Alex Kingston Who Do You Think You Are?

Actress Alex Kingston is best known for the formidable characters

she's played on British and American television.

I suppose the roles I play, ultimately, they're strong females.

They're not necessarily victims.

I think I come across as quite strong as a person,

but, actually, I'm quite vulnerable.

Alex lives in Los Angeles,

but when work brings her back to the UK,

she often stays with her sister Nicola in Surrey.

At the moment, I'm a single mum,

and I'm sort of living in America and here.

My daughter, certainly at the moment, is in America

and that's where she's living and what she knows.

And I very much feel because my life is so unstable,

finding out about our roots

makes me feel as though I'm keeping us held together.

I always felt that I DID know my family,

but because I know I'm doing this,

I realise that actually I don't.

I don't really know anything about any of them.

Today, I'm making my way to my parents' home.

And it's ironic, really,

that I'm seeking this

at a time when actually, personally,

erm, I feel rather adrift.

And it's really becoming quite important to me

that, at this moment in my life,

I sort of really know who my family are, where my roots are.

Alex and her two younger sisters were raised by their German mother, Margarethe,

and English father, Tony, in Surrey, where they still live today.

It's the English side of the family that Alex knows least about.

-Hello.

-Hi. Hello. How are you?

-I'm good. How are you?

-Fine.

-Oh, hello!

-How lovely to see you.

-Nice to see you.

-You brought sunshine, look!

-I know.

-It was raining, pouring with rain, this morning.

-Yeah.

-Come on in.

Ah, so I see you've got the... got the photos out already.

Yes.

This is you and Nicola.

And I think you were about 12 here.

-Yeah, if Nicola's about five.

-Yeah.

-Who do you think that is?

-That's not Daddy?

-Yeah!

-Wow!

That is me. That was me and my mother.

-Is that Mitty?

-Yeah, that's Mitty.

-Look at the hair!

-Gosh, that's incredible.

-Your hair is exactly like mine was when I was little.

-I know! That's it!

-You've got to thank your genes for me.

-Yes, yes! To you.

I do. I have to thank you for my curls.

One thing that I've had people, erm,

ask me, erm, in the past...

Because I suppose I don't have, erm,

a particularly, erm, English face...

I've been questioned and asked whether I am Jewish.

-Or sometimes people have assumed I'm Jewish.

-Really?

-Was Mitty Jewish?

-I don't know, but...

She never told me, particularly,

but I do remember a slight rumour going round.

But it never got any further than a rumour, so I don't have any absolute knowledge...

-No, no.

-..Of it at all.

Alex's paternal grandmother, known in the family as Mitty,

died in 2008.

Alex never had the chance to ask her about their possible Jewish roots.

But the family does have a few mementos of her father,

Alex's great-grandfather.

This nice picture here, that is my grandfather William.

And on his lap...

is my mother.

And he was killed...

in the First World War.

And so my grandmother didn't marry again.

And she came and lived with my father and mother.

-So you never met him?

-I never met him, no.

He was a photographer.

-He was a photographer?

-He was a photographer.

-Wow! I didn't know that.

-And, er...

-You might be interested in seeing...

-He had his own business, you know.

..Some of his photographs.

This is one.

-It's a self-portrait.

-That's a self-portrait.

Oh, my gosh!

-Good looking, wasn't he?

-Yeah.

This is another shot that he took of his, er, son...

Who's Bernard.

-Bern, Uncle Bern.

-Oh, wow!

-That's a lovely shot, isn't it?

And he had a photographic business, I believe.

The little toes are so cute.

-And the little toga.

-Yeah.

Very, very lovely.

This is, er, the record of, er, my grandfather

during the First World War.

And he was in the RE,

-which is the Royal Engineers.

-Hm-mm.

And rank - SPR.

That may be sapper.

Funny we never knew much about the Keevil side, did we?

No.

Erm, but I suppose your mother didn't talk much about it?

-No, they didn't, no.

-No.

I think my brother, Bernard, has some other facts about...

-Bernard.

-..About them, as well.

Alex wants to know more about her great-grandfather, William Keevil,

and how his wife, Nan, and their young family coped after his death in the First World War.

Hello!

Alex has come to see her Uncle Bernard in Kent.

-Welcome.

-Thank you.

-It's been too long.

-I know. Nice to see you.

Lovely to see you. Lovely to see you. Do come in. Do come in.

-Thank you.

-There you go.

I feel I must show you this very precious document,

which I've been guarding for a number of years now, and discovered by chance really.

Erm, it was found amongst Nan's possessions, in a drawer.

OK.

-That's the address.

-That's the address.

-32, Santos Road.

Wandsworth.

It starts here.

"Regret to inform you, officer commanding...

BOTH: "55th Field Ambulance, France.

-"Reports 11th August..."

