Annie Lennox Who Do You Think You Are?

PIANO PLAYS

Singer Annie Lennox was born in Aberdeen on Christmas Day, 1954.

Her parents' only child.

She left Aberdeen for London at 17.

# Sweet dreams are made of this

# Who am I to disagree

In the early 1980s she shot to global fame

as one half of the band Eurythmics.

# Everybody's looking For something. #

Today, as well has having a successful solo career,

she is an active campaigner on humanitarian issues.

People ask me like, what was your background.

I will always say, well, really, it's working class.

From what I know of my family,

nobody came from money.

You know, nobody had a silver spoon.

It was hard work and they believed in doing the right thing,

doing the right thing.

So for this, I have tremendous respect.

Although my own life has turned out to be very different.

Completely different. My values are in there, though.

I knew my grandparents very well.

As for the generation or two or whoever before, I know nothing about.

So we're going to really... This is what we're going to find out.

Maybe not.

It's really very tantalising, the whole thing.

Obviously, I don't know what I'm about to discover,

whether it's going to be something extraordinary,

or something disappointing, but for me now it's like, I'll take the risk.

I won't say, "No, no, no, I don't want to know anything about that."

I'm like, "Yeah, I want to go on an adventure."

To start her journey,

Annie is heading back to Aberdeen in north-east Scotland.

Aberdeen is where I was born, and it's where I grew up

and it's where my grandparents lived, so it is a good starting point.

First, Annie wants to look into her late father's side of the family.

Her father's mother, Annie's grandmother, Jean Lennox,

lived into her late 90s, and Annie knew her very well.

But she knows nothing about her grandmother's background.

This morning I'm going to visit my Auntie Jean.

And Auntie Jean is my father's sister.

My grandmother's youngest daughter. Only daughter, actually.

It would be really nice to sit down with Jean

and take the time to talk about my grandmother

and her side of the family.

She's got to be able to fill in the dots for me,

so we'll find out, it'll be really interesting.

DOORBELL RINGS

Hello.

Oh! This is a surprise.

Chee, chee, chee. In you go.

All right.

Anne, do you remember that evening?

A bus load came down from Aberdeen and there was a proud grandma.

That's so sweet.

And then, of course, at the end of the concert

we all got on to the bus and came back, and we had a wee sing-song.

-You had a wee sing-song?

-We had a wee sing-song.

-Oh, that's nice.

-Yes.

Yes. And of course, there's the wedding photograph.

The wedding photograph.

-Grandma was 18, she was quite young when they were married, right?

-Mm-hmm.

I would very much like to know more about her, about gran,

-about her mother and father.

-Yes.

I don't know anything about them.

Well, there is a picture.

Oh, gosh.

I'm hoping that we're going to find out a little bit about, well,

my grandfather, Henderson, and the rest of his family.

I have never seen this picture before.

No.

So this is grandma's father?

That's right. Now, when I asked mum about him,

she said she was only about three or so when he died.

Yeah.

And she really couldn't say anything about him at all.

So you know, we know nothing about...

That side of the family. This is the Henderson side?

The Hendersons, yes.

The Hendersons. OK. God, how strange.

But maybe you will discover something.

Yeah. Who knows?

That would be good, wouldn't it?

Who knows? The mystery. Fascinating.

Annie's grandmother, Jean, was only three when her father,

Charles Henderson, died.

So nothing is known about his branch of the family.

To see what she can discover,

Annie has come to Aberdeen Central Library.

She's being helped by librarian David Main.

So he was born in 1866.

OK. So one of the first things that we can try and do

is to have a look for his birth certificate.

Right. Oh, OK, let's do it then.

So if we have a look for Henderson.

And this one we've got a birth record for 1866,

Charles Fraser Henderson, and it's in the Parish of Aberdeen,

so we know that we've got the right one.

And what's useful about the birth record

is it gives us details of his parents.

So we have Father's name is James Henderson,

and he's a stoker on a steam vessel.

And we've got Jessie Henderson, maiden name was Fraser.

So my great-great-grandparents were James Henderson

and Jessie Henderson, but her maiden name was Fraser?

That's absolutely right. Yeah.

Now Annie has the names of her great-great-grandparents,

she should be able to discover more about them.

We now hopefully look on the census records to find them

as a family living in Aberdeen.

So if you look for the 1871 Census,

we'll include Jessie's name

and just zoom in and we'll go through in a bit more detail.

-James Henderson.

-That's right.

He's the head of the family.

And there's Jessie, there's Jessie, his wife, yeah, yeah.

And she's 24. Ah, what's this bit here?

So this is showing us where they were born.

Where they were born.

So this line here is for James. So we've got him being born in...

Aberdeenshire. And she was born in Banff, in Banffshire, OK.

Do you know Banff at all?

Um, ish. I know it's kind of north somewhere.

It certainly is north.

-She's a country lass.

-Indeed.

Is there any way we can find out a little bit more about her?

Well, we can try and find out more about her background.

That might give us some indication as to...

Why she came to Aberdeen, right, right.

..maybe why she moved, yeah.

And we can have a look on the 1851 Census.

Jessie Fraser, but as a little girl, this time.

And we're looking specifically at Banff

because we know that that's where she's from.

And unfortunately, no matches.

Oh.

So, Jessie being a bit of a pet name,

it's possible that she had a different birth name,

and that's why we're not finding her.

