Newsletter – 11th
April 2024
New CEO for The National Archives
Correspondence from the past: Home Children
write home
Reconstructing your ancestor’s DNA
History of the Royal Marines 1837-1914 FREE DOWNLOAD
Don’t be misled by the GRO birth indexes
British man is oldest in the world
Save on Ancestry DNA UK ONLY - ENDS SUNDAY
National Pet Day TODAY!
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The LostCousins
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We’re
just 3 weeks away from our 20th birthday! LostCousins launched on
Saturday 1st May 2004, and if you visited the Society of Genealogists Annual
Fair which took place that weekend at the Royal Horticultural Halls in London,
I might well have handed you one of these leaflets as you stood in line:
The
timing of the launch couldn’t have been better – less than six months later Who
Do You Think You Are? burst onto our TV screens, and suddenly family
history was in the news!
On
12th October, when the very first episode was broadcast, there were
just 2525 LostCousins members, but by the end of October there were 3504, and at
the end of December the membership had increased to 7182. It doesn’t sound many
– nowadays there are 10 times as many researchers on my mailing list – however
in those days the website wasn’t nearly as user-friendly as it is today, so
there were many more queries to deal with, and I was already working 60 hour weeks even though I didn’t have a regular newsletter
to research and write.
I
also spent a lot of time helping members with their research – you have to
remember that until 2008 there were no parish registers online, so we were
dependent on visiting record offices if we could, and
trawling the IGI. In those early days some of the censuses which we take for
granted today were only available on microfilm. For example, the 1851 England
& Wales census wasn’t launched online until late 2005:
It
was a very exclusive event – there were just a few dozen people there – so I
was able to have long chats with Tony Robinson, the celebrity guest, and the
late great Audrey Collins (who wrote the official history of the censuses, and subsequently
became a LostCousins member).
New CEO for The National Archives
One person I didn’t
get to speak to at the launch of the 1851 Census in 2005 was Natalie Ceeney, then the newly-appointed
Chief Executive of The National Archives
(a role she held until 2010).
The
National Archives has this week announced
the appointment of another new Chief Executive, Saul Nassé
– who might be coming to the job 19 years later, but was actually born 6 years before
Ms Ceeney.
I
don’t know anything about Mr Nassé beyond what it
says on his Wikipedia
page (which hadn’t, at the time of writing, been updated to reflect his new
role), but I certainly admire his taste in shirts! I was also interested to
read a prescient blog post
that he wrote in November 2019, just as the world as about to be hit by a
pandemic, outlining the many advantages of flexible working.
Correspondence from the past: Home Children
write home
I’ve
written about British Home Children on several occasions in the past, so I was
fascinated to learn that LostCousins member Martin had transcribed the
surviving letters from a seven-year correspondence involving members of his
family who, after their parents died, had been put into a home, then sent
overseas.
Martin
has very kindly given me permission to publish excerpts from the letters in
this newsletter; they cover the period 1895 to 1902.
Introduction
Emma Newman and her brothers John and William were sent to Canada in
Aug 1888. Emma was 13, William 12 and John 10. They sailed aboard the SS
Parisian which left Liverpool on 16 August 1888 and arrived in Quebec City on
24 August 1888.
Their mother Louisa Newman nee Dowden, daughter of my great-great grandfather
Andrew Dowden and sister of my great grandfather William Dowden, had died aged
36 on 12 Feb 1886 having fallen from a window at Crown Office Row in Temple off
Fleet Street where she was a laundress.
Louisa’s husband William Newman, whom she had married 10 May 1874 at
St Clement Danes in the Strand, was a Military Tailor in his father’s tailoring
business and he had died 24 August 1882 at 2 West Street, Soho, London aged 31.
His cause of death was alcohol related. On Louisa’s death, or very soon
afterwards, the children were all put into Children’s Homes.
We know from Emma’s letters that she went to Ealing in West London.
This would have been St Mary’s Road Girls Home which had opened at Ealing House
in 1867. This was run by the National Refuges for Homeless and Destitute
Children. Here Emma would have received a basic education and be trained in
housework.