-And that's...

That's his number, isn't it? "Keevil..."

-W... It's W H Keevil.

-"Keevil."

"Royal Engineers."

"..Engineers, died 7th August, gunshot wound.

"Left...thigh."

So you've got...

What year was that? Hang on, what year?

Well, that was 1917. So that was the notification to Nan

-that he died on the 7th August.

-Hm-mm.

This is a copy of the Certificate of Death.

-It just says he died of wounds.

-Yes.

Near Dickebusch, Belgium.

But what moved me... I always find it very moving, very moving.

Because...

She must have ripped that open, you know,

in, in a sort of terrible anguish.

When she received that, Bern was 16, Billy was 10,

and my mother was four.

So there she was, you know, a single mother,

erm, faced with this awful news.

BUT she put her head down in 32, Santos Road,

and started taking in lodgers to make ends meet.

Erm, supported by the war pension, war widow's pension, which wouldn't have been great.

I suppose I'm left wondering

in what capacity he joined the Great War.

Potentially, he might have taken photographs.

And so I want to now know more about William's career.

And also what made him choose photography.

Does the interest in the arts and certainly in a NEW form of art...

Erm, does that go even back further?

-Mm.

-So that would be really...

It would be a wonderful thing to find out.

Alex has come to Wandsworth, South London,

where William Keevil's family lived at 32, Santos Road

at the time they heard the news of his death.

She's on her way to the Battersea Library to investigate her great-grandfather's

pre-war career as a photographer.

Local history archivist Ruth MacLeod has been collecting records for William Keevil.

-Got some certificates for you.

-OK.

-So this is actually the earliest of the ones we've got.

-Right.

So this is 1875.

Gosh!

William was born on the 7th November.

So that's his name there. So it's William Henry.

-William Henry.

-And then his parents' names. Walter Keevil.

-Walter Keevil and Ellen Keevil.

-Ellen Keevil, formerly Law.

-Formerly Law.

-And then there's his father's occupation.

-Lawyer's clerk.

-So that's kind of lower middle class, really.

-Yeah, yeah.

So we've also had a look on the Census for 1891.

And we can have a look at what he was doing a few years later.

-So...

-William...

-William there is 15.

-And he's working as well.

-Cos that's his occupation.

-At 15, he's a lantern slide maker.

Yeah.

I just wonder what it was that made him so fascinated in images.

I was thinking that maybe the father or the mother might have...

might have been an artist or might have had some connection.

-A kind of following in somebody's footsteps.

-Yes.

Yes. Because on the whole, that's what one would do, I would imagine.

It's fascinating that he was a lawyer's clerk, but yet...

William's a lantern slide maker. That's fascinating.

The next thing I've got is actually the 1911 Census.

Have a look. So there he is.

And he's now described as being a magic lantern slide manufacturer.

Yeah. That's right.

And a little bit further over,

it tells you whether they're an employer or whether they're working.

-Yes.

-And that says "own account".

-Yes. So that means this is his own business?

-Yeah.

It's like being freelance I think, effectively.

The next thing I've got for you is a 1912 birth certificate.

And that's Mitty. That's my grandmother.

-And he's now described as a photographer.

-Yes.

So he's certainly worked through his training

and he's now an official photographer.

Thank you so much.

I'm so thrilled that I'm finding all of this out. It's wonderful.

So, erm, he definitely had a passion for photography.

And, erm, when he's 15-years-old, in 1891,

-he's already, what's referred to as a "lantern slide maker", so...

-Yeah.

-I would say that's probably photography.

-I would imagine so.

They just use a different term for it, but it's probably the same thing.

-It sounds like they're connected.

-Yes.

But you might want to talk to somebody who knows a bit more about photography and the history of it.

I really do want to find out a little bit more about William's career,

because he was working as a photographer

in one form or another for 20 years.

So I'd like to know a little bit about what that work would have encompassed.

Alex has come to the National Media Museum in Bradford.

She's here to meet photographic historian Michael Pritchard.

I am learning about my great-grandfather

and the Census records in 1891,

erm, place him, aged 15,

as a lantern slide maker.

And then in 1912, erm,

he's described as a photographer.

-That's a fairly natural progression because it's moving him up the career ladder, if you like.

-Right.

And he's ended up in a position where, effectively, he's in charge of his own business

or working for someone as a photographer.

He starts off at 15 or so as that lantern slide maker.

And I think that's interesting. Do you know what a lantern slide is?

I don't know what a lantern slide is and 15 to me seems rather young.

At that time people were leaving school at either 12 or 14, anyway.

-Right.

-So it would have been absolutely normal for him to be moving into a trade of some sort.

What he's doing is, basically, making a slide for projection

in the same way that, a few years ago, we'd have looked at 35mm slides on a screen,

or now we're looking at PowerPoint presentations.

