Genealogy Chat

Geoff You cheeky thing! Actually, my friends say I am a bit eccentric, but I thought that came from my Norfolk side. There's insanity there too, another uncle, but he was harmless, poor thing. Poor William spent the rest of his life - another 50-odd years in Broadmoor. I don't suppose he got many letters or visits. It's quite a sad tale really, the girl he murdered was pregnant with his child, she already had another child aged 3 fathered by someone else, and her mother had been burned to death in a fire a few years ago. He father was 80 and apparently unable to understand what happened to her. nell

Have you inherited many traits from him?

Just had a day in London walking round places various relatives were born/lived, etc, popped into FRC for a few quick refs, then I thought I would just nip into the London Metropolitan Archives to see what they had to offer. Well...started looking for parish registers and realised relatives didn't go to church they were married in to baptise their children - found several churches , no time to check them all. The I found they had the Times on microfilm. I idly wondered if they had a record of the trial of my ancestor WILLIAM MEALING, who murdered a woman in Rendcombe, Gloucestershire. I knew the trial had been between October and December and would have been brief. Well, the Times in those days had six columns of news and no illustrations. It went on and on and on and on. Finally, I found it - December 18th, near the end of the film. He was acquitted on the grounds of insanity and I was really moved to read his cousel state that "he was not responsible for his actions, that his neighbours did not consider he was so responsible, and state that they had provided funds for retaining professional men for his defence". Now I need to plan a trip to Kew to read up the original trial notes. nell