So, what is the original name from Jessie? What...

The most common name would be Janet.

Janet? Oh, OK. Let's try it.

So we'll give that a whirl.

This is real detective work. OK.

Fingers crossed this time.

Ah! So it's 1851, Janet Fraser, three years old.

Have a detailed look at it.

There she is.

We have Janet, which is Jessie,

and the rest of her family are all...

All there, yeah. We've got Mary Fraser, Jessie's mother.

Oh, Mary's the head of the family, so there's no... where's the father?

He's not here, says she's a widow, formerly horse shoer's wife.

So her husband would have been a blacksmith.

So he must have died and left her taking care of all these children?

Absolutely.

Right. OK.

And it's showing that Mary's a pauper.

Pauper.

That's it.

You never see that word these days.

And it basically means, I guess, she was just completely impoverished.

Reliant on help.

Reliant on help. Hm.

She's got five mouths to feed,

including my great-great-grandmother, Jessie.

So in 1851 Annie's great-great-grandmother,

Jessie Fraser, then aged three, was living with her mother Mary

and four brothers and sisters.

Mary's husband had died, leaving her a widow, and a pauper.

To try to find out more about Jessie and Mary,

Annie is leaving Aberdeen

and travelling to the coastal town of Banff where the family lived.

Jessie was only three years old in the census.

Her mother, Mary, my great-great-great-grandmother

was looking after five children - Jessie was the youngest one -

and marked as a pauper.

I mean, how she survived at that point with her five children!

And I think just what is so impactful is that I read in the census

this word 'pauper', and that's not a word that anybody uses any more.

It's not used even when I go to developing countries,

nobody says we're going to meet some paupers.

So what does it mean if you're a pauper?

How poor do you have to be in order to get that label?

Annie has come to St Andrews Episcopal Church in Banff

to meet archivist Ruaraidh Wishart.

We've been looking into the background

of my great-great-grandmother, Jessie Fraser.

And we had a look at the census from 1851.

The first thing that really struck me was that her mother,

Mary Fraser, was described as a pauper.

Aye, well the term 'pauper' means that she was in receipt

of Poor Relief which was really the Victorian benefit system.

It's an early form of Welfare State type of thing?

Yeah, uh-huh.

Victorian Poor Relief was based on the idea

of the deserving and undeserving poor.

It was set at the bare minimum so as not to encourage idleness.

At the time, Poor Relief in Scotland was administered by local boards

known as Parochial Boards.

To qualify, a person had to be unable to work.

It wasn't enough just to be unemployed.

Mary Fraser was unable to work

because she had five young children to look after, and her husband,

a blacksmith, had died, leaving her with no means of support.

I would very much like to know when this blacksmith died.

Well, the burial register has actually survived.

-This is the original...?

-This is the original.

..book? Looks like an ordinary exercise book.

-Jotter.

-Yeah, jotter.

Mm-hmm. If you have a look here...

"Charles Fraser, Blacksmith, died here on the 25th January,

"aged 38, of consumption."

Consumption is really tuberculosis?

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

So the date here is 1851.

That's the same year as the Census was taken.

Yeah, that's right.

So he died just a couple of months before they took the Census, OK.

Yeah. You know, it really gives you an idea of emotional state that Mary

and the children would have been in, you know, at the time of the Census.

Right. Because it was a recent bereavement.

Mm-hmm. You know, conditions were tough for the family,

and I'm afraid they actually got tougher.

This is the old Parish registers, it's a Register of Burials.

Oh, no.

Um, and it's burials in 1853.

Oh, gosh.

Mary Fraser, Banff.

Oh, dear me. She died as well?

-She did.

-She did.

Oh, how sad.

That means that Jessie, at the age of five,

has lost her mother and father?

Yeah, the whole family, yeah, are left, you know,

without anyone to take care of them.

To fend for themselves. That's right.

Wow.

What would have happened to the children?

Well at this point the Parochial Board would have stepped in.

Their main concern was to try and keep the children

out of the Poor House,

because it was more expensive to keep them in the Poor House,

so they would have boarded them out with a family.

Is there any way that we can follow that through? Do we know..?

We can. We've got the Parochial Board Minutes for Banff.

There is another entry about Jessie or Janet Fraser in 1858.

How old was she then, then?

She would have been ten.

Ten. OK.

-Janet Fraser.

-Yeah.

That's Jessie.

"There was read letters from Mrs Cruickshank of Turriff."

Turriff is only just a few miles away from here?

Yes, it's about ten, 15 miles away.

"In reference to Janet Fraser,

"whereupon the meeting direct the Inspector to write Mrs Cruickshank

"to send back Janet Fraser when she has no further use for her."

So, what does that mean?

Sounds like she's been staying with someone called Mrs Cruickshank.

Mm-hmm. So, in effect, the Board has sent Jessie to, you know,

to Mrs Cruickshank in Turriff.

But as to who Mrs Cruickshank is, you know, we really don't know.

It sounds like she's working for her.

Yes, she's working, but she's only ten.

Mm-hmm.

OK. So by the age of five she was orphaned,

and then between the age of five and ten,

Mrs Cruickshank has come in somewhere.

Mm-hmm.

Jessie must have been on her own,

sent to Mrs Cruickshank a few miles away from where she was brought up.

I'm just imagining she was just quite, um, isolated.

-Wasn't really much of a childhood for her.

-No.