But he was making the 1890s equivalent of that.

Magic Lanterns had been in use for 200 years before the invention of photography,

using candles and later oil lamps

to project drawn and painted images.

But once they could project images from real life,

magic lantern shows became even more popular.

It was at this time, in its heyday before the rise of cinema,

that William Keevil joined the industry.

This is a photographic slide and this would have been a normal picture taken through a camera.

And then the image would have been printed on to a piece of glass.

Local high street photographers, a bit like William ended up,

would go and photograph around their locality,

the local sort of religious groups, church groups, school groups.

Then hold a lantern show evening, where they'd project their slides

And, of course, they would charge a fee to come and see the show.

We're just on the cusp of cinema at this point,

so it's before moving pictures had really got seen by a mass audience,

and the magic lantern was the way of having that communication

-with a large group of people.

-Yeah.

So this is the lantern projecting and...

Gosh!

-This slide...

-That's Trafalgar Square.

-It is.

And it's Trafalgar Square, probably, what? Round about the turn of the century, I suspect.

This is exactly the type of slide that the local photographer would be producing,

or one of the big companies would commission a photographer to go out and shoot.

-So it is sort of journalistic, really, isn't it?

-Yes, it is. Very much so.

I was thinking,

this was such an unusual career choice for this young boy,

because his father was a solicitor's clerk.

So I imagine that...

he must have been absolutely passionate about photography

and this new, erm...

burgeoning, er, world

of cameras and, erm, slide shows.

He must have been really passionate for his father, I think,

probably to allow him even to enter into that world.

After 20 years working his way up the ranks,

fixing cameras, developing and printing pictures,

in 1912, William Keevil became a photographer in his own right,

earning a solid middle-class income in a thriving industry.

Despite the launch in 1900 of a popular amateur camera, the Kodak Box Brownie,

people still wanted portraits produced in a studio for display in their homes.

The studios provided painted backdrops,

elegant furnishings and props to produce opulent portraits -

a service that became even more popular at the outbreak of the First World War in 1914.

At that point, photographers become very much in demand

because all of those soldiers and young people going off to the First World War

wanted to leave something behind in case they didn't come back.

-Right.

-William, as a photographer at that point, would have started to have got very busy, I suspect.

Yeah. Yeah.

The next question that I just have for you is, erm,

he was part of the Royal Engineers,

so I wondered whether potentially his skill as a photographer

might have been, erm, used?

That's actually really interesting because the Royal Engineers is...

They have a very long history and association with photography,

right back to the 1850s, when they used photography for mapping and all sorts of things.

I know the outcome of William going to war.

Er, he was killed.

I'm still not 100% sure how he was killed

and also I question what the capacity was in which he went.

I can't imagine that he went as a young soldier on the front, because he wasn't that.

So I can only guess

that it was something to do with his photographic skills.

But in what capacity, I don't know.

Alex has come to the Headquarters of the Royal Engineers in Kent.

She's meeting military historian Peter Chasseaud.

One of the problems with First World War soldiers is that a lot of the records,

which ought to be in the National Archives,

were actually destroyed by enemy bombing in the Second World War, what we call the "Burnt Records".

Unfortunately, William Keevil's was one of those.

But there are other sources of information we can turn to,

in particular, the medal card here.

You've got a couple of numbers here.

The first one indicates that he actually joined up in February, 1915.

And the other number there, 550483,

tells us that he was in the 3rd London Field Company.

-And the rank, SPR, which is abbreviation for sapper.

-Yes.

So in the Royal Engineers, a private soldier, essentially, is called a sapper,

just as in the Royal Artillery, he's called a gunner.

The Corps of Royal Engineers was established in the 18th century

to provide basic engineering support to the infantry,

digging trenches and building bridges.

But the corps was also quick to embrace new technology,

adapting modern inventions, like the telephone and the camera, for military use.

So by the time William Keevil joined the Royal Engineers,

sappers had new roles in communications and intelligence gathering.

-If we can just look at that...

-Yes.

-..death certificate. It was 1917 when he was killed.

-Yes.

He belonged to the 5th Field Survey Company.

Yes. So he moved, he moved from the 3rd London...

Yes, he transferred, that's right. And field survey companies used photographers

in the sound ranging sections, right?

-What do you mean by sound ranging?

-I see you're looking puzzled there.

The sound ranging is where you try and locate the position of the enemy gun or battery when it fires

from the sound waves and the sound ranging recording apparatus.

It actually records the sound waves on a film, photographic film.

Sound ranging was at the leading edge of military technologies available in 1916,

decades before development such as radar.

Microphones were laid as close to the enemy lines as possible,

and cables conveyed the sound back to headquarters.

The sound waves were captured on photographic film,

in much the same way as a heart rate monitor does today.

