They're going to enjoy this.
Come on!
Gemma Collins is a social media phenomenon...
Good morning, everyone.
..businesswoman, and reality TV star.
She's one of the biggest names to emerge from reality show
The Only Way Is Essex.
I might not be a size ten, but I've got a good heart.
Gemma... So take that and kiss that. CHEERING
I decided very early on that this might not last forever.
CHEERING
I had a short window to make my mark.
Hello, Teen Awards!
A self-proclaimed diva, she's known to the nation simply as...
I'm the GC and I've earned my diva-ship.
She's brash, she's loud.
She's everything of your worst nightmares.
It's the GC. All your Christmases have come at once.
No-one in my family addresses me as GC.
Sometimes they'll say, "Don't go GC on us."
Gemma grew up in Romford, Essex,
with her older brother Russell, mum Joan, and dad Alan.
I'm really close to my mum and dad.
I always loved singing and dancing and performing,
so Mum put me in drama schools, tap-dancing schools, ballet schools.
You name it, I've done it.
When we were all sitting around the fire, she'd go,
"Right, come on, Gemma, entertain us all."
I was like, "God, here we go."
She liked the entertainment, my mum, I think.
That's why she sort of steered me into that direction.
Well, let's be fair. I weren't going to work at a bank.
My parents, they taught me everything about nature.
All our activities were outside.
Hello, girls.
My dad had an allotment, and I can remember going there with him,
and he had really big runner beans.
Loads of potatoes.
I remember growing up with loads of potatoes.
Here, girls!
I love the wind. I need air.
I only bought my house because of the land.
I loved the field out the front.
Hello, my babies.
No, Blu. They're not for you to eat.
With regards to my dad, I know a lot of what his family history is.
I've got a lot of family in Wales.
Blu!
I don't know anything to do with my mum's side of the family.
All I know about my mum is
that she was born and left at the hospital, I think.
My mum was fostered.
Why was she left at the hospital?
Why did they not try and come back for her?
She never talks about it.
I just think it's too painful for her to go there.
It'd be so nice to know where my mum's from
and just put all the pieces together.
Come on, then.
When you get older, you really start questioning more about life.
I would love to say to someone over a half a lager in the pub one day,
and a packet of dry-roasted peanuts, "This is where I'm from.
"This explains why I am the way I am," and...
Because at the minute, it's like I'm from outer space.
Come on, boy! Blu!
I'm off to see my mum.
There is no way I would move too far from my mum and dad.
You know, I'd love for them to actually live with me.
I love Essex.
It is home. I love the people.
Everyone has got a character in Essex.
We're all a bit, you know, raw.
We love dressing up.
We love all the glitz and the glam.
To help Gemma start her investigation into her maternal family history,
Gemma's mum Joan has agreed to talk to her for the first time
about her childhood and what she knows about her past.
I know there's so much pain attached to my mum
because she was left at the hospital as a child.
You know, I've never been able to go there with her
because no-one wants to see their mum upset.
She's got a lovely garden, me mum.
All right, Mum? All right, Gem?
Lovely to see you.
Mum, how are you feeling about this?
We've never really spoken about your...
..past, kind of thing, you know.
I'm just checking that you're OK with the journey.
Oh, yeah, because you're always left wondering, that's the thing.
I don't know nothing about my mum.
My foster family that I was with, they were my family.
What do you know? Because I know absolutely nothing.
What hospital was you born in? Where are you from?
Well, I found that. Open it and read it.
Children's papers? Yeah.
This is an agreement of foster parent
from the London County Council. Yeah.
If your date of birth was 21/02/55,
you went to live with them on 07/03/55.
Yeah, because I was in the hospital for two weeks.
They looked after me. Right, so you really was a baby. Yeah.
So you went into foster care at two weeks old. Yeah.
"Edith Timbrell at 66 Canonsleigh Rd
"will receive Joan Williams."
"Into our home and feed, clothe and look after the child, and bring
"the child up as carefully and kindly as we would our own child."
It's really sweet.
"We will help the child become a good citizen.
"Send the child to school."
God, this is a lot.
There's a little picture there of me at home.
Well, you was dressed nice, Mum, and you had a teddy bear.
Oh, yeah, I was always dressed nice.
You did have stability. You went to school.
You did have a family to come home to. Yeah.
The next photo I have of me
is that picture.
I went into a children's home at 13.
Why? For playing truant at school.
How long was you there for? Two months, that was all.
But it was like hell, really. In what way?
Well, I remember going in with me suitcase.
I'm sorry.
Brings it all back. Yeah.
With all my clothes in.
And the other kids there started
taking all me clothes out of the suitcase.
It felt like a prison to me.
Shocking.
Yeah, I just went back home after that, and that was it.
You should get rid of that picture.
I don't like it.
So did you ever meet up with your real mum?
Did she ever try and contact you?
