I’m not sure if this counts as a “black hole”, but sometimes when I’m tracing family members, I happen to stumble across other records that pique my interest and I then get distracted and follow up those interesting snippets to see what happened. Even though they are totally unrelated to my own family tree.
A couple of examples. In one case I was tracing my 4x great grandmother born in 1818. She and her younger sister Mary Ann were in and out of prison together a couple of times when they were younger.
I come from a long and distinguished line of … ne’er do wells and petty thieves (on both sides of my family). Although, interestingly, it was always the women who were on the wrong side of the law. Men overwhelmingly commit much more crime than women. However, in my family, it turns out to be the other way round and it was always the women who were getting convicted.
Whether this means that the men in my family were a lot more law abiding or just better at not getting caught? I don’t know.
My family mostly lived in Gloucestershire (apart from those who left to go and become tobacco farmers in Maryland in the 1600s – and some later went on to become slave owners. But that’s a whole other story).
My ancestor eventually married and settled down, but her younger sister didn’t. She had a couple more convictions and then, in 1846 when she was 21, there was an incident of alleged murder that made quite a few newspapers in different parts of the country.
It turns out that Mary Ann and another young girl, also called Mary Ann, were two young women of, shall we say, negotiable affections.**
On the evening of 21st Jan 1846 they had agreed to spend the night with some Italian and Russian sailors on board their ship in Gloucester docks for the sum of 5 shillings (each, I think?). However, Mary Ann changed her mind at the last moment but the other Mary didn’t – and that was the last time she was seen alive.
The sailors were later arrested, and Mary Ann gave evidence, but there wasn’t enough evidence to convict them of murder.
All of that came from newspaper articles from the time. Newspaper articles can be really fascinating insights into life then. They highlight things that can be very difficult to trace otherwise.
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Anyway, that wasn’t actually the black hole. What did distract me from my, clearly upstanding and law abiding, family was an entry in the prison register in 1842 just above that of Mary Ann (she had been convicted of stealing three silver teaspoons). This led on to a very sad story indeed.
Most of the other entries on the page were the usual things like robbery, receiving stolen goods, assault, sheep stealing etc (the ringleader of the sheep stealing gang got sentenced to ten years).
But then I noticed a particular word in the list of offences; “Sodomy”. Sodomy? Really? And then I thought, yes, sodomy was a crime that was not repealed until 1967.
Then I saw that the person below was also charged with sodomy (actually with aiding & abetting sodomy).
I wondered, are these two connected? Then I noticed their ages. One was a man of 35 and the other was a boy of 16.
Then I noticed the sentence – “Death”. But at the end it said “transmuted to transportation for life”.
Being gay was a death sentence for men back then.
This prompted to me have a look at some more outcomes on the adjoining pages. In comparison, other offences, a murderer was transported for life and someone who aided him was transported for ten years. A death sentence for sodomy and ten years for helping to murder somebody.
The young boy was named Henry Jenkins and the older man was William Smith. I wondered what became of them.
Well, it turns out that, after being convicted on on 6th August 1842, Henry spent some time on two prison hulks. He was then transported on the Asiatic leaving on 25th May 1843 and arriving in Van Diemen’s Land (nowadays Tasmania) on 22 Sept 1843.
Unfortunately, things didn’t go well for Henry when he got to Australia; he drowned just over a year later at the age of 18. The last entry reads “Drowned at Impression Bay Probation Station whilst bathing on the 10th December 1844”.
The records describe him as being only 5’1” tall. A 16 year old boy 5ft 1 tall and a 35 year old man?? Hmm??
All in all, a very sad story.
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** I mentioned about Mary Ann in 1846 being a young woman of negotiable affection. When it came to the 1851 Census, what I found was a little unusual.
Mary Ann was one of four women lodgers, all young women between the ages of 18 and, allegedly, 22 (although Mary Ann was by then 25) each was described as a “laboring woman” – I’ve never seen that term used elsewhere, (has anyone else?), perhaps it was used in the same sense that “working girl” might be used today? There was also a widowed older woman who was the head of the household who was also described as a “laboring woman”. Given Mary’s past, I really do wonder if this was a brothel in reality?