Speakers

Even by Victorian standards, Bedford was a particularly unhealthy town. Polluted water, no sewerage, overcrowded dwellings, and overflowing churchyards all contributed to dire living conditions. As a result, Bedford�s residents suffered severely from successive outbreaks of plague, smallpox, typhus, cholera, and typhoid. This talk will explore how Bedford Corporation eventually stepped in to clean up the town and improve public health.

Continuing from The Admiral, The Rector and Long John Silver, the second talk includes the Keysoe Miracle involving William Dickens’ fall from Keysoe church steeple, Eilward Of Westoning and his miraculous recovery from castration and Alice Anderson’s touching memorial on which she records how her heart is forever entombed with her dead husband – four years before she re-married!

For centuries, education at all levels was provided, often free, by Churches, the State, charities, endowments, professional institutions and individuals. Surviving records are invaluable.

Colin Chapman is a Life Vice-President of the FFHS. Founder/co-founder of six county-based family history societies: President of three and Patron of another. A Vice-President and Fellow of the Society of Genealogists and a former member of its (then) Executive Committee. An acclaimed authority on WW1 German POWs held in Britain.

In this talk, Nick explores the sources that will help you find out more about the lives of your industrial ancestors, whether they worked in a factory, down a coalmine, on the transport networks through the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.