I mean, the phrase "no further use for her", I think,

depersonalises it.

It's on the verge of sounding exploitative, it kind of is.

If an adult has no more use for a child, it definitely means that

she's been in some kind of working relationship, whatever that was.

I just imagine her as a sort of scullery maid or something,

this little, tiny thing.

I mean, it's a very, very curious entry. I mean, you know,

other entries in this volume don't leave you with so many questions.

Whereas this one really, really does.

There's no further reference to Janet,

there's no mention of Mrs Cruickshank again.

And who was Mrs Cruickshank, anyway?

I think I'd like to go and remonstrate with her.

Jessie started out with her mother and father and brothers

and sisters as a little girl.

Although they were poor, her father had a trade, he was a blacksmith.

Her father died, and so did her mother.

It's horrific for any child that loses one parent, let alone two.

And all of a sudden, you're going into the hands

and control of adults that sound like very tough Victorians.

I'd like to know about this woman Cruickshank, who sounds really mean.

Annie has come to the neighbouring parish of MacDuff

to meet Professor Marjory Harper.

Hello, Marjory.

Marjory has evidence that may throw light on the orphan Jessie's fate.

The trail begins a generation back with Jessie's mother, Mary,

and the circumstances of her birth.

The first clue lies in the record of Mary's baptism,

which took place in this church in 1821.

So, here's the Baptismal Record for Mary.

There she is. Mary, ND. And what does ND mean?

Well, ND means natural daughter.

It means that she was born illegitimately.

Ah. Natural daughter. So, ah...

To James Rose, writer.

That means solicitor.

Oh!

OK. So, Mary's father was actually a solicitor.

Probably practising in Banff.

Well, he's an established man, he's certainly not a pauper.

And Mary's mother, her name is Ann Stewart.

I wonder what her background would have been.

Well, we do know a little bit about Ann Stewart's background,

and it was a rather different background from James Rose's.

It seems likely her father was a crofter.

Yes. Well, I mean, if Ann was the daughter of a crofter

then she was very much lower class.

Yes. We simply don't know how they met.

Do we happen to know anything more about James Rose?

Yes, we do. We do know, for example that he did not marry Ann Stewart.

He, in fact, married somebody else.

Right.

And what we have in the next document

is his Marriage Certificate.

-OK. So...

-Here we are.

"Mr James Rose and Miss Isabella Faulder."

"December 15th 1821."

So...

If we go back to the original...

illegitimate daughter, Mary... Oh, she was just a few months old.

-Yes.

-Yeah.

-When he married somebody else.

-Yes, OK.

So I guess no contact with the father?

We might speculate that at the time Mary was born

that James was already betrothed, engaged to Miss Isabella Faulder.

We don't know what Miss Isabella Faulder would have made of these matters.

Solicitor James Rose had a relationship with Ann Stewart,

which resulted in the birth of Mary.

Shortly after, he married Miss Isabella Faulder.

Mary grew up in Banff and had five children including Jessie.

When the Census was taken in 1851, Mary's husband had just died.

She was recorded as a pauper.

Marjory is taking Annie to show her where Mary and her children lived.

We know from the 1851 Census that the family was living

in Carmelite Close which would have been a close off Carmelite Street.

This is the only close that's left, and so we'll go in here

-and look at what it might have been like.

-Right, OK.

As you can see, it's quite a confined little area.

Oh wow, look at this!

So this is where Mary and the children lived.

You could just imagine kids barefoot, lots of them,

women in shawls and heads, you know,

sort of, head scarves and overcrowding.

It's very unlikely that they would have had a whole house.

They would have had a room or a couple of rooms,

and often rooms were sub-divided,

so you had families living in extremely close proximity.

Certainly there would have been very little light in these closes,

and within the houses, very, very dark.

So this Census was taken on the night of the 30th March 1851,

and this is where Mary was a widow and a pauper?

Yes.

And Jessie was just like three,

a little tiny three-year-old little thingy thing, bairny.

And then on the very same night that the Census was taken here

and recorded Mary with her five children,

the Census also recorded James Rose, Mary's father,

living in Banff with his very different family

and living just really round the corner.

That's ridiculous.

Round the corner. That's incredible.

-Are we going to go and see it?

-We are indeed.

So here we are coming round just off Carmelite Street onto High Shore,

and as you see from the Census,

we have 6 High Shore and the Rose family living here.

-So we're on the right street.

-OK.

-So just really round the corner.

-Right.

From Mary and her family.

This is where James Rose would have had his house probably,

-where this car park is.

-Right.

It would have had a good view out to sea.

And here we have the Census entry that shows who actually

lived in the house at 6 High Shore.

So you see James and his wife Isabella.

Three daughters?

Yes.

Jean, Georgina and Jemima Rose.

And we find that also living in the house, they have two servants.

So James and his wife were living in very different circumstances.

They have two servants.

They have two servants,

whereas Mary has five children and she's living as a pauper.

Yes.

-It's quite strange, isn't it?

-Bizarre.

-Really juxtaposed with each other.

-It's unbelievable.

His daughter and grandchildren lived absolutely just a few yards away

round the corner in a complete, sort of, probably like a hovel,

and you wonder nowadays at how could that possibly be.

You know, James Rose passing his daughter

and his grandchildren in the street, you wonder,

did he acknowledge her, did he acknowledge the children?

