soldiers' Wills at the National Archives of Scotland, and the Scottish War Memorial at Edinburgh Castle to almost every Scots soldier. apparently regardless of whether they were in a Scottish regiment.

Poor law records helped one lady discover that her great grandmother's brother was killed in Huelva, Spain. There are lots of interesting facts to be discovered in our volumes of Poor Law records - see our blog article, Borders Poor Law Records - Jedburgh (1852-1874), and index to Borders Poor Law Records.

An interesting anecdote about a death mentioned other useful sources. Margaret Halcrow died, was put in her coffin, and left in the church overnight. During the evening, the beadle went in to try and steal a valuable diamond ring, was in the process of cutting her finger, when she sat up in the coffin.
Her husband, Henry Erskine, was at home being consoled by a friend when there was a knock on the door. Henry told his friend that it sounded like Margaret's knock. They opened the door and found it was her. This demonstrates the need to look at the Register of Corrected Entries. Those two useful sites are Deceased Online and Findagrave.com.

Next Sunday's programme, like the others, will be broadcast on 92-95 FM at midday, will cover criminal ancestors, Burke's accomplice and a prison governor.

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Internet Surname Database

I found an interesting and useful website today, as usual, it happens when looking for something else, and in a way it ties up with last Sunday's 'Digging up Your Roots' programme - see the blog Immigrants and Emigrants.

The site is the Internet Surname Database which is a lot handier than going to my bookshelves.

I was just looking at some of the surnames I know, to see if either there's something I can add, or a glaring error, when I searched for Munro.

Part of the entry refers to "....James Monroe was the fifth president of the United States of America in 1823. He was a descendant of Andrew Monroe, who was captured at the battle of Preston in 1648....", which is interesting to me because my granny claimed that James Monroe was a distant cousin of some sort.

She knew a lot about the family history however as we weren't interested when we were young, so much of what she knew was never written down - of course, I'm kicking myself now.

The battle of Preston in 1648, was during the English Civil War, and was won by the roundheads against the royalists.

I'd love to see President James Monroe's family tree, particularly about the descent of Andrew Monroe, who Wikipedia's article implies, was "...2nd great-grandfather immigrated to America from Scotland in the mid-17th century. In 1650, Major Andrew Monroe (16-1688), son of David Munro of Katewell... ", though it doesn't mention that he "was captured at the battle of Preston".

There's contradictory text in Scottish Emigration to Colonial America, 1607-1785
by David Dobson, where it says that David Munro of Katewell was captured after the Battle of Preston in 1648.

There's a bit more of the family tree on the Presidential Avenue entry for James Monroe, and Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae says that David Munro of Katewell was the husband of Agnes, daughter of Alexander Munro and Janet Cumming, and that Alexander, born about 1605, was the son of Hector M. of Milntown of Katewell, dyer, Inverness.

That's rather a lot to check, so if you know of any other record of President James Monroe's family tree, please let me know.

A knot in my handkerchief to get David Dobson's book.

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