Was you ever told that you had a different mum?
Yeah, like, when I was probably about four,
my real mother come to see me... Right. ..at home.
And I remember her coming in and she bought me, like,
loads of bags of sweets. Oh, that's nice.
She'd bought a 45 record.
It was Honky Tonk Women of the Stones.
Right, the song. And she played...
Yeah, and she played it as soon as she come in the house.
I thought that was weird.
And then she come again.
I was probably about seven.
She took me to an aunt's house.
She was called Winnie.
I played with my cousin Christine.
And then when I was a bit older, I would go over to see Christine.
And what was she like?
She was all buzzy, glamorous.
This is more like it.
And all I remember is that she put make-up on to perfection.
When I was a teenager, my mum wrote me a letter at home,
and she asked me to take her a packet of cigarettes.
That was it. Just went in, said hello,
not seen her for years,
had a cup of tea, and then said goodbye.
I know she's your mum, but...
..she don't sound one of us, because we wouldn't have done that.
Well, times were different then, Gem, weren't they, I suppose? Right.
Who knows what went on back in the day?
I only saw her three times.
Your life then moves on.
You meet Dad, you know, have us.
Did you ever wonder what happened
to Christine and her make-up, your mum?
I did try and get in touch with her.
And I wrote a letter who I thought was Christine.
Sadly, it wasn't her, so... Oh.
..I did try to get in touch with her.
I did research, because I thought, "Is me mother alive?
"If she's dead, what's happened to her?"
And, um...
Yeah, she died, so...
What age? 61, I think.
That weren't long. No.
Here, look. This is your birth certificate. Yeah.
You was born at Lambeth Hospital. Yeah.
Name, surname, and maiden surname of the mother -
Joan Williams.
But you was called Joan Williams as well. Yeah.
I did find out that she, at a young age,
was in these different hospitals. What for?
Yeah, well, I don't know what for, why she went in there.
They were in Epsom, Surrey.
And one was called St Ebba's
and one was called Long Grove Hospital.
So I need to now go to Epsom to find out about your mother.
Yeah. It's a starting point. It's a starting point.
Gemma's discovered that her grandmother, like her mum,
was called Joan Williams.
She's also found out that her mum Joan had an aunt called Winnie
and a cousin called Christine.
But why Gemma's mum was given up as a baby remains a mystery.
Meeting with my mum was such a huge mix of emotions.
Her mum was in and out of her life.
She turns up to see her daughter, plays the Honky Tonk Women,
says, "Here's some sweets," and off she goes again.
How confusing must that have been for my mum?
Because I've never known that I had a grandmother called Joan,
I'm now really interested to find out about this woman.
Gemma's come to Epsom in Surrey.
Her grandmother spent time in two hospitals here,
and she wants to know why she was admitted.
She's meeting historian Kirsty Arnold at a heritage centre
in a former chapel on the hospital site.
Hello. Hi, Gemma.
I'm Kirsty. Welcome to the Horton.
Thank you.
I know that my grandmother was here in these hospitals,
St Ebba's and Long Grove. That's all I know.
So please tell me everything you know. I'm so excited.
So St Ebba's and Long Grove were two of five hospitals
built on this site at the turn of the century.
They were psychiatric hospitals.
Really?
These hospitals were built for 10,000 people with mental illness
coming from London. OK.
So when your grandmother was here,
this was a summary of her admissions to the hospitals.
The date of my grandmother's admission was the 31/08/51,
and she left when she was 14. Yeah.
I was terrible at maths at school. Can you help me with it?
She would have been 13 when she was admitted,
so she would be here about eight months.
Right, so she was young.
When it says serial status number - voluntary,
what does that mean?
Voluntary meant that she didn't have to be here,
so she wasn't being detained.
She chose to be here?
Well, given her age,
it might be that her parents chose for her to be here.
Charming.
When I think of an asylum, it's..
..very scary.
Were they scary places?
You hear all sorts of stories back in the day.
This is what St Ebba's looked like.
It looks like a holiday place.
When your grandmother was here,
this adolescent unit had only been set up in 1949.
It was a couple of years old. Wow!
There was a real sense of optimism about mental health.
There was a sense that people could get better,
they could recover. Oh, OK.
So she first came in in '51.
She left in '52.
If you turn over the page,
you'll see the second time she was admitted, to Long Grove Hospital.
Right. She came back in on 04/03/55,
just after my mum was born.
At 17 years old, just having a baby.
What a shame.
Status - certified.
What does that mean?
A medical professional had determined that she needed
to be in a hospital environment for her own safety.
So it would have been quite a different experience
the second time. Right, OK.
This is an image of Long Grove Hospital. Right.
It looks scary.
You wouldn't catch me walking round there of a night.
Tell me about this place.
She would have been on a locked ward,
so under constant supervision with no privacy.
You can just imagine what that must have felt like. Oh!