Letter from Miss Emma Newman to Alexander Dowden, her cousin
1st Feb 1895 c/o Mr Aaron Read St
Catherines Ont Box 807
Dear Alex
I suppose you think I should have answered before
but I have been very busy and I thought I would keep you waiting a little
while. Well, I received your letter, and one from Mrs Grestock
at the same time. I had been out in the afternoon, and while I was gone Mr Read
had been to town and got the letters, and I didn’t know anything about it until
I had got supper all ready, and then he gave them to me. So
then I didn’t want any supper it kind of took away my appetite to get two from
England at once.
Mr Grestock sent me about a dozen views of
the old Temple places. He said he supposed I would remember something about
them, but I don’t remember much, you see I was never there since I was eight
years old. He didn’t say anything about anyone bringing a message from me. I
didn’t send one anyway. But last summer there was a fellow went from here to
England, he might have seen him and told him some thing. You don’t seem to be very good friends, what
is the reason they never said anything about you when they wrote.
When I got your letter I couldn’t make out what I was getting in it I
thought it was a penknife, so I was rather surprised to find a gold pen, the
one end of it was broken but I took it up town and got it mended, and I thank
you very much for it, I am writing with it now, this is the first I have
written with it.
And I was surprised to find the picture you sent me, I didn’t think
much of it when I first got it, but when I had read the letter, and how it came
that you sent that kind of a one, and was going to
send another I didn’t care. When I first got it I
didn’t know which was you and which was Andrew, but I think I know now, you are
the oldest looking one I suppose. Why if I had seen you I would never have
known you, you don’t look anything like the one you sent before, I don’t ever
remember seeing Andrew much, as far as that goes I never saw you much, the last
time I saw you was when you run after the bus when we was leaving Exeter Hall*,
maybe you have forgotten all about it, but I haven’t. Andrew looks like Will I
mean my brother not yours.
*Exeter Hall was a large meeting hall at 372 Strand WC2 that at the
time of this would have been the YMCA. It may well be that Emma and Alexander
had gone there to hear a talk. The Strand Palace Hotel now occupies the site.
You needn’t tell Andrew but I think you are
the best looking of the two. You must have had a good time going to so many
parties. I never go to dances, never get the chance, and don’t know how to
anyway and I wouldn’t go if I did. You see I am a Methodist now, and they don’t
believe in dancing.
We have fine sleighing now, I was out to a
sleigh riding last Tuesday That’s all the party I’ve been to as yet. I had a
good time though, it was half past two next morning
when I got home. We had two great revivalists in St Catherines last month,
Hunter and Crossley was their names, and I used to get
up to hear them once in a while, I used to like to go, the meetings were good.
I have heard from Will and John both since Christmas, and they are both well.
They are both in the same places yet.
John said he would like to come up around here if he could get a place
and I wish he could. Will said he was off hunting all day Xmas but didn’t shoot
any thing though. Will you please write to him and
see if he will answer he says he has been careless and lost all addresses.
You spoke about sending me handkerchiefs, why I have got some cotton
ones I brought from England yet, that I have never used, but you can send all
the silk ones you like. I’ll have to get you to coax them up to send me a
likeness of Florie, I expect she looks pretty nice.
Now it is not so bad out here as you think it is. I wish you would
come and see for yourself you might make quite a bit at printing though I don’t
know anything about it. There is one boy, at least he is a young man now, he
has been out here 7 years and he makes quite a bit at
making furniture.
I bought a pair of skates last week, but the ice is all covered over
with snow now and I haven’t had a chance to learn. I expect to have some fun
learning, I suppose I will fall down pretty often. I
can stand up on the ice with them and go about 4 feet without falling and that
is about all.
I think I have said about all I can think of now. How is Fred you
never said any thing about him. I hope Uncle is
getting better, and that you are all well as I am at present. Goodbye give my
love to all and accept the same yourself. I am afraid if I was to see you I wouldn’t know how to talk to you, you look such dude’s
in that photo.
I remain your affect Cousin
Emma Newman
Despite
the tragic circumstances which led to Emma being sent to Canada, she seems to
have landed on her feet. There will be more extracts from the correspondence in
future newsletters.
Forensic genealogy offers families the gift of closure
A
lot of the coverage of forensic genealogy in the media is critical of the way
that DNA samples provided by family historians can be used to solve crimes and
identify victims. This article
from Scientific American is much more positive – well worth a read!
As
I mentioned to Nicola, the LostCousins member who spotted the article, I began subscribing
to Scientific American when I was at school in the 1960s. At the special
student rate it cost just 2s 6d per copy, and whilst that was still a lot of money
for someone whose pocket money was just 5s per week, it was worth it to be able
read the wonderful Mathematical Games column by Martin Gardner.