And by analysing this film,

the enemy's guns could be precisely located.

-Here, we have some original...

-Gosh!

..Film, 35mm film.

Oh, yes.

You may be able to see some kicks in turn in those strings.

Oh, yes, I can!

-And from those kicks...

-Oh, my gosh! Yes! There's one there!

-There's one there!

-That's right.

-Yeah.

So what those kicks are telling us is that the sound wave is reaching one microphone after the other,

and you can read off from the vertical divisions the time interval.

Oh, my goodness!

And from that time interval they can actually read the position of the German gun.

So you were talking about William Keevil having photographic experience.

This is precisely the sort of person that the Royal Engineers would have been looking for.

The portrait photographer William Keevil

suddenly found himself handling complex equipment in the midst of battle.

When conditions were favourable, like in the Battle of Arras in Northern France in early 1917,

sound rangers helped to identify as much as 90% of enemy artillery positions before the assault began.

But in Belgium, in the summer of 1917,

William Keevil and his section faced the worst possible conditions.

At the Third Battle of Ypres, also known as Passchendaele,

the Germans held higher ground and pounded the Allies with artillery fire

as heavy rain moved in.

Sound ranging became all but impossible.

Some of the experiences are actually described

in this book about the sound rangers,

which talks about William's section here.

Now this was actually written by the officer

who was commanding him during that period.

Wow!

"Disaster sometimes came to the sound ranging line system,

"particularly at the opening of an offensive,

"and to meet such an emergency the whole section was organised to form line repairing parties."

If things happened, like intense German shell fire, that disrupted all the microphone lines...

-Yes.

-The cables laid along the ground.

Everyone would be going out on the lines repairing these.

So it didn't matter if he was a photographer or not,

he would still have been exposed in the open to heavy shell fire.

-And we've got a couple of photographs here that show the way that...

-Gosh!

..the artillery fire churned up the ground.

Men and guns and mules and even tanks were sinking into this mud.

-So ground conditions became, as you can see from the photos, absolutely appalling.

-Horrendous.

Wow! And it's through this that the lines were laid?

The microphones and lines would have been laid through these conditions.

The shelling was shredding their lines.

The wind was lifting the sound away from their microphones.

Sound ranging was practically non-existent. Everything was against them.

I mean can you imagine having to do your job,

but at the same time knowing it's pointless, but still having to do it.

Now if we can just...

look at...

this bit here,

-is I think very relevant.

-OK.

"The opening of the Third Battle of Ypres on July 31st, 1917,

"was a fresh milestone in the section's career.

"The line system was so mutilated

"that the whole section was organised into line-repairing parties."

-The whole section was organised into line-repairing parties.

-Yeah.

Everybody, yeah.

"A photographer was killed and an officer wounded on..."

Now we know that officer wounded was Lieutenant Rothwell,

who wrote this particular chapter in this book.

So he survived the war.

But we're talking about a photographer being killed.

And to try and amplify this,

we can look at the War Diary

of 5th Field Survey Company.

Oh, I need my glasses, hang on.

-Yeah, 2nd Lieutenant Rothwell.

-"2nd Lieutenant Rothwell."

-SRS, Sound Ranging Section.

-"Sound Ranging Section.

"Wounded in action by..."

-Shell fire.

-Oh, shell fire.

"Admitted to hospital

"on 7th of August.

"Sapper Keevil,

"killed by...

"shell...

"same date."

That's it. Yep.

So that is him.

And you've got the date on the death certificate, haven't you?

-Absolutely.

-7th August.

So the telegram that Nan received

that said he was killed by a bullet wound in the thigh

was not completely accurate.

It was, erm, a terrible, terrible business for everybody...

-Yeah.

-..Involved in that battle.

Passchendaele is remembered as one of the great disasters of the First World War.

The campaign ended in November 1917.

Allied forces claimed a tactical victory, but at appalling human cost.

William Keevil among the 300,000 British casualties.

I feel really grateful that I've learned this,

if nothing more than to be able to pass this on to my father and to his brother,

so that they can close that chapter, in a sense, which I felt from both of them in a way.

I felt was still, after all these years, was still quite raw.

Because they didn't really know.

I now feel that that's, in a sense, been laid to rest

at least that's what I'm hoping.

Now Alex wants to pursue her family history further back.

There has always been this very vague, unsubstantiated rumour

that there is some sort of Jewish history within our line.

And I'm hoping that there might be records

that might help me find whether this rumour

is a rumour or actually a truth.

-Hello. Pleased to meet you.

-Hello, nice to meet you?

-Shall we go in?

-Yes.

Alex is meeting historian Nick Evans at London's Jewish Museum.

I've been able to look up some of your ancestry from the family that you know further back.

-For your grandma. Is that Mitty?

