THE CRIMINAL ELEMENT

The Notorious NED KELLY.  Are we related ?

My very first home was just across the road from the house where the murderer Frederick Seddons had lived and I went to school just around the corner from Dr.Crippen's house. From my school playground I could see the tower of Holloway Prison. As a teenager I remember going to a pub in Hampstead where you could still see, on the outside wall, the marks made by the bullets when Ruth Ellis (the last woman to hang in England) gunned down her lover. During my post office years I knew the brother of a well known armed robber and several times I encountered the notorious "Mad" Frankie Fraser. I recently wrote about my mother's husband's connections with infamous characters like Alf Solomons, Darby Sabini and Billy Hill and my late partner, Terry, had family connections with the Jack the Ripper case. Murderers and other criminal types are part of history and as unfortunate as that may be a lot of people find them interesting - and I count myself among them.

Thankfully our close family seems to have been relatively (excuse the pun) speaking free from serious crime. If we go a bit further afield things get slightly different and there are a couple of interesting connections which it is worth mentioning here. I do not claim to have researched these connections myself because. as I hope you appreciate, I am trying to concentrate a bit closer to home.  One of the best Family history websites on the internet is devoted to The Ennever Family (click the name to go there) and we arerelated to the Essex branch of that family by Harriet Emma Curtis (who was my 1st cousin twice removed).  Harriet married Frederick Ennever in  1886 and through him the Bayliss family are very distantly related by marriage to those famous East Enders, the Kray Twins.

Reggie and Ronnie at home.

Read about them HERE

If that wasn't surprising enough, my last visit to the Ennever website revealed that there is a connection as well to the famous Australian bushranger Ned Kelly!!!!  The Ennevers have had quite a few links with criminals over the years - one of the most interesting being Joseph Ennever who led a gang of counterfeiters and was hanged for his crimes at Ilchester in 1807.  You can read about Joseph and other Ennever related criminals by clicking this LINK

Dr. Bill writes:

Welcome to the Geneabloggers family. I hope you find the association fruitful. May you keep sharing your ancestors stories.

Many thanks Bill, I'm sure I'll find Geneabloggers most useful.