-Probably not, because she has been registered as a pauper.

-That's right.

You know, he could have possibly been such a wealthy man,

ensured that his daughter maybe had a job

or maybe even worked for him or whatever.

But there's just that big divide,

it's just that denial of existence, clearly.

And there's a final twist to the story...

Ah! Well, I am curious.

..puts another piece into that jigsaw.

These are baptismal certificates,

and the first is for James Rose, born in...

June 10th, 1794.

And then we move on two years

to another baptismal entry, same parents.

So here we have February 1796.

And a daughter.

Ann Rose.

So we've had two baptismal certificates,

we've had James Rose and his sister.

And then we move on to the 19th century and to 1829

to a marriage register,

and we find Ann Rose's marriage to John Cruickshank.

Marriage in the Parish of Turriff.

OK. OK. So wait a second here. I'm making a connection.

Ann Rose is James Rose's sister.

That's right.

She marries a man called Cruickshank, so she becomes Mrs Cruickshank.

Mrs Cruickshank must be the woman that we heard about earlier

who was taking care of Jessie

but she had no longer any use for her.

So that means that Mrs Cruickshank was Jessie's great aunt?

That's it.

Hmm.

The dots are finally joined.

So there's our Mrs Cruickshank.

So James Rose had a sister Ann, who became Mrs Cruickshank.

It seems this is who Jessie Fraser was sent to live with at some point

between the ages of five and ten.

So, obviously, James Rose decided that Jessie

should be taken in by his sister.

I think James Rose is the real enigma in the whole story.

He didn't act when Mary, his daughter, was widowed.

So why did he then act subsequently?

It could be that the initiative came from his sister, Ann, who needed...

Yeah, she could have...

..some sort of help. Had use for Jessie.

That's right. Oh, well, I need to have a servant.

Ah, I know of an orphaned child, you know, his grandchild.

James Rose must have had a hand in all of that.

But the feeling is, not that he's doing it out of love

or compassion, the feeling is that there's a child there

that could be of benefit to Mrs Cruickshank, because she says

very clearly in the Parochial records that Jessie is of no further use.

Jessie was seen very much as commodity, it would seem.

A commodity, yes. There's no love there.

-Mrs Cruickshank kicked her out, basically.

-Yes.

So, I mean, if she had really cared for her, a child of ten,

there's no way she would have kicked her out.

It's, um, whoo!

People living cheek by jowl. What is known, what is not known.

Yeah. In the middle of a very close, closed society.

The whole thing is very dark.

It's, it's a very Victorian melodrama to me.

This is, oh, what a complex web we weave.

Tells you that it's acceptable for a man of a certain class

to sire children out of wedlock,

have his own life with his servants and with his own family,

but the others are almost like mongrels, and it's fine.

You don't have to have too much responsibility for them.

And this little girl, Jessie, at no point do you feel that there's

anyone really loving her, taking care of her at all.

It's just rough.

Now Annie wants to find out

if she can pick up the thread of Jessie's life from the age of ten.

I would like to find out what happened to Jessie

after Mrs Cruickshank had no further use of her.

So we're going to look into the next Census that was taken.

That would have been in 1861.

If we find her, she should be 13 years old.

So her first name is Janet, going to look for Banff,

because she was going to be sent back to Banff by Mrs Cruickshank.

No matches. OK.

Little bit frustrating.

What I think I might do is look for her in the town

that I know she went to ultimately, which is Aberdeen.

Do the search.

No matches.

Well, maybe Janet starts to become Jessie by now.

So I think I'm going to try that.

Um...

Oh, two matches.

OK, so here's Jessie Fraser, she's come from Banff, 13, yes!

That's definitely her.

It looks like Jessie is a boarder in a household,

on her own at 13 years old.

Jessie... oh, God!

Jessie Fraser, I can't read this, this writing.

Is it Flax? Flax.

Flax mill worker.

The flax mill actually, that I know of,

was right across the street where I was brought up.

Broadford, yeah. She must have worked in there.

Wow!

It's round the corner from where we lived, ironically, bizarrely.

That's quite...

quite amazing, actually.

So my great-great-grandmother, Jessie Fraser,

she was sent out from Mrs Cruickshank's at the age of ten

and then this little girl,

she's ended up three years later in Aberdeen,

on her own, in this hardcore work in a factory.

It's like a pillar-to-post existence.

She's had a rotten life.

Really terrible.

Gosh.

Oh.

Following in the footsteps of her great-great-grandmother Jessie,

Annie has come back to Aberdeen.

For Jessie, the city must have been overwhelming.

I mean, it's a big, dark, dangerous place. She's only little.

Annie's on her way to Broadford Mill

in the neighbourhood where she grew up.

I remember these walls when I was a little girl

because I lived here since I was a baby

until I was about eight years old and I used to play with balls,

you know, up against the wall, and it was very imposing.

If I had known that my great-great-grandmother

as a teenager was working there, in the Victorian times,

it's almost like fiction.

Annie is being met by Dr Alistair Durie.

-Hi, Alistair.

-Hello, Annie.

Good to meet you.

Welcome to Broadford Works.

This is where Jessie would have come.

Every day, six days a week, a hundred and what, 50 odd years ago.

That's right.

I'm afraid you're going to need a hat...

OK.

..before we go in, and we'll unlock the gates. Come away in.

Girls did start in a mill like this at the age of nine.

She was what, perhaps ten?

