I got an email from Ancestry.com.au the other day. To help celebrate Australia Day they are giving people free access to over two million searchable convict and criminal related records to see if they had a crooked skeleton or two in the family closet.
The offer ends on January 31, so if you’re keen to see if you have the odd recessive racketeering gene in your DNA you’d better hurry.
Of course, it’s cool to have a convict in your past now – manacle chic, I think they call it. But it wasn’t that long ago it was a source of shame.
I recently discovered a dodgy character on my mum’s side of the family. His name was Jack Radnidge and he was shipped out on a convict ship out of Bristol in 1830. He’d robbed a guy at knife point, apparently, but after a few years out in a NSW penitentiary he was released and given a parcel of land up in the Hunter Valley.
He did well for himself, becoming a bit of a gentleman farmer from all accounts. So much so that those who followed on my mum’s side of the family glossed over his dark past until it was forgotten altogether.
My mum was a little shocked when I told her. Her grandmother, Jack Radnidge’s great-granddaughter, was regarded as quite posh.
The upshot of it all is that I have not descended from the landed gentry. Rather, I’m fifth generation mugger from Bristol.
Maybe that’s why I liked the place so much.
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