And it was very much a kind of communal experience,
so clothes would have been shared.
We've even heard accounts of people having to share toothbrushes
on these wards.
When you just have a baby, you want to spend time with that baby
and have privacy.
She was dealing with a lot, a hell of a lot.
So when she came back in, she had to be back in here.
It wasn't voluntary any more. That's right.
So did she do something funny to someone or to herself?
We don't have the details of what happened on admission
because, as I said, the records are a little bit limited. OK.
But we do have a bit of information about the diagnosis. Go on.
This was the original card that would have been filled out
on the day she was admitted to St Ebba's.
So her first admission, she was 13.
And the diagnosis on admission,
principal condition was schizophrenia.
What was she doing?
You need to talk to a mental health professional
about what the understanding of schizophrenia was at that time,
in the 1950s.
But what I do have is this, which you might find helpful.
This is the card from her second admission.
So the poor girl's got schizophrenia,
and the second time she comes back in,
she's got chronic schizophrenia.
Yeah, makes sense.
And my mum gets really bad depression now,
so it must follow in the bloodline.
I'm going to have to research all of this.
Schizophrenia is such a scary word.
Like, it scares me even saying it.
It is scary, you know?
And aged 13, just thinking back,
my grandmother was diagnosed as schizophrenic.
Then my mum said, when she was 13, she...
..basically went into the children's home
for playing truant from school.
And then I think when I was 13,
I went through a period of self-harm and...
..a really weird phase.
So it's just very poignant, that age.
At 13, my grandmother, my nan, and me all went a little bit...
But is that your hormones?
Is it your teenage years?
Was she really schizophrenic?
Was she just a bit out there?
Was she just fabulous?
To find the answer,
Gemma is heading to the Royal College of Psychiatrists in London.
She's meeting psychiatrist Dr Claire Hilton...
Hello, I'm Gemma. Hello, Gemma. I'm Claire.
..to see if she can shed any light
on her grandmother's schizophrenia diagnosis.
I found out my grandmother,
when I've looked at her documents, it said that she had schizophrenia.
I've managed to find an article written by the doctor
who was in charge of the unit at St Ebba's
that your grandmother was in. No!
Let's have a look.
It's written by Dr Sands, the physician superintendent.
This title is Psychoses Of Adolescence.
It lists some of the symptoms.
"In retrospect, it may be found that stealing,
"truanting, screaming attacks,
"and behaviour sometimes involving court appearances,
"have marked the onset of a disorder that subsequently
"is diagnosed as schizophrenic."
This book's rubbish.
I did all of that when I was young.
This seems like normal behaviour to me, for a teenager.
It might be common, perhaps you might say... Yes.
..but it's still distressing and requires help.
The understanding of illness 70 years ago...
Yeah, they didn't know. ..is not what it is now... No.
..whether we're talking about physical illness or mental illness.
Yeah. I think that the schizophrenia is a bit of a red herring.
Go on. In what way?
It was only in 1970 that we began to get the models of schizophrenia
that we would consider like we have schizophrenia now.
Right. What is actual schizophrenia, then?
There's various sorts, various problems.
Sometimes they're called psychotic symptoms.
People can hear voices and see things and that sort of thing. Yes.
Sometimes that can last for a long time. OK.
Today, young teenagers are rarely diagnosed with schizophrenia.
Right. But in the 1950s, problems like autism, developmental disorder,
social withdrawal, for example,
were put under that label of schizophrenia.
You know, and actually sitting here, my mind's racing,
I'm piecing it together.
My mum's mum was a bit lively at 13, like all of us were.
My mum played truant at 13. I played truant at 13.
She was labelled as having schizophrenia,
when she perhaps didn't.
We've managed to find some of your mother's foster care records
that mention your grandmother.
Really? Wow.
"Joan's mother was received into care under a Fit Person's Order
"when aged nearly 17, a few months before Joan was born, October 1954."
A Fit Person's Order means that somebody is taken into care,
and the person they go and stay with
is considered to be a fit person to take on that responsibility.
Your grandmother went into care
when she was about six months pregnant.
And that would have been when the pregnancy was showing. Right.
And the social ideals at the time
was that women get married before they had...
Children. ..children.
It was very much frowned on by society. Right.
If you get pregnant out of wedlock,
especially as a teenager, well,
you're not going to be able to bring that child up on your own.
Yeah.
Was my mother taken away from my grandmother,
or was she given away?
Young women, single women,
weren't given much choice in the matter.
Which is terrible because their actions resulted in
my mum never feeling loved because she didn't know her mother
and thought her mother had given her up,
and that wasn't the case at all.
This is also from your mother's foster care notes. Right.
"As would be expected, her contact with the foster home,
"although maintained with some regularity of time until 1965,
"was erratic in some other features."
What does that mean?
Is that saying that her mother
visited her for up to ten years, then?
It appears that there was contact fairly regularly over those years.