Think she was about...

Well, we know that she was working here when she was 13.

At 13, she would have been full-time here,

ten hours a day, six days a week.

Flax mills like Broadford were engaged in making linen thread

and linen products from the plant flax.

Linen was stronger and more durable than its competitor cotton,

and Broadford specialised in the manufacturer of linen canvas goods,

like hosepipes and tarpaulin.

In the early 1860s when Jessie arrived here, business was booming.

She was a country girl. She came in from either Banff or Turriff.

What would have the contrast been like?

For a girl like her, coming into a mill would be a bit of a shock.

Although it's deserted now,

in its day this would have been a hive of noise and industry and dust.

After all, the machinery is running full-time,

the temperature goes up and down, the noise of the machines,

but I suspect most people adjusted, and she will have done so.

Broadford was one of the biggest textile mills in Scotland,

employing more than 2,000 hands, most of them women and young girls.

With long hours, six-day weeks and meagre pay, it was a gruelling life.

This is where Jessie would have spent her working day,

and she spent it in company with 60 to 100, maybe more girls,

most of them teenage, 13 to 18, some younger,

operating the spinning machines.

The thing is, of course, when they got to 18, they were on full wages.

What often happened was that milliners,

should the girl decide to get married, used that as an opportunity

to dismiss them and then engage a younger girl who'd be cheaper.

Well, we know she did get married actually, obviously,

because my great-grandfather is her son.

Alistair has documents that will

help Annie piece together Jessie's later life.

Here's the Census for 1871.

Ah. This is the Census that I saw earlier on

when I was in the Aberdeen Library.

Jessie is now 24, she's married to James Henderson

and they have a son of four years old whose name is Charles.

That is my great-grandfather, my grandmother's father.

You'll notice she's described merely as a wife.

-Wife.

-So she's obviously given up work. She's settled.

She's part of a family. Her family.

So it's a little bit brighter, hopefully.

It is, indeed. 1881 is the next Census.

Ah, fabulous.

And the family has grown.

Oh, the family has grown, hasn't it?

One, two, three. She's got four sons. Charles is 14 here.

I'm afraid four years later, 1885...

..this is not Census, but this is a death certificate.

-Oh, no.

-Jessie's death certificate.

Ah! So there's Jessie Henderson.

-Yeah.

-Oh, dear me.

Death, 22nd November. Now, let me see if it says cause of death.

Carcinoma. Would that be...

-Ulcerous.

-Ulcerous Carcinoma.

And she was 35. She was just 35. Ah.

Oh, how sad.

Now I have some sense of Jessie. And who she was.

It's a life of tremendous hardship, and very few opportunities.

I'd like to think that her husband was kind to her.

And I'd like to think that they had some kind of a better life.

But it is pretty overshadowed with tragedy, really.

When I first looked at this photograph,

it was just this picture of a man,

but now as I look at him, knowing that he's Jessie's son,

and I know her story,

there's a whole different sort of connection as I look at him

and it's almost as if I'm feeling like they know I know.

Maybe, you know, there's a trace of his mother Jessie in his face.

It's quite a dramatic story.

It would have been lovely if my grandmother would be around

to have that knowledge, but you know,

we'll take it forward which is just really beautiful.

It hasn't been lost, and that's really a lovely thing.

Now Annie wants to turn her attention

to her mother's side of the family,

to her maternal grandparents William and Dora Ferguson.

'My grandmother and grandfather, the Ferguson side,

'were country people, and my grandfather worked as a gamekeeper

on various estates,

and they actually met each other in Balmoral in the Royal Estate there,

where my grandmother was originally a dairy maid.

My grandfather died when I was about nine years old,

but he left a distinctive impression on me.

I have quite an attachment to him, I always have, since I was kid,

and anything I can find out about him would be really nice.

There's a family story that my grandfather was probably illegitimate

but that's all we know about it.

There's no further information.

There are a few questions that would be interesting

to piece together the answers, if there are any answers.

To start her search,

Annie has come to her cousin Shirley's house to meet up

with her mother's brother, her Uncle Alistair and his wife Biddy.

Hey!

Good to meet you. Come away in.

Here's a photograph there that they had taken at Balmoral.

Grandma?

- Yes.

And do you think that's at Balmoral?

That's at Balmoral.

-While she was working there?

-Yes.

I haven't seen this picture. My goodness.

Now, that is granddad.

He's a young gamekeeper there, granddad, isn't he?

Very dapper again.

Yes, indeed. Smartly turned out as usual.

-Yes. So they met in Balmoral.

-Aye.

Maybe mum, you could tell Ann the story about the ghillies'

ball at Balmoral, about granddad.

-Have you heard the story about it?

-No.

No. Well, you maybe know that granddad was a very good dancer,

he could do the Quadrilles and the Lancers and oh, just fantastic.

Anyway, he was such a good dancer that the night of the workers' ball

he was asked to dance with the Queen.

Well, the Queen Mother.

You mean our current Queen's mother?

Mother, yes.

Oh.

And grandma, she wasn't invited, but I don't know

if she was allowed to watch or maybe she just sneaked a peep,

but anyway, she saw granddad from the balcony dancing with the Queen.

I think it was a waltz, and he was...

Not a tango!

Not a tango. Nor a... What's this latest..?

Zumba.

Zumba. That's the word I was trying to find.

Isn't that funny.