Note:
Gardner’s 1970 column about the Game of Life, invented by British mathematician
John Horton Conway, inspired me to write a computer version when I bought my
first home computer towards the end of that decade.
Colossal Biosciences in the United States
claims to be the world’s first and only de-extinction
company. A month ago Colossal announced that their
team working on bringing back the woolly mammoth had turned normal elephant
cells into stem cells, the first step in creating a mammoth-like hybrid.
They’re
aiming to bring their first ‘mammoth’ into the world in 2028, which – since
elephants have a two-year gestation period – doesn’t give them very much time
to refine their technology.
Although
the ancient hominins known as Neanderthals died out around 40,000 years go, possibly as a result of
climate change, they interbred with early humans – and as a result we all carry
some of their DNA.
Analysis
of ancient DNA has produced Neanderthal genomes which are around 70% complete
but, because ancient DNA degrades over time, Neanderthal sequences in the DNA
of modern humans provide a more reliable source. A study of 27,566 people in
Iceland was able to reconstruct 41% of the Neanderthal genome.
The
latest study,
which involves just 2,762 people from across India, has found around 50% of the
Neanderthal genome – and there is the possibility that a larger study would
find more, though whether we will ever get to 100% is in doubt. Either way, the
chances that you or I will ever met a Neanderthal are pretty small – though you
never know…..
Reconstructing your ancestor’s DNA
If
it’s possible to substantially recreate the DNA of Neanderthals, who died out
around 40,000 years ago, and woolly mammoths, who haven’t walked the earth for
perhaps 4000 years, what are the chances of recreating the DNA of one of our
ancestors, perhaps someone who died just 200 years ago?
Of
course, these are not like-for-like problems – if the Neanderthal genome can
ever be fully-reconstructed it won’t be the DNA of any one individual, but a
patchwork comprised of segments from many different ancient people. Even the
Human Genome Project used samples from many different living people – as you
can read here.
Because
we only inherited half of our parents’ DNA, and they only inherited half of
their parents’ DNA, and so on, it would be necessary to have DNA samples from a large number of documented descendants to even come close
to reconstructing the DNA of one of their shared ancestors.
Even
then we’d never get to 100%, because some DNA would fall away with each
successive generation – for example, even if the ancestor in question had 10
children, there would be some DNA segments that weren’t inherited by any
of them. If some of those children didn’t survive to adulthood even more DNA
would be lost. And that’s just one generation…..
If
you then take into account the difficulty of knowing
which DNA segment was inherited from which ancestor, it’s clear that this
piecemeal process isn’t very practical. And it would certainly be exceedingly
expensive, even assuming all of the living descendants
could be persuaded to test!
Perhaps
the best chance of getting hold of an ancestor’s DNA is to dig them up,
something I’ve suggested in jest on a few occasions in the past. But even
assuming we can get permission to disinter our ancestor, there is a moral
question – would we be doing it purely for our own satisfaction, or in order
that we can better honour the memory of our ancestors?
However there is one circumstance in which it would
be relatively easy to justify analysing the DNA of a long-dead ancestor, and
that is if the remains will be disinterred for some other reason. For example,
a member recently posted a question on the LostCousins Forum relating to an
ancestor buried in a graveyard which is on the route of HS2 (the proposed
high-speed rail route from London to Birmingham, and possibly beyond). Remains might
also be disinterred as a consequence of redevelopment,
or the reorganisation of a cemetery in order to provide more space for future
burials.
In
fact, as I pointed out in a 2013 article,
DNA testing might be the only way of identifying individuals in unmarked or
pauper graves. I don’t know what the cost would be – certainly a lot more than
we pay for conventional DNA testing – but let’s hope that it would be
affordable. There’s also the question of how much the DNA would have degraded
over the years.
Assuming
that it would be practical, ethical, and affordable, how might it help to have
samples of an ancestor’s DNA? For a start, we’d know which parts of our DNA
were inherited from that ancestor – all of them, not just the few that happen
to match with a cousin.
But
more importantly, if Ancestry were to allow us to upload the DNA for (say) a 4G
grandparent, there would be many more matches than we would normally get –
indeed, the chances are that EVERY cousin (who shared that ancestor and had
tested with Ancestry) would be a match, even though the chance of any two 5th
cousins sharing the same DNA segment is normally less than one in three.
