07 July 2025
Discovering Unexpected Ancestors in the Online Newspaper Collection
An interview with Kim Thompson
Kim Thompson lives in Leeds. She is using the British Library’s online newspaper collection, accessed through FindMyPast.com, to research the history of her family.
I first became interested in researching my family history about 16 years ago. I was curious about my grandparents, who had all died either before I was born or when I was young. I’ve got children of my own, and I wanted to know where I came from, and be able to pass the knowledge on. I signed up with all these genealogy sites and I found some wonderful articles on the British Library website about some of my ancestors. My research now goes back to the early 1600s.
My mother’s paternal grandfather was a big puzzle for a very long time. He’d told a few porkie pies in the 1901 census, so that set me back. I traced every single person with his name, unable to find him. Then I did a DNA test, and learned that he’d changed his identity to that of a dead man: a man he knew, from his hometown. This man used to go drinking in a pub run by my great-grandfather, but he had a gambling problem and committed suicide. Around the same time, my great-grandfather disappeared from his hometown, Norwich. The following year, he turned up in London using this other man’s name and age. I still don’t fully understand all the reasons behind it.
The Library holds the transcript of the trial
After I’d found his identity, I could go back a few more generations, and that’s when I found that his great-grandmother was hanged for murder in 1815. The Library holds the transcript of the trial. Reading it was like being in the courtroom: you could see the whole thing happening and what led up to it.
Her name was Elizabeth Woolterton and she was hanged in 1815, in Ipswich. She was a farmer’s wife. She lost her husband in 1811, and had this farm to run. Her husband had left her a thousand pounds, which was quite a lot of money back then, but by 1814, she’d run out of money. She wasn’t very good at managing things, I think. Her uncle promised her that when he died, he’d leave her his house.
She used to bake him cakes, and a few times, after he ate them, he was unwell. She baked another one and got her son to take it round to his house, but he didn’t want it because he’d been ill the last time he’d eaten one. He gave it to his housekeeper to get rid of, and instead of throwing it away, she gave it to her grandchildren. Her grandson ate too much of the cake, and, unfortunately, he died from it. They did the autopsy and found traces of arsenic. At the trial, they said that she was after her uncle’s money, and she was found guilty of the death.
Each person I’ve found has their own little story
My great-great-grandfather’s sister was a kleptomaniac. She never married. In the 1850s, she was her great-aunt’s companion, and when her great-aunt died, she took a turn for the worse, and got caught stealing a few times. The first time she was given a caution and let off, because her family was quite respectable. The second time, a few years later, she was staying at a rectory, and they went out one day and she helped herself to the entire kitchen. But the vicar’s son became suspicious and followed her. She’d stashed it all in a cabbage patch. He confronted her, and she lay down in the cabbage patch, saying, ‘Oh, I don’t feel too well.’ She got six months for that. I haven’t found anything more about her; I think she might have reformed.
It did get to a point where every ancestor was worse than the one before. I’d like to find some nice pipe-and-slippers, in-bed-by-nine-o’clock-type ancestors. I was saying to someone recently, it’s a surprise that I’ve turned out half as normal as I have. Each person I’ve found has their own little story. My great-grandfather, the one who left his wife behind, had two girlfriends in the early 1900s, and one of them became my great-grandmother. She worked at Bryant and May at the time of the matchgirls’ strike. While she was struggling in the East End of London, making match boxes, her father’s second cousin was having tea with Queen Victoria, because he became the Mayor of London.
History was my favourite lesson as a child
It’s about finding out who you are, the people you’ve come from. My children think I've got an ancestor for every occasion. I’ve discovered that on my dad’s side, there was an astronomer involved in the moon landing in 1969. He was the first director of the Parkes Observatory in Australia. So – moon landing: I’ve got an ancestor for that. The Great Fire of London – I tell them, your eighth great-grandfather’s cousin was Dean of St Paul’s. He became archbishop and crowned James II. Sometimes I think they just shake their heads.
History was my favourite lesson as a child. I was probably quite inquisitive when I was younger. Going back to the age of seven or eight, when we got a newspaper, I’d turn to the middle and look at the births, marriages and deaths, to see if I knew anyone that had been born or got married or anyone on the street that might have died.
I always recommend the Library to new researchers
I wouldn’t have found out half as much if I hadn’t come across the British Library website. Sometimes making a discovery is as simple as just typing in a name. I always recommend the Library to new researchers and anyone who’s interested in the past.
As told to Lucy Peters