And she watched her fiance.

Was he a bit miffed?

Ah, a wee bit.

Do you know how long granddad was at Balmoral?

How long he worked there for?

-No.

-No.

Well, maybe you could find that one out.

It would be quite interesting to know.

Yes.

We've got one more picture of granddad, and I love this one.

I just think this is the sweetest.

I love that, I know.

-And again, he's so well turned out there.

-I know.

-He's so sweet.

I've always had this funny question about granddad,

because I was never really sure if he was born illegitimately.

Was he? Is that the case?

No. Definitely not.

Definitely not.

So that means we can find out more about him, then.

-Aye.

-Oh, fantastic.

I was a bit confused when they said that my grandfather

wasn't illegitimate, because I'm sure that that little family rumour

had been going around for quite a few years.

But apparently not, which is actually really good

because I kind of like the idea that, you know, that there

was some kind of solidity in his background.

So now I'm going to Balmoral Castle,

and that's an extraordinary thing to be doing.

It would be very interesting to know when my grandfather went into service

and my grandmother too, specifically what they did.

Wow!

Oh, my God, this scenery is to die for.

It's truly amazing.

Wow!

The Balmoral Estate was purchased for Queen Victoria

by Prince Albert in 1852,

after she fell in love with the Scottish Highlands.

From the early days, ghillies and gamekeepers played a crucial role

in the Royal pastimes of hunting and fishing.

Annie's grandfather William Ferguson worked on the estate

in the early 1900s when King George V was on the throne.

Annie has an appointment with Royal expert Charles Mosley.

So here we are in the great outdoors, where your grandfather

would have roamed, up on the hills there...

That's right.

..where the snow's still lying even in late April.

He'd have been helping the gentry and the Royals to stalk dear,

and he'd have driven grouse and he may have acted as a loader.

Does that mean that he loaded guns?

He was stuffing cartridges into a double-barrelled shotgun

to hand to the game bird shooter, let us call him George V,

who was known for bringing down four or five birds

before they'd hit the ground, he was so good,

and that was an important part of being a ghillie.

So it's all about hunting, shooting and fishing?

Real countryman skills.

Mmm. He was very strongly connected with the land.

Well, being a ghillie, you were helping manage nature, really,

keeping it in harmony.

In some ways I think they had a really excellent life,

you know, my grandparents.

I think if you lived in this part of the world,

with this beautiful scenery,

it was a very good place to identify with,

and you dined off salmon much more frequently

than the poor wretches in the south did.

I mean, the first time I ever ate salmon was actually a fish

that my grandfather had caught out of the River Spey.

My grandmother grilled it for me under the grill with a little

bit of butter, and it was the most extraordinary flavour,

and I've never forgotten that.

I don't think anything has ever matched it since, you know.

-Fresh caught salmon.

-Yes.

Yes, delicious. There's nothing like it.

Gamekeepers like William Ferguson

spent most of their time out on the estate,

but they were invited into the castle itself for the staff balls.

This is the room where the ghillies' ball is held.

Let's go over and have a look.

It's very splendid.

According to family history,

my grandfather danced in this ballroom, and one particular

occasion, apparently he was a very good dancer,

so he was invited to dance with our current Queen's mother.

And my auntie told me that my grandmother wasn't invited

to this ball, you see, but she was kind of sneaking a peek.

But now that we've come in here, I have noticed that there's

a balcony and thinking there's no other place that she could

have sneaked a peek from, so do you think it might have been there?

I think so, it's a very good vantage point,

and if she kept her head down, as I'm sure a ghillie's girlfriend

would have done, would have learned how to do, then she would have

been able to keep out of sight while she watched her quarry.

So I'm curious to know a little bit more about the specific dates

when my grandparents were here, and you're,

you're holding in your hands some very authentic-looking records.

They come from the Royal Archives in Windsor,

and that's your grandfather's employment record.

William Ferguson, born in 1896, taken on in 1913,

so he was 16 at the time.

-And here's my grandma's record!

-That's your grandmother.

Oh, my goodness! Paton, Dora Jean. The Dairy.

So the date of commencement of service was the 22nd January, 1924.

She was here until she left to get married, which is in 1929,

so she was probably on the premises, milking and churning her butter,

and catching the eye of William Ferguson for four years.

Right.

So whatever courtship it was, was probably not a lightning one.

Whatever his twinkling toes may have done on the dance floor,

he was a more steady wooer, let's put it that way.

Yes, yes.

Well, he was a modest person, you know, I don't imagine him...

Great dancers often are. Great dancers often are.

Now Annie wants to look into her grandfather's family background.

I know nothing about my grandfather's parents.

There was a question mark around this thing about illegitimacy,

that had been touched on but I just don't know.

This is his record of employment at Balmoral,

and it marks his birthday,

so now I'm going to try and find my grandfather's birth record.

And the district is Braemar, because it's local to here,

and let's find out what happens.

So we've found one match, which is very hopeful.

Ah, William Ferguson.

All right.

Now, his father's George Ferguson and his mother is Sophia Ferguson.

It's so exciting.

So the parents were married in 1895 on May 24th.

But wait a minute.

My grandfather was born in 1895, in August,

which means that Sophia was six months pregnant

when they got married.

Ah, OK.

Perhaps the fact that my great-grandma was expecting a baby

was probably fairly notable,

and so this thing about illegitimacy, I mean, if she hadn't got married,

my grandfather would have been born illegitimately a few months later.