However,
the real benefit would come from being able to identify cousins who share an
ancestor from an earlier generation, because that’s how most ‘brick walls’ are
knocked down.
Normally
the chance of matching with a 7th cousin is less than 1 in 30 – but they
wouldn’t be 7th cousin to a 4G grandparent, they would be 1st cousin 6 times
removed. That might sound equally distant, but in terms of shared DNA they
would be more like a 4th cousin, which means 2 in 3 would be a DNA match – 20
times as many.
Will
we ever have the opportunity to sample our ancestors’
DNA? Over the years there have been a few examples of exhumations where DNA has
been the motivation: in 2015 the remains of Tsar Nicholas II and his wife were
exhumed so that their DNA could be tested (see this BBC article for more
information), and in the same year I reported
that motor racing legend Fangio was to be exhumed so that a paternity test
could be carried out. Salvador
Dali suffered the same fate in 2017.
There
is one example of an exhumation in England that I’m aware of: 12 years ago this
month I reported
that Allan Jenkins had been given permission for the exhumation of his mother,
and though DNA was not the motivation in that case, it does provide some hope
that permission might be granted for other reasons. You can download Mr
Jenkins’ petition to the Consistory Court of of the
Diocese of Southwark here
– it might come in useful should you ever need to make a similar application.
Note:
although DNA was not a factor in that particular case,
coincidentally the article appeared in the same newsletter that I revealed my
decision to test my own DNA.
Last
year I wrote
about my next-door neighbour, who assumed his cousin’s identity after deserting
from the Royal Navy, and not only married under his cousin’s name, but joined
the army using his new identity. This article, written by a LostCousins member,
demonstrates how she unpicked her great-grandfather’s deception with the help
of DNA.
My great grandfather was a career soldier and told his wife and
children that he had changed his name before enlisting; he said that one day he
would tell them who he really was, and they would be surprised!
The story he regaled them with was that he had run away from home and
enlisted in the army against his parent’s wishes, when he was under age. His parents had searched for him and when they
discovered where he was they had bought him out of the
army. Apparently this scenario was repeated, so the
third time he ran away he changed his name and they never found him. He joined
the Sixth Dragoon Guards, and eventually became a staff sergeant in the army,
working with horses alongside the veterinary officers.
In 1926 the dear man went to York Races with my grandfather
and they got caught in a thunderstorm; sadly he developed pneumonia and died
within five days, without telling anyone who he really was. As you can probably
appreciate, ever since there has been much speculation in our family!
This story had always seemed implausible to me, on various levels, but
appears to have been believed at the time. He seemed to be inferring that he
came from a wealthy, possibly well-known family, and even said on one census
that he had been born in Windsor!
When I started researching family history, I looked for him in the
records and sure enough, I couldn’t find him before his marriage in 1887, when
he said that he was twenty-six years old. This implied that he was born in 1861,
but no-one of his name was born around that year in any of the several places,
he stated as his place of birth on the various census. Nor could I find in the
1861 or 1871 census any child where the father had the name he had given when
he married. So I came to the conclusion that it was
probably true that he had changed his name, but why had he done it, and who was
he really?
I should mention that this was back in the day before we had
searchable records online, I had to scroll through microfilm and microfiche in
libraries to find any information, but I managed to get his 1904 discharge
papers from the army – by paying a professional researcher to go to Kew. The
discharge papers were not very helpful they said he had been born in Digbeth,
and that his job had been a labourer when he enlisted in October 1881, which
didn’t bear out his story implying wealthy parents.
There didn’t seem to be any way that we could identify our mysterious
forebear, but then along came DNA testing and the slight possibility of
breaking down this stubborn ‘brick wall’!
I had my DNA test and then started sifting through my DNA matches to
find those who seemed to be from my great grandfather’s line. Quite a lot of my relatives
eventually got tested too, in order to help in the quest. I attempted to link
the trees of those who matched with the appropriate members of my family, and I
was pursuing this when the start of the breakthrough occurred….
I was contacted by a DNA match, a gentleman who had built a vast
family tree (as have I), but we couldn’t see any connection between our trees. Consequently I suggested to him that the connection might be
through my great grandfather, for whom I could find no trace before October
1881 when he enlisted.
