Asylum records

Crime has always been popular with family historians. We all love a rogue (up to a point, anyway), and finding out you’re related to one can lead to some interesting avenues of research. The more seri

At the foot of the stairs up to the Bethlem Museum of the Mind in Beckenham, south London, are two massive writhing naked male figures by 17th-century sculptor Caius Gabriel Cibber, known as Raving Ma

KATHERINE COBB is a member of AGRA based in Somerset REBECCA PROBERT is professor of law at the University of Exeter STEVE THOMAS is a genealogist with over 20 years’ experience PHIL TOMASELLI is a mi

Family history website Ancestry (ancestry.co.uk) has added a major new collection of 49,105,506 electoral register records from Birmingham, dating from 1833–1972 and featuring notable residents, from

Most of us have unfortunate brick walls in our family trees – those frustrating relations who seem to have appeared into the world as if from nowhere. Perhaps a person does not feature in the baptism

Do you ever feel that something in your heritage might be holding you back, or wonder if an event in your family’s past might explain a psychological block that you’re keen to overcome? From the very