Right.
The impression that it gives me
is that your grandmother wanted that relationship.
So she did want to see my mum, then? She did want to see your mum.
I wonder why she wasn't allowed to have the baby back.
They paid very, very little attention at that time
to the mother.
They were much more told what was going to happen.
Really? And that was also people who had no mental illness.
It was much more the social expectations of the day.
Fair enough.
That information that I received upsets me,
because their actions left my mum feeling like
she was never good enough because her mum didn't want her.
And actually today, reading between the lines,
my mum was taken away from her mother,
and her mother did try to see her.
I can't wait to tell my mum
the amazing meeting that we've had today.
Now she's found answers to why her grandmother gave up
Gemma's mum as a baby,
Gemma wants to investigate her maternal line further,
and today, she's had some news that could help her.
My mother's cousin Christine, who my mum did mention to me
about that she'd tried to track her down over the years,
actually is still alive,
and one of the members of the team on this show
have managed to track down Christine.
She lives in Dagenham.
I'm in utter shock right now.
I have never met my mum's side of the family.
I might have cousins.
This is opening up my family, you know?
There's 15.
She has agreed to meet me,
and I'm just so excited for this moment.
This is just, like, a moment in my life.
It's better than meeting the King and Queen.
Oh, the garden's beautiful!
Lovely.
DOG BARKS
Christine! Oh, my God!
Darling! How are you? Oh!
Gem! I'm not very glam!
Yeah, I'm Gemma today. I'm not the GC today.
Don't be disappointed.
Come in.
Hello, girls. How are you? Are you OK?
Can you believe? Don't you find this just so strange?
No, I know, it's weird, isn't it?
I can't believe you're here. I know, it's so surreal.
It is weird, but it doesn't feel weird, if you know what I mean.
Well, it's blood, isn't it?
Christine has two daughters, Lindy and Carrie.
Your mum and my mum are cousins,
so that makes you my cousin once removed. Yeah.
And because you're your mum's daughters, you're my second cousins.
But forget all that. We're family. How does that even happen?
Right, tell me. So, my grandmother.
Your... Auntie. ..auntie.
Basically, they made out she was schizophrenic,
and then a chronic schizophrenic.
Well, I know nothing of that, because don't forget,
I was a child at the time as well.
I found these in me mum's box when she died. Right.
That's Winnie, my mum.
That's you. That's me. And that's your mum.
Oh, lovely!
So cute. So cute.
I can remember that. But the problem is my mum don't remember
a lot of this. She won't. She was two years behind me.
Oh, I see.
Your mum, Joanie... Yeah.
..was me best friend when we were little. Yeah.
This is a lovely picture of your grandmother, Joanie.
Don't she look lovely? Yeah.
There's a lot going on behind photos.
Really, yeah.
I remember going round to Joanie, your grandma,
as a child, with Winnie, my mum.
They lived in, like, a prefab in Brixton.
Right. It's trendy, Brixton.
Well, it will be now, but not then!
Right. It was all prefabs and nothing else.
And there was me Aunt Joanie... Yeah.
..your grandma, sitting there, with an ashtray full of fags. Full.
And she never really spoke.
And I thought it was strange as a child, thinking,
"I'm getting nothing from me aunt," sort of thing.
My mum obviously spoke to me and told me that Auntie Joan
cannot cope with children, she cannot do it.
Not the reason that she didn't want to. She couldn't.
Funny, because me mum said she wrote to her once and said,
"Oh, Joan, can you bring me a pack of fags?"
So Mum must have gone to her house when she was older
and took her mum some fags. She loved her fags. Mm.
Here's another photo. Right.
This is your great-grandmother, Daisy,
married to William, your great-grandfather.
And these two ladies are your great-aunts,
Rene and Dolly.
Right.
Great-grandmother Daisy and William had four girls.
This is two of them.
Well, they all look ever so smart, and they don't look poor.
What I like about it, they've turned themselves out nice.
Well, they've obviously come out for the day.
This, I found recently.
Your great-grandfather, William Williams.
My mum's got a nose like that.
Like, prominent.
He was so quiet.
He never really spoke. Really?
Your great-grandad used to be an air raid warden in the war.
Right. So he used to go round knocking on all the doors.
And say, "There's a war coming." "Get them up, get out, get out!"
Right, he'd help everyone. Get them all out. Yeah.
See, he looks a nice man.
Well, he was a nice man. He was just quiet.
Where did my great-grandfather William Williams live, then,
Christine? He lived with his family in Angela Street,
and that is in Tower Hamlets. Yeah.
Right. I've got to go, ladies. OK.
But next Saturday, lamb leg, Yorkshire puddings, roasties.
I never used to ask my mum too much about her life and that,
but this is just so healing for her.
She can close all them questions she's got.
I'm so excited that you're my family. Are you being real now?
Course you are, love. I swear on my life. I know you are.
