Tag: family stories

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Murder, Mystery And My Family recommissioned for second BBC One series

This news item is written by the people at the BBC.

BBC One daytime TV hit Murder, Mystery and My Family is to return to our screens in 2019 with twenty brand new episodes.

BBC programme - Murder, Mystery and My Family

Building on the audience’s fascination with the first series, there will also be ten further follow-up episodes in Murder, Mystery and My Family: Case Closed?

The series follows relatives of those convicted of murder and hanged for their crime, as they reinvestigate the evidence using modern forensics and team up with Barristers Jeremy Dein QC and Sasha Wass QC. The first series, produced for the BBC by Chalkboard Television, was a stand-out hit for BBC One daytime, regularly bringing in over two million viewers in a 9.15am slot and striking a chord with crime fans across the country.

Lindsay Bradbury, BBC Commissioning Editor, says: “When Chalkboard Television pitched the territory of murder crimes, they were slightly cautious because it felt so different for a daytime audience. But this type of distinctive format is exactly what we are after. The audience have really got stuck into the intrigue, suspense and emotion so brilliantly brought to life by Sasha and Jeremy.”

In the first series, half of the cases investigated were found to be unsafe by Judge David Radford. Now the team behind the show are on the hunt for new cases and relatives to re-investigate historic crimes and convictions.

The team are looking for murder and serious crime cases from 1970 and earlier, where there is a question mark over the conviction. As part of this they are looking to team up with relatives of the convicted who are keen to learn more about both their family and the safety of the original verdict.

Anyone interested in contacting the show can reach the production team on: familymystery@chalkboardtv.com

Executive Producer for Chalkboard TV, Mike Benson, says: “The response to the first series was more than we ever expected and the cases proved both fascinating and heart-breaking in equal measure. Most of the cases we featured involved capital punishment and many of the convicted went to the gallows desperately pleading their innocence. Now, decades later, the family members and barristers will be scrutinising the evidence using everything from DNA to ballistics in a bid to learn the truth.”

Bringing modern forensic techniques to historic cases is happening more frequently – with the recent arrest of the Golden State Killer in America an example of the power of modern science being applied to historic cases. However for the family members the show represents both an emotional quest to find the truth about their relatives’ guilt and learn more about their family history.

In series one, barristers Sasha Wass and Jeremy Dein investigated a Dorset murder case that tragically tore a family apart in the 1930s. When Frederick Bryant died after a mysterious illness, his wife Charlotte was convicted of murdering him using arsenic, and hanged. With both parents dead, the Bryant’s five children were separated and raised in care. As the barristers re-investigated the strange circumstances surrounding Frederick’s death, William Bryant explored his parents’ past, accompanied by his own son David. Revisiting his childhood home, and the final resting places of both his parents, William learned a great deal about his family’s story, which had been hidden from him as a child. Following the transmission of the episode, William and David were contacted by long lost relatives of both Frederick and Charlotte, reuniting a family that had been fractured for over 80 years.

Anyone wishing to get in touch to appear on the new series should email familymystery@chalkboardtv.com

Production credits for series two:

  • Executive Producer – Mike Benson
  • Series Producer – Simon Cooper
  • Producer – Lorna Hartnett
  • Commissioning Editor for the BBC – Lindsay Bradbury
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Counting down to WDYTYA? LIVE

Only 5 days to go till this years Who Do You Think You Are? Live at Olympia and I am getting excited.

My tickets have arrived and I’m pouring over the glossy show guide to decided which stands I’m going to visit and which workshops I want to listen to.

This year I think I shall be trying to find out more on DNA and I have already spotted that there is a whole lot of dedicated  workshops for me to chose from.

Other workshops that have caught my eye are: Sex, Illegitimacy and Cohabitation:1700-1960; one called Grandpa’s on my iPod: Extending your family history using social networking and mobile devices; another named Grandmother’s Bullet Proof Vest: Why your children need to know their family history and what to do about it and Mrs Fancy Tart is Coming to Tea – Making sense of family stories!

It is a busy week for me as I am hoping to launch my new family history membership site as well as attend the above family history event.

Fingers crossed that it and my travel plans all go smoothly.

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Genealogy Know How – Searching Your Family Tree

Family tree research is an exciting and rewarding look into your ancestry .  Much of your genealogy research will come easy , and parts will be more difficult.   Along this journey you will begin to wonder if anything is accurate as you grow your genealogy know how.

Census and legal documents may have illegible or incorrect names, wrong dates or errors in location .  As a researcher, you will need to question the evidence to determine whether or not the proof is correct .

People study their family history for many different reasons.  Some wish to join organizations , which require a proven lineage.  Some do it for religious reasons.  Others for medical reasons, trying to trace medical issues through members of their family .  Perhaps the individual wishes to leave a legacy for their children. Most begin genealogy because they are fascinated with the study of their family as a whole .  For whatever reason it becomes a fascinating project.

There is a difference between a genealogy and a family history .   A genealogy is a collection of names, dates, and places .  A family history includes the personal family stories that add interest to the genealogy . 

The often heard question for those beginning genealogy is “How do I begin ?”  

Start with yourself – work from the known to the unknown , gathering proof each step of the way.  Be objective and be organized.

There are several tools to get you started on your path to genealogy know how.  These include pedigree charts, family group sheets,  and basic organizational techniques. You will learn search techniques and will become familiar with genealogy databases.

Sign up for a beginner’s genealogy research class to learn how to be productive with a genealogy project.  Gaining knowledge from one or more experts will show you where to start and how to reduce your research time.