But some months ago he contacted me again, to
tell me that he had been looking into this, and had found 20+ matches descended
from two sisters who had had a brother who had disappeared from the records in
1878, after being discharged from the army for health reasons. These matches
all matched with me and/or my other family members. How exciting!
We then compared the army discharge papers of these ‘two’ men and
found that there were a lot of similarities. They both had brown hair, and were
said to have blue or gray eyes, were within an inch
or so of the same height and, most significantly, both had a scar on the left
forearm!
The first man had been discharged from the army in 1878 because of an
injury which had occurred in Bermuda, when he was off duty
and which was hampering his mobility. Nothing more could be found about him in
the records from that date on.
As a further confirmation, we also exchanged photographs of family
members and we could all see marked family resemblances.
The puzzle was solved, but I’m sure you want to know who he really
was. He turned out to have been just an ordinary chap from a normal family in
Sussex, not particularly wealthy or famous. His mother had died when he was a
young child, his father had remarried and then because his father and
stepmother had died when he was a teenager he had gone
to live with his elderly grandmother for several years before joining the army.
Why did he change his name after being discharged? Was it perhaps he
thought the army wouldn’t have him if they knew he had previously been
discharged with a disability – even though it must have improved for him to be
able to re-enlist. He also said that he was younger than he really was,
presumably so that they didn’t think he was too old to enlist.
Could he have been claiming a
pension in his other name? We certainly haven’t found any record of a pension. Was
there something else he was fleeing from? I don’t suppose we will ever find
out, but we do know that what he had said to his family wasn’t quite true.
Nevertheless, nearly a century after his death we do at least feel
that we know who he really was!
Do
you have any similar stories in your family? Why did your ancestor
change his identity – and how did it work out?
Last autumn I bought
myself a rather extravagant birthday present – it cost £150 – but it was all in
a good cause, because it came from Oxfam.
Those
of you who have met me may be wondering if I bought myself a second-hand suit.
However, what I bought was even older than the clothes in my wardrobe: a
handful of papers related to the Reverend Henry John Cooper who died in 1845
and, according to several Ancestry trees, was born in Kent in 1801.
Regular
readers of this newsletter may recall that my first foray into historical
research came in 1993 when I purchased a collection of correspondence dating
from the 1830s to the 1850s, so perhaps it was appropriate that – almost
exactly 30 years later – I was once again delving into someone else’s family.
There
were three documents which particularly interested me: one was the original licence
for the 1835 marriage of Rev Cooper to Barbara Currie Snell, because I’d only
ever seen such documents online. It transpired that whilst they married in
Windlesham, Surrey the bride had, like me, been born in Ilford, Essex. Another document
was the 1841 warrant appointing him Chaplain to His Royal Highness Prince
Albert, Consort of Queen Victoria – this bears Prince Albert’s signature, which
was missing from my collection of Royal autographs.
The third document that
intrigued me was a letter from the Admiralty dated 30th December
1852 which began with the words “Madam, according to Your Royal Highness’s
desire, I asked the Duke the question Your Royal
Highness wished to know, about the young Cooper….”.
Reading
the letter it was clear that enquiries had been made regarding
the possibility of a cadetship in the Royal Navy for Henry, the only son of the
late Rev’d and Mrs Cooper. The letter, signed by the
Duke of Northumberland – who had been First Lord of the Admiralty until the minority
government led by the Earl of Derby collapsed in mid-December – explained that
cadetships were reserved for sons of officers in the Navy, Army, and Marines,
so that as the son of a clergyman young Henry would not qualify.
He
did, however, get a commission in the end. Admiralty records for Henry Towry
Miles Cooper at The National Archives (ADM 196/60/19 and ADM 196/60/30) show that he joined the Royal Marines
Light Infantry, serving as a 2nd Lieutenant from 1855, and being
promoted to 1st Lieutenant in 1858. On his return to the Portsmouth
HQ in 1867 he was promoted to 2nd Captain, and to Captain the following year.
In
February 1872, aged just 33, he was put on the ‘retired list’ at his own
request, qualifying for an annuity of £122 pa, which he commuted to a lump sum
of £1725 19s 6d shortly afterwards. This turned out to be a good decision since
he died less than 5 years later, in January 1877, having served as Collector of
Customs for the Settlement on the Gambia in the intervening period.
Tip:
you can download those Admiralty records – and many others – free from The
National Archives website.
