Digging in the dirt

It’s official. I’ve become more than a little obsessed with my family tree. I first tried to dig into my family’s past in the mid-1970’s, when I spent the summer holidays staying with my brothers in London. I used to take advantage of Ken Livingstone’s under-16 bus pass, with any journey just 2p. I’d set off early in the morning, with no real plan, and just jump on the first bus that went past, and when the mood. Took me, I’d get off that one and jump on another. By lunchtime, I truly could be anywhere in Greater London. My mum used to make me promise to call her whenever I got to where I was going, and so I’d dutifully report in with a list of place names that she’d never heard of.

I can’t remember now whether I had a specific plan to visit St. Catherine’s House, or I just came across it by accident. That was the magnificent building in central London that used to house all of the UK’s original Birth, Marriage and Death certificates. You used to be able to walk in off the street and access their card indexes, and then you could fill in a form to request a copy of the original. I seem to remember requesting two copies; one of my Uncle Bill’s death certificate (he’d died a couple of years earlier at the age of 62, after a life down the mines had made him old before his time) and my Grandmother’s death certificate (she’d died before my 3rd birthday, so I don’t remember her.

I think that part of my fascination is because I grew up not knowing any of my grandparents, and none of my dad’s side of the family. My mum’s dad had died shortly after the Second World War after a long illness (yes, you guessed it.. he broke his back in a bad mining accident in the 1930s, and was mainly bed-ridden after that). My dad came from a long line of miners too, and I think that in those days, miners worked hard and played hard. My paternal grandfather was a heavy drinker, a womanizer and prone to bouts of the ‘blue devils’ – the way that coming home and beating your wife senseless could be passed off as “not my fault” back then.

My dad was the oldest of 5 children, and grew up in abject poverty. It wasn’t just the poor wages and poor social conditions of the time, but the fact that his father was also keeping a “fancy woman” and a second family across the other side of town, and then drinking himself senseless every night. One night when my dad was 15, he came home from the pub and found an excuse to beat up his wife. My dad decided to stand up to him and got between him and his mum. As a result, my dad took the beating, and he was thrown out of the family home.

With only the clothes on his back, my dad walked 20 miles through a wet and windy night, turning up at his aunt’s house, which just happened to be around the corner from where my mum lived. She took him and after a few hours sleep, he made his way to the local pit, where they took him on. Before you say to yourself how wonderful his aunt was for taking him, that hospitality came at a price. Her condition was that he handed over his pay packet to her, and she gave him an allowance in return. Not having a choice, he accepted her offer, and so while earned a decent wage at the time (he did one of the most dangerous that there was down the mine; widening new seams to make them accessible and putting in the pit props after explosives had opened them up), he remained as poor as a church mouse until he married my mum.

Only in the last week or so, have I finally tracked down my father’s side of my family on Ancestry.com. I have names and dates, people and places, births, weddings and funerals. All of them are part of my history, and yet I know nothing about them. I see names of cousins and aunts and uncles that I’ve never met, or maybe I have. Maybe I’ve passed them in the street, or sat next to them in a pub or on a bus. I wonder if any of them heard different stories growing up, with my dad cast as the black sheep of the family? I wonder if any of them are looking up my part of the Ford family tree?