Oh!
Do you know what's so weird?
Even though I've never known them, it's like I've always known them.
Like, meeting Christine,
it's so mad how she's like me mum,
so I just cannot wait for them two to meet.
And this is going to fill such a void in my mum's life.
And actually, I can go, "No, my mum did have family."
And it wasn't all doom and gloom for her.
I feel my mum can really make up for lost time now, and me.
This is just the beginning of beautiful things.
Thank you so much.
Bye!
I am so intrigued to go back further.
I knew there was more to me than coming from Romford.
Bring it on, baby!
Gemma has found out that her grandmother Joan
had three sisters - Rene, Winnie, and Dolly.
They lived with their parents, Gemma's great-grandparents,
William Williams and Daisy Dutton,
in Tower Hamlets in the east end of London.
To push her family line back further...
Hi, I'm Gemma. I'm Fiona. Pleased to meet you.
..Gemma has come to the local archives
to meet historian Fiona Rule.
I found your great-grandfather, William Williams,
on the 1901 census. Right.
If you look at this column, there he is.
William Williams, and he was one years old.
Wow. And you can also go back another generation,
because this is his father and mother.
Right. William Williams.
I think in the day, they must have named their kids after themselves.
Yeah, yeah. Thirza might have been his wife.
Is your great-great-grandmother, yes.
And my great-grandfather had sisters,
Nora and Julia.
The street that they lived on...
Was Dorset Street.
Yeah, and Dorset Street, it's no longer there,
but it was actually a stone's throw away from Spitalfields Market.
Unbelievable. My mother loves...
I get the phone call, "Shall we go down Spitalfields today?"
I'm like, "Oh, Mum, not again!"
"Can we go to Harrods?" Do you know what I mean?
Another interesting thing about 37 Dorset Street, where they lived,
is they weren't the only people living there.
Right. If you look at this column...
Did they all live in the same house, then?
They all lived in the same house.
So in total, there were 35 people living at 37 Dorset Street in 1901.
Wow.
My great-great-grandfather and my great-great-grandmother
lived in one bedroom with three children.
Yeah. Must have been squalor.
Oh, terrible. I mean, so overcrowded.
No sense of privacy at all.
In fact, I've got a really interesting map to show you next.
Go on. You find Dorset Street there. You might need...
..one of them.
Right, there's Bishopsgate.
Oh, I can see it there.
Dorset Street. Yeah.
The different colours here at the bottom of the map,
what did that represent?
Charles Booth, who was the guy that drew up these maps, wanted,
like, a snapshot of the areas in London that needed the most help.
So orange was the upper middle and upper classes, wealthy.
Peachy was fairly comfortable.
Poor was blue, like, a light blue. Mm-hm.
Very poor was a darker blue.
And the lowest class, and the vicious, semi-criminal...
..was my family.
What did they do?
Well, your great-great-grandfather was a bricklayer.
Now, this was a skilled trade.
Yeah, very much so. It's a great job.
I think we can guess, when the census was done in 1901,
he didn't have an awful lot of money at his disposal... No.
..because he was living in one of the worst streets in the east end.
We've also got a photograph of Dorset Street... Right.
..which was taken a year or two after the census was conducted.
Right.
I love the drama in this picture.
I love that it's slightly foggy.
I think what's really extraordinary about this picture as well,
that one of these people could be one of your relations.
That's so interesting.
Well, you're from where you're from, at the end of the day,
there's no shame about it.
Absolutely none, no.
Now, when you think of that area - Spitalfields, Whitechapel -
is there anything notorious that springs to mind
about that particular area of London?
The Krays? Before the Krays.
Whitechapel... Oh! I know his name.
Jack the Ripper. Yes.
Don't tell me I'm related to him!
Well, nobody knew who he was, so the jury's out on that, actually.
Jesus! FIONA LAUGHS
No, but three of the victims of Jack the Ripper
had connections to Dorset Street.
One of them was murdered on Dorset Street.
Wow.
That is... It's made me go cold, Fiona.
My hairs are standing up on my ends.
How interesting that, when I was at school,
I found it really fascinating about Jack the Ripper. Mm.
And your family were on the very street
that was absolutely in the centre of those murders.
So, of course, Jack the Ripper was back in 1888.
But when we know for definite members of your family
were on Dorset Street in 1901,
there was another murder.
At the inquest, things were said about Dorset Street,
and the Daily Mail decided to write a rather salacious article about...
Was the Daily Mail going then?
Very much so, yes. Jeez.
And one of their journalists - a Mr Fred Mackenzie -
decided to write an article absolutely damning the street
and its inhabitants, with the headline, "The Worst Street
"in London, Where Criminals Are Trained." Right.
And Jack McCarthy, who was the landlord of your ancestors,
decided that he was going to respond to this article in the Daily Mail
by calling a huge meeting, and this was attended by around 400 people.