It might be where the rumour came from.

But I have a feeling there's something else.

I'd like to check out George Ferguson, my grandfather's father.

Oh, gosh, look at this.

My great-grandfather George Ferguson's parents were

William Ferguson and Isabella McHardy.

"William Ferguson and Isabella McHardy had 'something' child

"born on the..." Oh, gosh.

"On the 23rd of February, 1852 years. Name, George."

What does that...? Illegitimate child.

That's what it says. Illegitimate. Is that what it says?

Illegitimate child? It is.

So that's my grandfather's father, was illegitimate.

Ah, OK. Phew.

They've skipped. Not that it... it doesn't matter,

but this thing about finding something illegitimate.

And it's interesting that they've written the world

'illegitimate' in the records, because I've never seen that before.

Fascinating.

So it wasn't Annie's grandfather William Ferguson,

the Royal gamekeeper who was illegitimate,

it was his father, George,

born in 1852 to William Ferguson and Isabella McHardy.

Annie's heading to the town of Braemar where George was born,

to see if she can discover anything further about him and his parents.

If you'd like to just take a seat.

Archivist Pete Wadley has been doing some research for her.

You were interested in the history of George Ferguson

who's your great-grandfather.

So let's start right at the beginning with his birth.

What we have here are the records of the Kirk Session of Braemar.

What's a Kirk Session?

It's a meeting of a body who act like a court

and it's made up of the elders of the church

and they meet to discuss things that are going on in the local society.

If you take a look here,

we have Isabella McHardy appearing before the session.

Isabella, George's mother?

George's mother, it's your great-great-grandmother.

She has been brought before the Kirk Session

to be admonished for the sin of having a child out of wedlock.

Oh!

At this time the Kirk was not just a place of worship,

it also had the power to actively police

the moral behaviour of the community.

The elders who made up Kirk Sessions were leading members of the Parish.

Part of their remit was to investigate sexual transgressions,

including illegitimate births.

Proceedings began when the elders issued a summons to the mother,

in this case, Isabella McHardy, to force her to appear before them.

She would sit here, at the front of the church,

the Kirk Session would have gathered round a table,

a minister would rise and would say,

"You are accused as an unmarried woman of bringing forth a child."

Well, now, she would know these people, they're prominent members

of her society, it's a small area, they would know her,

and there is an embarrassment or a stigma or a shame

to having to appear and apologise for her behaviour.

And they'd be censured and have...

Oh, it's terrifying.

-It's not a pleasant thing.

-No.

But the Church is responsible for the moral welfare of society

-and this is the way they deal with it at the time.

-Right.

So, "On being interrogated, she declared that the father

"was William Ferguson, farm servant in the Parish of Kettins."

OK. What the story is here, is that Isabella, who's from Braemar,

had left Braemar and gone to this other Parish, Kettins.

She had a job for two years as a domestic servant, and that's

where she met William Ferguson and she's come home to have the baby.

The Kirk Session didn't just summon

the mothers of the illegitimate children, they also pursued the

fathers, to rebuke them and to seek financial support for the child.

But in this case there is no record that the Kirk managed to

track down William Ferguson.

So now that makes me really interested in Isabella,

because here's a single mother with a child.

Do we have any knowledge about Isabella?

-We know quite a lot about Isabella.

-Ah!

We're very fortunate in that, in that way.

Isabella's quite interesting.

She's back here again, in front of the Kirk Session.

Oh, no.

Eight years later.

Oh, what's happened this time?

This is the 1860, it's the same people.

Oh, the same people!

And here, appearing before the meeting, voluntarily.

OK, so...

"Isabella McHardy confessing herself guilty of a relapse in fornication...

"..being solemnly admonished to adhere strictly to truth she declared

"that Thomas Russell, watchmaker, is the father of her pregnancy."

-She has another pregnancy?

-She does. Eight years later.

-Right.

-With another man.

In this case, Thomas Russell.

And he's a watchmaker.

"That guilt took place betwixt them

"in her mother's house at Tomintoul in this Parish."

"That guilt took place betwixt them only once."

God, they're into the detail!

Absolutely.

"He had promised to marry her before guilt took place betwixt them."

It's equivalent of being engaged, if you like.

He had said he was going to marry her, and then guilt takes place.

Right.

"Being asked if she had any writing from him

"of a promise of marriage, declared she had not,

"but that he told her uncle, George McHardy and his wife.

"Being solemnly admonished, she was dismissed for the present."

She's pregnant by this man Russell now, but unlike Ferguson,

what she's saying here is that he's promised to marry her.

And not only has he done that, he's let it be known,

and they list some people, other members of your family,

George McHardy, that he's going to marry her and then he doesn't.

What's quite interesting about this one,

is that she appeared, voluntarily.

Everybody would have known that she's pregnant again and she,

I think she wanted it formally recorded that this isn't her fault,

she had promises that were broken.

It's Russell's fault.

Right. She met somebody, she'd had this tryst with him,

he told everybody they're going to get married, so she's thinking,

"Oh, great, I've got a future. I've got a father for my other child."

-She must have been very pleased with this promise of marriage.

-Yeah.

But the marriage never took place.

It never took place.

This is Isabella's second child, Jane McHardy.

Oh, it's a girl.

-And she's listed as...

-Illegitimate.