Learn what books and relevant maps to have in your library . Locate local libraries, genealogical and historical libraries . 

Collect family records , legal documents, census records , oral history stories , pictures , jewlery, pins, medals, ribbons, birth announcements , memorial cards , obituaries, holiday reminders and artifacts , scrapbooks and momentos .

Become excited, awestruck and filled with wonder as you increase your genealogy  knowledgeand build your family tree.  

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Why Can’t I Find My Ancestor?

If, like me, you have searched for hours and hours trying to find an ancestor’s birth, marriage or death with no luck and you begun to wonder if it is something that you have been doing wrong; then just consider the following list. It was one that I was introduced to when I did a genealogy course with the on-line specialist Pharos Tutors and I commend you to take its suggestions to heart.

  • Is It The Wrong District – are you looking in the one that you assume your ancestor should have been registered in? Think about looking in neighbouring districts as your forebears may be found there instead. You may not know, as I didn’t, that the early registrars for districts were paid by results and that it was they who were responsible for gathering the information! Later on the responsibility was transferred to the public to register their births, marriages and deaths for their relatives.
  • Looking in the Wrong Year. You may have been given the ‘received wisdom’ that your great-great grandfather was born in a particular year. Did you know that professional probate researchers, these are people that give evidence in court cases, will look for a person up to 100 years of age when searching for a death.  Also they will normally look for a woman’s marriage right they way up to the age of 100! When looking for a birth they will search for up to 25years after the marriage for the birth of a child. We need to also keep in mind that some people may marry several years after a child was born.
  • Wrong Name – Could you be looking for the middle name instead of the first? Many people are known by a second name rather than their first so a John Alan Smith may have been called Alan Smith all his life. His name may have been spelt Allan, or Alun so keep a watch out for spelling variations. Be aware that people may have been mis- indexed or their names spelt differently. Also they may have reverted to a previous name after the collapse of a marriage.
  • Family Stories – that send you off on a wild goose chase like looking for the handsome Irishman in one branch of my family when all the ancestors seem to be from Devon, with the exception of a small bit of Cornish that crept into my bloodline.
  • Inconsistent Searching. Not recording what you have already done. Now I know that many of us may hold our hands up to this!
  • Simply your ancestor was not registered. This may occur especially in the early years after the introduction of civil registration in 1875 but should be more rare after 1875. In between 1837 and 1875 some districts were under registered.

    I hope this helps some of you, it certainly has for me as I have some elusive forebears whom I am still trying to locate using Ancestry and the excellent FreeBMD on the Internet. I had lost my way until I did the course and realised that I should think around the problem more than homing in on what and where I thought these ancestors should be.

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Use more than one ancestor look up site!

I really need to remember my own advice to use more than one ancestor look up site!Ancestors in Thorne Family tree
On the occasions when I find myself talking to someone new to this family history pastime, about doing ancestor research, I often find myself going back to the advice that I have been given by a professional genealogists. Now I do not consider myself to be anything like a Genealogical Guru, I am simply someone who has gained a little experience over the years and now am happy to pass on two of my tips here. Both are about stepping back from the research results and introducing some careful thought into the proceedings.
  • Think logically about a person’s time-line.
  • Listen to family stories, but then step back and try to corroborate them with hard evidence to confirm what you have been told.

A person’s date of birth is obviously going to dictate an approximate time for when they could have got married and when you should reasonably expect them to have died. A little thought will tell you that rarely will a person be getting married in their hundredth year! Likewise, they are not going to be getting wed aged 6 or 7 either. Beware of entries in databases that just happen to have the same name as your ancestor, but are just plain and simply the wrong people. But even then we can go wrong if  we are not careful.

One weekend, when doing some family tree research,  I got myself stuck in a hole and wasted oh so much time digging it deeper and deeper! What was it I was doing wrong and how did I finally get out of it? Well I was trying to find the details of an ancestor’s death so that I could purchase a death certificate from the GRO site.

I am fairly wedded to www.ancestry.co.uk for most of my research. I like what they have on offer and I have become use to the way the site works. I also have a subscription to other sites such as www.thegenealogist.co.uk which I find good for many searches and then there is another favourite of mine:  www.findmypast.com.  (Disclosure re these links: Compensated Affiliate.)

The research I was doing had been initiated by reading some “thoughts” put down on paper by a relative before he died. I had been shown this family history because, as a cousin, I had an ancestor in common with them and I wanted to enter this forbear into my family tree as well. The handwritten notes indicated that our ancestor had died aged 66 and from this I was able to work out that as they were born in 1865. From this I then worked out that they probably died in 1930.

I went on to ancestry.co.uk and searched by name for the ancestor in all four quarters of 1930 but to no avail. I then broadened my research for ten years either side and spent hours looking for them without any luck. I then thought I’d try misspellings of the ancestor’s name as this, I thought, is surely why they are missing. Result: A big fat nothing!

Eventually, after much wasted time, I thought about using one of the other websites that offers Birth marriage and death details, something I should have done early on. And what did I find? There he was, on the other BMD site spelt correctly and dying in the district where I expected him too, but aged 70 not 66 and in the year 1935 not 1930!
The lessons for me to relearn and hopefully for you to benefit from are as follows:
  1. Remember that all websites are fallible and omissions happen.
  2. Family stories can sometimes be wrong as humans are not blessed with 100 percent recall and we can get things wrong, as it would seem this relative did in his writings for his children!

I have made myself a note to remember my own advice in future: Use more than one ancestor look up site and remember that stories can be wrong!

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