And we found an original transcript of what Jack McCarthy actually said
in this meeting.
"The worst street in London - a reply to the Daily Mail.
"J McCarthy."
Man of my own heart.
There's been many occasions I've liked to reply to the Daily Mail.
I'll be Jack, you be the crowd. Right, fine, OK.
"Dorset Street, Spitalfields has sprung into undesired notoriety.
"Here we have a place which boasts of an attempt at murder
"once a month."
"Lies! Wicked lies."
"Now, gentlemen, is there an attempt of murder once a month?"
"No, no, that there ain't. Does he take us for cannibals?"
"Does it not compare favourably with any street in the world?"
"Of course it does, and is as good as any other place."
Yeah, so you sort of get the vibe of the...
LAUGHING:It was quite a lively meeting, by all accounts.
I think it's awful to be misrepresented in life.
I've had a lot of that.
And at the end of the day, we're made of strong stuff.
Because we didn't have silver spoon beginnings,
or didn't come from that background,
it doesn't make us any less of people. Yeah.
So I'm really loving the fact that my family are from here,
and I also love the camaraderie of them fighting for their rights.
A united front. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah.
Having only recently discovered her maternal grandmother's name,
Gemma's now pushed her family back four generations.
She's uncovered that, in 1901, her great-grandfather,
William Williams, was a baby living with his sisters,
their father - also called William Williams - and mother Thirza
in Dorset Street, one of the most notorious streets in London.
You can feel the history around here, though. I love it.
Gemma now wants to find out what happened to the family next,
so she's come to Spitalfields to meet historian Dr Emma Butcher.
Hi, I'm Gemma. Hiya. Emma. Lovely to meet you.
And you. Hiya.
This is the first document that we have,
and this is the Whitechapel Workhouse Infirmary
admission register.
Looking for that surname of Williams.
Oh, William Williams.
So this is my great-great-grandfather.
Yes.
So he was admitted in 1902 to the workhouse infirmary.
What's the workhouse infirmary?
It's a hospital for the poorest in society to go to.
Right.
He was 45 years old.
He still lived at Dorset Street.
He was unwell with...lumba...
..jumba? What's it called?
Lumbago.
Which means? Lower back pain.
And if you keep going along there - can you keep reading?
Oh, he's dead.
He did die in there, yes.
Oh, that's really sad. I feel touched.
How do you die of lower back? Was he in agony?
If you look at the admissions of all the people on here,
you can see loads and loads of different illnesses,
and the workhouse conditions in the infirmary were really bad.
So it's likely he would have picked up something,
and that might have contributed to his death alongside that.
Terrible.
Also, Thirza, my great-great-grandmother,
was left with three children under the age of ten.
No-one's got any money in them days, there's probably no benefits,
so what the hell did she do?
I've managed to find this document.
Wow. What is this?
Williams. At Crispin Street School. Age - eight years.
This is the baptism certificate of Nora and Julia,
your great-grandfather's sisters.
You can see their years.
Eight years. So Nora's eight and...
Julia's seven.
Seven and eight - that's quite late to be baptised.
Nora and Julia were rebaptised so they could attend Crispin Street
School, otherwise known as St Joseph's Catholic School.
But where's William in all of this?
William's also at that school. Good.
OK, so they all was put in the same school together? Yeah.
At the turn of the 20th century,
when Gemma's great-grandfather and his sisters were living there,
Spitalfields was still a very poor area, with many children destitute
and not attending school regularly.
Crispin Street School was part of a Catholic convent and refuge,
providing poor children and their families with not only
an education, but also a much-needed support network.
I think Thirza got them baptised as Catholics
because she wanted to get her kids into a good school.
It did help to be Catholic.
It's the sort of thing I'd do.
The testimonies that we have from the people that went there
said it was a safe haven in the community.
So the children, they would have been fed well,
they would have been in a clean environment, been able to wash,
and, basically, had some dignity.
Wow. That's amazing.
It just shows the determination of Thirza.
She wants to get her kids out of the squalor.
She wanted a better life for them.
She wanted a better life for herself.
Do you know what's touching about this, as well, is -
and it brings tears to my eyes - cos my mum was a real powerhouse
in our family, she changed our course of our lives.
She always pushed me and my brother to do really well,
so she must have had a lot of Thirza in her.
I love that. Mm.
I have found a document relating to Thirza which goes further back.
Wow.
It's my great-great-grandmother's - Thirza's - birth certificate.
Now, this was produced in 1865.
She was born in the Haggerston East district.
And this is her father, your great-great-great-grandfather.
Right, so he was called Gerard Moore.
And name of mother - she was called Thirza as well.
Her maiden surname was Moles.
What did they work as? Rank of profession of father...
What does that say?
Hairdresser.
No! You're joking!
Oh, my God. This is great.
Gerard Moore, Thirza's father, was a hairdresser.