What's really interesting is this bit here.

-It's a cross, in between...

-That's her mark.

Oh, it says here, her mark.

Her mark. She can't write.

Ah.

So when the Kirk Session said

"Do you have something in writing from Thomas Russell?",

what good would it have been to her? She can't read it.

-Yes. So she's had two children and both times...

-She's been let down.

-She's been abandoned, as it were.

-She has.

Isabella McHardy had two children, both illegitimate,

and no husband to help her support either of them.

We know that Isabella came back to this Kirk Session,

to these same people, for a third time.

Don't worry, there's not a third child.

In this case, she comes back to ask for financial help,

but she's not asking for financial help for herself,

she comes back to ask if they will pay for George's education.

Oh, OK.

Now, that's quite interesting. She's illiterate herself

-and she clearly doesn't want her son to have that difficulty.

-Yes.

So she comes back to the church,

despite the fact she's been admonished twice by these people.

She swallows her pride and she comes back and says,

"Can you help educate my son?" And they do.

Wow.

George Ferguson, for school fees.

I think it must be seven shillings and sixpence.

-That's correct.

-So he's at school.

And we know that Isabella made sure that her daughter

also has an education.

Incredible.

Education is a passport, in a way, to a better future.

I believe Isabella gets how important that is.

Because she hasn't had it herself.

No.

So do we know what happens to her next?

We know she never applies for Poor Fund.

The Poor Fund records exist for Braemar,

her name never appears on it.

She's always managed to get just enough to keep going

and to see her children educated and perhaps point them for,

to a different, if not better life.

Tomintoul seems to come up quite a bit here in the records.

It does, yeah. What it's referring to is a farm called Tomintoul...

Oh, I see.

..which is in Braemar,

and it's a vital place in, in this story.

And we're coming up to Tomintoul, and to remind you, this is

where your great-great-grandmother Isabella, was born.

It's where she retreated to when she fell pregnant

with your great-grandfather, George.

It's where that 'guilt' took place with Russell

and where her second child was born.

And it's where she lived a great deal of her life.

And I think this is the original stone,

and a spectacular view over Braemar.

It's unbelievable. So they're looking directly over Braemar.

Yes, indeed. You can see the church.

Pete, do we have any information about what happened to Isabella

later on in life?

Yes, we do. If you look here, this is the 1881 Census, here she is.

Isabella McHardy.

She seems to be on her own.

-Yes.

-Living here.

She's 51 and she's a poultry keeper.

Poultry keeper.

The 1891 Census...

62 years old.

Yes, indeed. She's still a poultry maid living on her own.

So that's 1891.

We go to the next Census, 1901. She's now in her 70s.

1901. And I've just stopped to think that this Census goes up to 1901.

Yes.

And my grandfather was born in 1896, perhaps.

-He must have met his grandmother.

-Yeah.

Maybe my grandfather came to this cottage to visit her, you know.

And he was such a sweet-looking young boy, and terribly nicely

turned out, so I would imagine she would have been proud of him.

And there she is living alone, this little old lady, and...

Poultry maid.

She's still working in her 70s.

Still hanging on in there.

-And finally, here's the 1911 Census. She's now in her 80s.

-Yeah.

Isabella McHardy, living alone.

She's aged 81 and she's a pensioner.

Wow, I didn't know that they had the Old Age Pension back in the day.

That's right, they do.

The Old Age Pension comes in in Scotland in 1908.

She's lived right into the modern era.

It means she can stop being a poultry maid.

She died in 1913. So she died when she was 83.

The cause of death is given as senile dementia,

but really what we're talking about is old age.

She's lived in this harsh environment for 83 years,

and her death is reported by her son, your great-grandfather, George.

It's quite a testimony to survival, isn't it, really?

Tough cookie.

Mmm.

It's a hard life, underscored by poverty, Isabella's life.

And what is strong about her is that as a single person

she brought up her children.

And then you see her life scored by so many decades

of living alone up here in the hills.

It's funny, because I'm just thinking,

there's two kinds of poverty. Rural poverty and urban poverty.

And I'm wondering, you know, what is the better poverty?

And I'm thinking neither, actually.

Poverty is just ugly stuff, at the end of the day. It's really tough.

But that's one of the most interesting things about

Isabella McHardy, it's not what she did, it's what she did not do.

She didn't pack her bags when she was young and go to the city.

She stays right here.

She's born here, and while hundreds of other of her contemporaries

from Braemar and all parishes around here, will have packed up

and gone to the hill town of Dundee or the tenements of Glasgow.

She stays on the land.

And that's really quite interesting because that makes her

part of the story of this land.

-Mmm. The continuum.

-Absolutely.

-Yeah.

-Absolutely, and this really is home.

The lives that I've discovered on both sides of my family

will definitely resonate with me for ever,

there's no question about that.

You take this knowledge with you, it doesn't go away once you know it.

Now I have a sense of the Victorian times here in Scotland,

and they were incredibly tough, and it ceases to be a fiction for me

or an abstraction, it becomes far more clearly focused.

The other feeling that I have is a tremendous sense of gratitude

for anything that I have received from all the hard work

that my ancestors put in.

It's all about survival, you know,

and I wouldn't be here without them and without their struggle.

So there's a deep sort of sense of gratitude and a sense of,

you know, understanding better why I feel so passionately

about issues like poverty, really.

It's been an incredible journey for me.

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