-Yes, that's Mitty.

If go back further from Mitty to her mother, and her mother again,

we get back to a family who we know quite a lot about really,

and we're able to document, and that's the family called Braham.

That's as far back as we can get.

Erm, is Braham, is Braham a Jewish name?

Originally, we believe the name was Abraham,

because the name appears interchangeably, either with the "A", so Abraham,

or just shortened without it, so it becomes Braham.

Following the female line, Alex is descended from the Braham family.

Although Braham could sometimes be an adaptation of the Jewish surname Abraham,

this is not conclusive proof of Alex's Jewish ancestry.

But researching further, Nick has found compelling evidence in the details of Eve Braham's marriage.

This is the marriage certificate of Eve Braham.

On the 12th August, 1847.

She's marrying Laurence Emanuel.

Now his profession is...

"rag merchant".

And...

his father is called...

"Uzziel"?

-Uzziel.

-Uzziel Emanuel.

And he is also a "rag merchant".

Yeah. Emanuel's father, Uzziel, was a very prominent but very orthodox Jew.

And therefore we can see how Eve was marrying into a very religious family, the Emanuels,

which is a very well-known name within Victorian Jewish society.

Given that this was a very orthodox Jewish family that Eve Braham married into,

then presumably...

I mean, if one's going to talk about pedigree,

-they were Jewish?

-Yes.

But also here, we have the signature -

I don't know if you can make that out - of Simeon Oppenheim.

And it says here he's the secretary of the Great Synagogue

at Duke's Place.

And this was the representative of the Chief Rabbi,

who was present here to sign the certificate

-to prove it was a Jewish marriage certificate.

-Right.

So Alex's family rumour of Jewish ancestry is in fact based on solid evidence.

But not all of the Braham siblings were upstanding members of Jewish London society.

Nick has discovered a less than flattering account of Eve's brother, Lewis.

So if we see here in a newspaper extract from the period.

Oh, my gosh! Right.

"Low Life In London.

"The husband of the heroine of the diamond ring versus Lewis Braham.

"This was an action brought by the plaintiff to recover £40,

"money lent to the defendant."

-Cos £40 was quite a lot then. Yes.

-A sizeable amount, yeah.

"The defendant was introduced to the plaintiff by the latter's wife.

"He lived upon the plaintiff as long as he could,

"he having great difficulty in shaking him off.

"The defendant used to drive about with the plaintiff and his wife,

"taking him about to various places,

"dining with him and inducing him to be extravagant."

Oh, my God!

"In addition, he borrowed of the plaintiff two sums of £20 each

"for the recovery of which this action was brought.

"When called upon to repay the money, the defendant delivered a set off

"which he, the learned counsel,

"characterised as one of the most impudent things that was ever attempted.

"The jury then returned a verdict for the plaintiff for £40

"and the judge, on the application of plaintiff's counsel, granted speedy execution."

What's interesting is that the judge said Lewis is a dubious character

whose testimony should not be relied upon.

And for the judge to direct a jury is quite telling really about...

He was living a lifestyle that wasn't quite as becoming or orthodox as we would hope.

-And his poor mother!

-Yeah, and his poor mother still had quite a few years to go.

So she must have seen this in a very prominent newspaper about what her son is getting up to.

Ooh, he's a party boy, isn't he?!

The Braham family matriarch, Elizabeth, had been widowed in 1827

when her four children were all under the age of 10.

Alex wants to understand how Elizabeth managed to make ends meet

as a single mother in the mid-19th century.

So if we see here, the 1851 Census, I don't know if you can make out the actual address.

9, Shepherd Street, erm,

in the district of Hanover Square, Westminster.

In the heart of Mayfair.

Elizabeth Braham is the head of the household.

But it says then here - rank, profession or occupation - lodging house keeper.

So presumably that's what Elizabeth Braham set to doing,

to try and make some money for her family.

It's not always desirable. People didn't always want to be lodging house keepers.

-It was a way of paying the bills.

-Yes.

-She's strong, proactive. She's really keeping her head above water.

-Yeah.

And keeping her respectability by being financially independent,

because there was very little support for widows at the time.

-She was obviously a strong figure.

-And that's funnily enough, exactly what Nan did as well.

-Really?

-Because, erm, her husband, erm, died in the First World War

and she had, well, my grandmother and her two brothers.

They were all young children.

And she then did the same thing, she, basically...

-It's interesting, isn't it?

-She took in lodgers.

-Yeah.

Today, Shepherd Street, where Elizabeth Braham kept her lodging house,

has been renamed, and most of the original houses are gone.

So Alex has come to a Mayfair club nearby to meet historian Catharine Arnold.

Alex has further questions about her four times great-grandmother's life in the 1850s.

I, basically, learnt today

that I have Jewish ancestry.

