Why Alice did not accompany Walter to Canada.

Just over a year ago Dennis asked about Walter Ginn and his wife Alice Barns, the parents of Olive Victoria Alice Ginn, born in 1891, and who ended up in the workhouse at Ware. He specifically asked "Would you have the date when Olive's mother and father immigrated to Canada." I pointed out that Walter seems to have gone on his own, and someone called Alice Ginn had died a few years previously.

Mike, who is researching the Ginn family in Hertfordshire (see his blog the blog www.Ginn-hertfordshire.blogspot.co.uk) has drawn my attention to a case history on the excellent Herts Past Policing web site.

A saying at the time was "A wife, a dog, and a walnut tree - the more you beat them the better they be." and clearly Walter hit Alice too hard ...The Policing web site quotes the contemporary newspaper accounts in detail and it would seem that both the all male coroner's jury, and the one trying Walter, took it for granted that a husband could normally hit his wife - and Walter was only convicted of unlawful wounding - despite the fact that the wound was fatal! As a result he had a comparatively minor sentence and went to Canada after being released from prison.

See my answer to Dennis's original question.

Did your ancestors spend time sitting in the stocks.

Subject Index

Many of the villages in Hertfordshire would have stocks (see Early Crime and Punishment). Bishop Stortford Museum has kindly provided the following picture of the stocks that formerly stood in Thorley churchyard.

Thorley Stocks

The stocks at Aldbury still survive in the open air - but time has taken it toll. Do you know of any other Hertfordshire stocks that can still be seen  - preferably in their original location?

Joseph Hunt and the Radlett Murder of 1823

Help Desk

Probert's Cottage

 Occasionally I get a question where there is an impossibly large amount of information linking someone to Hertfordshire - but the vast bulk is irrelevant to trying to unpick their genealogy. Francis, who live's in Bathurst, New South Wales, has asked such a question relating to the murder of William Weare by John Thurtell. 

John Thurtell's accomplice Joseph Henry Baine Hunt, is my gr gr great grandfather. I was just wondering if there is any information about his direct family in the Hertfordshire area, before he was transported to Australia in 1824. His story means so much to me, for my family's existence was literally hanging by a thread in the courts at Hertford in 1823/24. I would like to know if anything is known about his life before the terrible crime. (Joseph died in 1861 at the age of 67, He was a district constable in Bathurst at the time of his death "Noted on his Death Certificate",and his drinking habits got the best of him in the end.)

I have replied as follows:

Remember - Your assumptions may not always be correct

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Ebenezer Albert Fox

At the end of May I attended the Herts Family History Society Meeting and also took the opportunity to walk round the village of Woolmer Green. At either side of the entrance to a modern housing estate there was a brick pillar, each surmounted by a bust. One was labeled Ebenezer Albert Fox (1857-1926) and the other Albert Ebenezer Fox (1857-1936). So I decided to ask myself a question and find out who these obviously important twins were. Had they lived in a big house that had stood where the estate now is ... ... ??? 

I was in for a surprise - read what I found out about 

The Fox Twins

More Old News from Tring

Old News

I have completed the preparations for tomorrow's talk  by adding the following additional sample news stories:

1842: Opening of the Tring National School - on the site of the old workhouse.
1849: Stealing a tea-caddy at Tring - 18 year old get whipped and 1 week's hard labour
1861: Fire at Miswell Farm, Tring - Buildings destroyed but farmhouse saved - arson suspected
1887: Obituary of Benjamin Crouch, of Miswell Farm, Tring - 93 year old farmer had seen 51 harvests at the farm (and his son continued for another 24 years). I have added some biographical details.
1890: Sale of Building Land at Tring  - Sale of plots  in the Longfield Road area I have added details from 1897 O.S. map