Free access to digitised records was introduced during the first year of the
COVID-19 pandemic, but no end date has been announced.
The
most interesting question from my point of view was, who was the ‘Royal
Highness’ referred to in the Admiralty letter, and how did the letter end up
with the Cooper family papers?
There
was a clue in one of the other letters. An undated letter from ‘Mary’ to
Barbara Cooper reports that her attempt to secure a place for young Henry has
been unsuccessful. The monogram of a crown over the word ‘Mary’ suggests a
Royal personage, and one possibility is Princess
Mary, Duchess of Gloucester and Edinburgh.
Born
in 1776, the year in which the American Colonies declared independence,
Princess Mary was the 11th child of King George III and Queen
Charlotte, and the longest-lived – she died in April 1857, a few days after her
81st birthday.
The
proof was in the final letter, also from ‘Mary’, with a date (April 28) and the
letters ‘G H’ at the top. It took me a while to realise, but G H clearly stands
for Gloucester House.
There
is a wonderful photograph taken at Gloucester House in 1856 which shows Queen
Victoria with her eldest son, Albert Edward (later Edward VII), her daughter,
Princess Alice, and her aunt, Princess Mary – you can see it here.
Note:
the photo was temporarily unavailable when I checked this morning – the Royal Collection
Trust website is undergoing maintenance.
History of the Royal Marines 1837-1914
In
the course of researching the previous article I came across a comprehensive history
of the Royal Marines which was completed in January 1934 by H E Blumberg – you
can download it here.
Further
research revealed that the author was none other than General Sir Herbert
Edward Blumberg, KCB who had previously written Britain's
Sea Soldiers: A Record of the Royal Marines During the War 1914 - 1919.
Blumberg died in August 1934, just months after finishing his remarkable
history of the Royal Marines’ first 77 years.
Don’t be misled by the GRO birth indexes
Another
discovery I made during my research into the Cooper family was that the birth
of Henry Tory Miles Cooper was incorrectly registered in 1838.
Although
the names of Henry’s parents are shown correctly, his mother’s former surname
isn’t given, which means that when the General Register Office created a new
birth index in the 21st century, no mother’s maiden name was recorded.
This would usually indicate an illegitimate birth
Also
see this example
from my January newsletter.
British man is oldest in the world
John
Tinniswood, at 111 years and nearly 8 months, is the oldest man in the world –
and just to prove it I’ve dug out his entry from the 1921 Census:
©
The National Archives – All Rights Reserved. Used by kind permission of Findmypast
You
can read more about John and his remarkably long life in this BBC News article.
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We
had a bumper crop of fruit last year, and most of the gooseberries went into
the freezer. This week my wife harvested our first batch of rhubarb this year,
so I decided it was time to start cooking up last year’s gooseberries. They’re
small and very tasty, but I didn’t ‘top-and-tail’ them before they went in the
freezer, so I was initially daunted, but it turned out to be a blessing in
disguise.
Cutting
the stalks off is easy, but removing the bushy tails is usually quite tricky;
when I use scissors either I cut into the fruit, or I leave half of the ‘tail’
intact. Quite by accident I discovered that because the gooseberries were frozen I could remove the tails very easily with my finger
nail, whilst the stems could easily be broken off.
It’s
not an original tip – I subsequently discovered that there are plenty of similar
tips online – but perhaps, like me, you’d never thought to look?
Did
you watch The Jury earlier this year? It recreates a real case using actors,
with all the dialogue taken from court transcripts, and challenges
two juries to reach a verdict in a difficult case. Whilst the juries know that
the parts are being played by actors, neither jury knows of the other’s
existence. If you missed the 4-part series, and are in the UK, you can watch it
free here
– thoroughly recommended.
It
was especially interesting for me because the series was shot in Chelmsford,
where I did jury duty in 2018 – though the programme used the old courthouse as
the setting, rather than the current building. But the inside of one court
looks much like another.
Reading
a review of The Jury I discovered an American series called Jury Duty,
which was shown last year. The premise is slightly different: all the participants are actors, with the exception of
one juror, who has no idea that the case isn’t real. Although billed as a
comedy, the fact that one of the participants isn’t in on the secret makes it
an interesting study of human nature – and you can’t help empathising with Ronald.
We watched on FreeVee, which is a free, ad-supported,
Amazon service.
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Peter Calver
Founder, LostCousins
© Copyright 2024 Peter Calver
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