-And Elizabeth Braham, erm, lived till she was 84.

-Remarkable.

They're living here at a house - 9, Shepherd Street.

And she is a lodging house keeper.

But what I've noticed, er, and this has literally just struck me,

erm, reading this Census,

all of these houses are in Shepherd Street, which is where they live,

and actually I've noticed that there are quite a number of women

who are the heads of the household. In fact, almost all of them are.

-Which seems quite extraordinary.

-For the times.

And also, a lot of them are lodging house keepers.

-So it seems as though the men are very absent.

-Yes.

And there seems to be a street full of women.

-It seems to be quite a matriarchal establishment, doesn't it?

-Yes.

-With a lot of...

-Is that typical?

..Powerful women running houses. Erm, not normally.

So this street must be something different.

-Something different about this street.

-Something different.

Something a bit out of the ordinary about this district or this street.

Right. Oh, my... They're not hookers, are they? Are they prostitutes?

SHE GASPS Are they?! Oh, my God! They're not?!

Are they really? Oh, no!

-Seriously?

-Seriously.

Erm, they could well have been running what were called "disorderly houses" or "houses of ill repute".

Oh, my word! Oh...!

Not necessarily actively pursuant in being prostitutes themselves,

but running disorderly houses or houses of assignation.

Rather like motels where people could rent a room.

-Rent a room.

-By the hour. Yes.

-Oh, my goodness!

Prostitution was widespread in 19th-century London.

Somewhere between 50,000 to 80,000 prostitutes catered for all classes of clientele.

There were even guidebooks to help men choose their pleasure,

from seedy Soho to the more genteel streets of Mayfair,

where Elizabeth Braham kept her lodging house.

These houses of assignation

functioned more like guest houses than brothels.

After procuring their clients, prostitutes came to areas like Shepherd Street to rent a room.

I think you'll find this very interesting.

This is the Leicester Chronicle.

And it's just a small item in what they call "domestic news".

"A gentleman has poisoned himself

"in a house of ill fame in Shepherd Street, London,

"which he had entered with a girl known in the locality as Polka Poll."

ALEX LAUGHS

Poisoned himself in a house of ill fame!

SHE GASPS

Oh, my God!

-In Shepherd Street.

-Yes.

-With Polka Poll.

-With Polka Poll.

Oh, my goodness me!

So, let's have a look at the next newspaper cutting.

"Last night an inquiry took place before Mr Bedford

"at the Rising Sun Tavern, Charles Street, Grosvenor Square,

"as to the death of Mr James Fairs, aged 24.

"Mary Ann Dalton proved accompanying the deceased,

"who was perfectly sober, to a house,

"9, Shepherd Street, Oxford Street,

"where he sent for a bottle of wine."

Wow!

Wow!

-Number 9.

-Number 9.

-That really says it all, doesn't it?

-I'm afraid it does.

So Mary Ann Dalton IS Polka Poll.

She can only be.

What would be interesting is to find out about the last hours of James Fairs.

It would be very interesting.

-There'll be a record of the coroner's inquest.

-Yes.

So what we have to do is go to Westminster Abbey and look at the records.

-God, it's fascinating.

-It is fascinating.

-I'm loving this.

-Yes.

-I think this is fantastic!

Wow!

When I found that Elizabeth had been widowed

and she also took in lodgers.

And I thought that was rather ironic really.

After having been on the journey with William Henry Keevil

and my great-grandmother Nan.

And how she then took in lodgers to, basically, provide for

her small children.

The difference is...

that the lodging that, that Elizabeth established...

was a brothel!

Erm, and, I mean...

This morning, all I can say is, this morning,

I found my inner Jew.

And, this afternoon, I found my inner whore!

I mean, it's like... I just, erm... I was not expecting that.

To learn precisely what took place in Elizabeth Braham's lodging house on the night James Fairs died,

Alex and Catharine have come to Westminster Abbey.

Original records of 19th-century coroners' inquests for the City of Westminster

are kept in the Abbey library's special Muniment Collection.

This is what they call the "inquisition" or inquest, as we'd call it today.

It's a very delicate, old document, so...

-But to make it slightly easier for us, I have got us a transcript here.

-Right.

And here we go.

"Information of witnesses taken this 15th day of November, 1852,

"at the house of George Henton, known by the name of The Rising Sun."

-Pub.

-That's right. That's where they held inquests in those days.

-Right.

"Mary Ann Dalton."

-That's Polka Poll.

-That's Polka Poll, yes.

"Information from her on oath

"that on Wednesday last,

"about half past four,

"I was with Sarah.

"Deceased came and talked to us.

"He appeared to be perfectly sober.

"We went into Number 9, Shepherd Street, Oxford Street, together.

"He selected a room and called for some wine.

"Had connection."