I know, isn't it fantastic?
He was the Nicky Clarke of...
..that time, the 1800s.
But I suppose, back in the day, it must have been...
..extraordinary, really. Or was it the norm?
That's what you'll find out. Yeah.
Wow.
What really comes out of this is that Thirza,
my great-great-grandmother, really held her family together.
So I really admire her strength, you know?
I feel so connected knowing all of this now,
that if I ever had a child, or a little girl,
I'd have to call it Thirza.
How sweet is that? It's bringing tears to my eyes.
Gemma's great-great-grandmother Thirza Moore's birth certificate,
has revealed that in 1865, her father, Gerard Moore,
was working as a hairdresser.
Gemma's come to Hackney to meet cultural historian
Dr Sean Williams and hair and make-up artist Helen Casey.
I'm so excited to find out more today. Great to meet you.
She wants to know what they can tell her about
her three-times great-grandfather Gerard and his life
as a Victorian hairdresser.
Please tell me that Gerard Moore was the Nicky Clarke of the 1800s.
Well, I really like the idea of calling him Gerard because...
Yeah, I need a bit of glamour.
No, but because he was a hairdresser, not a barber,
and sometimes they called themselves hair artists.
Right. So they really could be creative.
Was it a prestigious job to be a hairdresser?
Was it run of the mill?
Well, hairdressers were on the up.
They'd split from the Guild of Barber Surgeons, and it was
a kind of freelance profession which was seen as -
to use a common pun - a cut above.
So what style should we recreate today, then?
We're going to turn you into a very elegant Victorian lady today.
Lovely. I'm going to be using one of these hairpieces
and some of your own hair. Fabulous.
We can see some of the styles from around the year
you were talking about, so this is 1867.
And it's Harper's Bazar.
Would everyday women have had their hair like that?
Just like today, the more money you've got,
the more you can spend on your hair. Yeah.
Doing your hair was one of the few ways that women had
for an opportunity for self-expression,
for creativity in the social period,
so people did take a lot of time and attention.
I'm absolutely buzzing to be here today,
because my mum was a hairdresser.
I remember her doing blue rinses... OK!
..and putting in perming curlers when I was young. Yeah.
So did Gerard have his own salon?
We don't know whether he had his own salon.
They would have gone to people's houses.
Often, their lives were ephemeral.
They pass out of history, and there's not much documents on them.
But we have a census from 1851.
This is parish of Eye, borough of Eye.
Where's Eye? It's in Suffolk.
So 229 Church Street in Suffolk, in Eye,
is where he lived with Dinah Moore, his mother,
Alfred, George, Ellen and Harriet.
Jared was 23.
He was a hairdresser.
Did they stay in Suffolk, or did they then move into London?
That's interesting when we think about Gerard,
because he was the one in his family who moved to London.
Because it was informal and there weren't, like, hairdressing
academies at this time, you could make something of yourself,
if you had the charisma. You learnt the skills. I mean, you can't be
a bad hairdresser... Yeah, he obviously had all the chat.
You've got to have the chat to be a hairdresser.
You've got to have the chat.
Let's have a look at this one. Yeah, sure. I mean, I love this.
Absolutely.
And this is all real hair. Yeah.
There was a huge trade in hair at the time,
and it was more expensive than silver.
Shall we put this one on me?
Let's do it. Fabulous. Let's do it.
So how were hairdressers viewed, then?
So we have something that will show us. Fabulous.
"Rather suspicious. Sentimental young lady.
"Will you be so obliging, Mr Tongs, as to cut off a long piece
"of hair where it will not be missed?"
The hairdresser would have been privy to people's secrets.
He was going into the homes of aristocratic young women.
Maybe she's going to give a lock of her hair to some lover
that he knows about, and other people don't know about. Right, OK.
Cos she's very sentimental.
What does that say about the kind of character he was?
They need to know when they can trade on information and gossip,
and when they need to keep it for themselves.
Me and Gerard would have got along for sure.
He sounds like a real entrepreneurial,
"I've got to get out of Suffolk," kind of individual.
So we're finished. Do you want to see the final result?
Yeah.
Fabulous. There you go. Fabulous.
So I would have been a stylish lady to have hair like this?
Absolutely. You're ready for, you know, an aristocratic party,
to go to the opera.
You're kind of ready to go.
So Gerard, his wife was called Thirza as well.
Did she come from Suffolk too?
So we have found a census from 1861. Right.
From Haggerston round the corner.
And this gives us a clue as to where she was from.
15 Kent Street, Gerard Moore.
32.
His wife, Thirza, was 38.
Yeah.
Oh, she's from Essex. Yeah.
Thirza was from Essex?
Yeah.
And from a part of Essex... Foulness Island.
Never, ever heard of it. Well, nor had I.
So maybe that's where you need to go next.
I'm loving the fact I've got some Essex roots in us.
