Once upon a time, long ago, in the days when locomotives pumped steam and soot into the Empire's air (for rest assured, the very air itself was ours); when gentlemen wore hats and facial hair; and ladies strapped themselves into corsets, and crocheted antimacassars from dusk until dawn, there lived a man named Arthur George Leigh, who—during the years 1887 and 1888—was the Mayor of the town of Chorley, twenty miles or so northeast of Liverpool. Now, it just so happens that Arthur Leigh was my great-great-grandfather, and here he is:
So this Victorian gentleman got married and fathered a couple of sons, James and Albert. James became the parish priest, and a right old sanctimonious curmudgeon he turned out to be, too. Albert, on the other hand, chose medicine as his profession, and set himself up as the town doctor. In those days, doctors and priests wielded considerable power, and there was much competition between these two. According to family legend, they pretty much despised each other, especially as Albert was something of a ladies' man, which his saintly sibling most certainly wasn't. So Bertie, the dirty scallywag, embarked on an extramarital affair with an actress—an actress, begad!—and this caused James to fly into a rage of Biblical proportions. There are even rumours that he challenged his brother to a duel! I have no idea what became of Reverend James, but this is him:
But forget the baldy old Bible thumper. It is with Doctor Albert Leigh that we must concern ourselves, for he was my great-grandfather. It also happens that he and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle were good friends, and he received from him a gift of a full set of hardbound Sherlock Holmes books, all inscribed with "To My Dear Friend, Leigh," and signed. When Albert died, his actress mistress made off with these volumes, the damned dollymop, and they've never been seen since. Confound it! I want 'em! Anyway, like Doyle, Albert was a Freemason. Here he is chairing a Freemasons' meeting at his home. He's the one in the middle.
And here he is again, in the Army during WW1:
As you can see, he bore a striking resemblance to the actor, Donald Pleasance, which is a comparison that has been thrown into my face more than once, too. Donald Pleasance was, of course, an international sex symbol who gave Steve McQueen a run for his money. Bizarrely, other people have said I resemble Bruce Willis. Can you think of two actors more different in appearance? Obviously my bald pate dazzles onlookers into a state of befuddlement. Anyway, that's all a little off-topic.
Let's have a nice picture of shiny-domed Albert in his steampunky autocarriage:
So, anyway, Doctor Albert Leigh was father to five children, including Violet, who was my grandmother—my mother's mother. She's pictured here, I guess in the 1920s:
MEANWHILE: THE FEARSOME PIRATE BLACK JACK STOCKWELL, HAARRR, ME HEARTIES!
On my father's side of the family there's an unfortunate paucity of photographs. What we do have, though, is an interesting legend: my grandmother's ancestors stretch back to a pirate named Long John Stockwell, or, as other sources have it, Black Jack Stockwell. He's reckoned to have sailed with the notorious Captain Kidd but eventually settled down and bought land in London, now known as the Stockwell-Angell estates, which extend from Thames-side to Croydon. He had a servant, a widow named Angell, with whom he had an affair, and a son, John Angell, out of wedlock. One day, Black Jack got tired of family life and went off buccaneering again. He never returned. Mrs. Angell inherited the estate but later had a religious conversion and, considering the Stockwell fortune to be "blood money," she handed everything over to the church. Families with connections to the Stockwells and Angells have been trying to reclaim it ever since. There are rumours that those who've got close to establishing a legal claim have either disappeared or died in mysterious circumstances, so I'm steering well clear!
The End.