-It's a wonderful phrase, isn't it?

-Fabulous.

-Lovely euphemism. Yes.

COCKNEY ACCENT: I should really be reading it like this, shouldn't I? Polka Poll.

Yeah.

COCKNEY ACCENT: "He took a vial out of his pocket and said,

"'Look here, I've something I mean to drink presently.'

"I said, 'What is it? Lavender water?'

"I asked him to let me smell it.

"He laughed and said he would not and put it into his pocket.

"He sat a few minutes and began crying."

Aw!

"I came and got the wine and as I turned back again,

"he took the phial from the top of the wine glass.

"I endeavoured to get the glass away from him.

"I upset a little in doing so,

"but he put it to his mouth and drank it.

"He never spoke after he took it.

"He made a blowing noise with his mouth.

"He leaned on the sofa till the doctor came.

"He gave me no money.

"The policeman came. He took the bottle.

"I drank some wine.

"Verdict.

"That deceased destroyed his own life by poison,

"being at the time in a state of insanity."

Dreadful business.

Well, I suppose, erm...

-At least, it WAS suicide. I thought maybe they'd killed him.

-They'd killed him.

Very, very interesting.

Right.

The case happened in 1852.

That makes Elizabeth...

-63.

-63.

I suspect that Elizabeth knew very well what was going on.

OK.

And the reason that she doesn't appear in the proceedings of the inquest

could be that she wanted her name kept out of the papers.

-Yes.

-And she wanted to keep a low profile.

Because Elizabeth had actually been up before the Bench before,

-many, many years earlier.

-Oh...

OK.

Elizabeth was charged with keeping a disorderly house in 1827.

-Near Leicester Square.

-Oh, my word! Near Leicester Square.

-Let's look at the documents.

-All right.

-Let's look at what I found.

Here's a headline from the time, in The Standard.

They're just in the newspapers all the time!

Right.

The Standard.

"The defendant in this indictment, was convicted of keeping a house of ill fame...

"..Named the Sidney Hotel, in Leicester Street, Leicester Fields."

Which is Leicester Square.

Righty-ho.

I'm... You know what? I'm no longer shocked. That's all I can say.

It appears that Elizabeth Braham was keeping a house of ill fame

a full 25 years before the incident at Shepherd Street.

For women with no other means of support, the sex trade was extremely profitable.

Prostitutes could earn up to 10 times the income of domestic servants.

And landladies, like Elizabeth Braham, earned even more from the rooms they provided.

At the time, prostitution itself was not illegal,

so anti-vice campaigners often focused their challenges on public nuisance offences.

Here's the indictment of Elizabeth Braham.

Ahem!

"The jurors for our Lord the King

"upon their oath present that Elizabeth Braham,

"late of the Parish of St Anne, a certain common bawdy house,

"unlawfully and wickedly did keep and maintain

"on the days and times aforesaid,

"there did commit whoredom and fornication."

-Wonderful language.

-"Whereby diverse unlawful assemblies,

"riots, routs and affrays,

"disturbances and violations of the peace of our own said Lord the King,

"and dreadful, filthy and lewd offences in the same house

"on the days and times aforesaid.

"As well as in the night as in the day,

"there were committed and perpetrated

"to the great damage and common nuisance of all the liege subjects

"of our said Lord the King."

-It's like Sodom and Gomorrah!

-It really is.

Oh, my word!

"Cometh the said Elizabeth Braham in her proper person

"and having heard the said indictment,

"read the oath that she is not guilty thereof."

It's extraordinary, isn't it?

She, literally, does not have a leg to stand on,

and she's saying, "Not guilty, M'Lord." Quite extraordinary.

I think it shows tremendous guts and resilience,

because if we look at her life then,

she had four children under 10.

And she does not have any legal representation,

because in those days it was very, very rare to have any kind of advocate.

So she's defending herself.

"And concerning the matters within contained,

"to say upon their oath that the said Elizabeth Braham

"is guilty of the premises in the indictment within specified."

So she's found guilty?

-Yes.

-And we then have no knowledge...

There's nothing to indicate how long she's in jail for?

-No. We do not know whether she went to a house of correction, as they were then called.

-Right.

Or whether she paid a stiff fine.

And so the next time that we...

that we come upon her,

which is in the Census,

-that's when she owns the property at 9, Shepherd Street.

-That's right.

So she hasn't stopped, erm, her profession.

No. But she has gone below the radar.

-She's gone below the radar.

-She's run a much more discreet operation.

Yeah.

I'm now intrigued...

as to whether she continued

to work in this profession.

But she did it very, very much behind closed doors.

Or whether she became even more infamous

and ended up in jail, in bedlam, in goodness knows where.

So it would be really fascinating to know

what those last 20 years, really,

of her life were like and where she ended up.