It's all making sense now.
There's something really grounding knowing that actually Thirza,
my great-great-great-grandmother, was from Essex.
Hidden away and isolated from the outside world,
Foulness is the largest island off the east coast of Essex.
It's separated from the mainland by rivers and small creeks.
It's like a secret land in Essex that no-one knew existed.
I'm just going to take in this Essex air.
Owned by the Ministry of Defence, it's used for the testing
of explosives, so access to Foulness is restricted.
Gemma has had a special invite,
and is meeting one of its 150 residents.
Hello, Gemma. Welcome to Foulness.
Peter Carr runs the island's heritage centre.
We've got lots of family trees here.
And, as you see in this book, we have Moles. OK.
Here she is - Thirza Moles.
Thirza was born in 1822. Yeah, right. And she died in 1891.
So how old was she?
69.
Perfect. She had a good life. Good.
So above that is my four-times great-grandparents James and Sarah,
and they was here in 1778. Yeah.
James Moles married Sarah Garnham.
And what is quite sweet is that they lived next door to each other.
Aw! So you've got sort of, you know, childhood sweethearts
getting married. Right.
James and Sarah were parents to...
..one, two, three, four, five, six, seven eight,
nine, ten, 11, 12 children,
and the eighth child was my great-great-great-grandmother
Thirza. That's right. Born here.
But what I would like to know, Peter, is how did her parents
and my other ancestors arrive here? Oh...
We haven't got any further back with them than 1778, when James was born.
That's as far back as we can go, I'm afraid. Right.
A lot of people came here to hide.
There's no two ways about it.
You got people here who were only known by their nicknames.
They'd live in sheds... What, cos they were dodgy?
You bet. Really? Yeah. Oh, yeah.
And you've also got the people who chose to come here
because it was good farmland.
You needed the men to work here.
And we found this, which is what's called
The History of the Rochford Hundred.
I think it gives you some idea of the isolation of Foulness
and how difficult it was to get here. Right.
"It is extremely perilous for any stranger to attempt the passage
"to or from this island without a guide. But the dangers attending it
"have been a pleasurable excitement to many.
"Some of those who have been used to the sands all their lives
"have there yielded up their breath,
"and many hair's-breadth escapes are recorded."
So, basically, near escapes are drowning, I suppose?
In those days, you could only reach it either at low tide,
or you could go by boat. Right.
They were what was called racing the tide.
So, of course, the tide goes out, tide comes back in again. Right.
And the young farmers, they would say, "Right, let's wait till
"the last, get on the horse and cart, whip the horse up,
"and then race the tide,"
and try and get to Wakering before the tide cut them off.
They were dicing with death getting here. Oh, good Lord, yeah.
But they were determined to get here. Yeah, it was...
"OK, we can go normally when the tide's right down,
"but let's have a bit of excitement about this." Yeah.
So picturing James Moles and his wife Sarah Garnham,
what was life like for them?
A farming life was long and hard.
It would be cold.
And it is exposed. There were hardly any trees.
The day for James, I suppose, was ploughing an acre a day.
That would be walking eight miles behind a horse,
backwards and forwards, up and down a field.
Meanwhile, Sarah would be at home looking after the children.
Housework. It was all the hard, unrelenting work.
They were worn out by the time they were 40, a lot of them.
So Thirza was brought up in a beautiful...
Was it beautiful or not?
I think so... Cos I find it absolutely stunning here.
Yeah, I mean, they found this absolutely stunning place.
It was, as it is now, still isolated from the rest of England.
The birds on here are wonderful.
You see these great flocks of birds, and it just lifts your heart.
What is so interesting, my mum loves crows and ravens.
Does she? They're the bad guys. And I saw... Yeah.
I saw that there's quite a lot on here.
We get a lot of jackdaws, a lot of crows, magpies.
I can't thank you enough.
I have literally pieced together everything now. Yeah.
And how we are as a family.
I understand why my mum is the way she is.
There's so many traits from her great-great-great-grandmother
to now that we have.
And it's so funny, although I didn't know them, it's in my blood.
Now, that's what's interesting.
Well, it's took you 200 years, girl, but you got here, didn't you?
Yeah! Well done. Massively.
I feel just so connected with my bloodline.
I've got family out there that I never knew I had.
My family, they weren't shy of hard work.
They were grafters, they went out there and got it.
And, you know, we are grafters.
I've done well. Me brother's done well.
But what's been so interesting about coming to Foulness
was that my family line came from the land.
When I was younger, you know, we was always with horses, nature.
My dad had an allotment.
I am at my happiest here.
But the real standout character in my family history,
the award goes to Thirza.
My great-great-grandmother Thirza,
she rolled up her sleeves when William Williams died.
And that is where I get my spirit from, the Thirza line,
and that is where my mum gets her spirit from.
She was the OG.
And I'm the GC, the OG of Essex.
We carry on.