To fill in these details, Alex is meeting historian Sarah Richardson.

-Hello.

-Hello.

We start off here... the 1861 Census.

And you find her, er, in Marylebone.

In Northumberland Street.

This area, is this a step up?

-Yeah. Yeah.

-Right.

And now let's see, here it says, "Elizabeth Braham, head of the household,

-"widow, freeholder."

-So she owns property.

Oh, what, she owns other property?

She... Yeah, that's how she's describing herself.

So below Elizabeth,

there is Rosa Matilda.

And she's a granddaughter.

-There's a little... I don't quite understand. There's a little squiggly thing there.

-Yeah.

So that means ditto. So Rosa Matilda's surname is Braham.

Well, there's only one male Braham, which is Lewis.

-She can only be his daughter.

-Yep.

In 1861, the 72-year-old Elizabeth Braham

was looking after her son Lewis's 10-year-old daughter, Rosa.

Only two years earlier,

Lewis had appeared in the press during his scandalous court case.

And I suppose he's just not in a fit state to bring up a child, I would imagine.

So the care of the granddaughter has gone to Elizabeth.

Has gone to Elizabeth. Yes.

-So shall we check the next Census?

-OK.

-So...

-So this is 1871.

-This is 1871.

-Hang on. But Lewis Braham is now living with her.

-Yes.

And he's called himself a "financial agent".

And Rosa Braham...

who's aged 20 now.

She's there.

That's a different house. 8, Titchfield Terrace.

It's in St John's Wood. So she's steadily moving upmarket.

I mean, my God! They...

She must have had amazing girls or something, to make all that money.

-And this is all a single woman doing this.

-Yes.

In this period, women were unable to own property if they were married.

There's this strong disincentive for widows to remarry.

Mm.

Particularly I think with characters like this, where, er,

they have this strong independent streak and entrepreneurial streak.

-They're going to lose everything to a man.

-Mm.

Elizabeth remained a widow until her death at the age of 84.

By the law of coverture, had she remarried, her property would have gone to her husband,

unless it was vested in a trust.

But not only did Elizabeth hold on to her property in her lifetime,

she continued to protect it after her death.

So shall we move on, maybe, to her will.

God, this paper again. Look at that writing!

SHE GASPS

-That's her signature there, isn't it?

-Yes.

"This is the last Will and Testament

"of me, Elizabeth Braham.

"I give and bequeath all my plate, linen,

"china, glass, books,

"pictures, prints

"wines, linen, furniture

"and other household effects unto my son,

"Louis Braham.

"I give and bequeath unto my granddaughter, Rosa Braham,

"my watch and chain

"and all the jewels, trinkets and personal ornaments

"worn and used by me in my lifetime."

Wow!

"In trust as to my freehold houses,

"numbers 1 and 4,

"Wade Street, Poplar, in the said county of Middlesex,

"for the said Rosa Braham

"and for her sole and separate use,

"free from the control and debts of any husband she may marry."

So these are the most valuable parts of her estate.

And what she's using here is the device of the trust

to protect the property from future husbands and so on.

So... My God!

She's so smart, that's all I can say.

So she owns...

Number 58.

Number 56.

Number 54.

And Number 52, Cochrane Street, St John's Wood.

And she also...

owns Titchfield Street.

-And freehold in Poplar as well.

-Freehold in Poplar.

And she's all done that on her own.

Yeah.

And I think what's interesting about the will

is that, normally, you would have expected the property to go to the son.

Yes.

Through primogeniture, that's what would have been expected.

But she privileges his daughter.

-She's securing the future for the most vulnerable member of the family.

-Yes.

-The girl that she brought up.

-Wow!

How much was she worth then, would you say?

Well, she's leaving around £1,500 of freehold and leasehold property.

The nearest comparison I can give you is, somebody who dies in the same year as her

is the explorer David Livingstone.

And he leaves around the same amount.

So you're talking about respectable upper middle class, comfortably off.

Gosh, it's fascinating.

I love it. It's amazing.

I mean, really, really amazing, considering that she was widowed.

-Quite young.

-Quite young.

-With four young children under...

-Yes.

What you'd expect for somebody in that position is for them to sink into poverty.

She doesn't just survive, she prospers. She's thinking ahead.

-She's astute, and this is somebody who's quite a strong woman.

-Yes.

That's amazing.

This a journey that I really had no sense of

where it was going and how it was going to conclude.

Not only did it become, sort of...

I felt like I was reading the News Of The World or something!

Opening every day... I was like opening another page and there...

Erm...

But actually at the end of it,

I've come away thinking, wow!

What an extraordinary force of nature this woman was.

So I'm really... I'm just so thrilled

to have been taken on this...

Well, it's been a roller coaster of a journey, really.

Emotionally, erm...

but fantastic!

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