Who Do You Think You Are - Patrick Stewart 29th Aug
 

This evening at 9 p.m. on BBC1. A Shakespearean actor best known for playing Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek The Next Generation!

I thought this was quite interesting - the production team constantly keepng the subject in the dark:

http://www.tvchoicemagazine.co.uk/in...-think-you-are

I suppose that makes for better drama? I don't mean that in a derogatory way - I almost always enjoy the programme - but it makes for better viewing. It's the same when we make our discoveries really

The bit about not knowing where he was travelling to surprised me a bit as generally after some discovery or other is made the 'star' of the show says "so it looks as if I'll need to go to XYZ now" and then you see them on the train/plane etc - I never had the impression they didn't know where they were going. Maybe thy have to go back to film the links afterwards?

Thanks for the link Merry... sounds like another emotional rollercoaster ;(

He's a fine actor... I'm looking forward to seeing this one :)

Oh dear. I'm struggling to stay interested. It's a history lesson.

OC

I found it very interesting. OK not much on family history but interesting all the same.

Episode Synopsis

Sir Patrick Stewart was born in 1940 in Mirfield, Yorkshire. He lives in London and Oxfordshire. The episode focussed on the story of his father, Alfred Stewart who died in 1980.

Patrick's mother was Gladys Barrowclough and he had two older brothers, Geoffrey and Trevor. Patrick had heard that his father joined the army before Geoffrey's birth, and that his parents didn't get married until Geoffrey was about 8 years old.

Patrick visited the Imperial War Museum in London where a researcher showed him Alfred's military records. It turned out that Alfred joined the army in February 1925, soon after Geoffrey's birth (28th Jan 1925) and that he married Gladys in 1933. He was a Lance Corporal in the Regimental Police. After a 7 year term in the army he returned to civilian life but when WW2 started, he joined a territorial battalion of the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry (KOYLI).


The KOYLI were sent to France in 1940 to join the British Expeditionary Force and build a transport network. Patrick visited the town library in Abbeville, Picardy, to find out more about this. The KOYLI arrived at Abbeville just as it was being bombed by the Germans and they had to retreat. They didn't leave France from Dunkirk, but from Cherbourg, being among the last Allied troops to leave France.

Patrick was given a newspaper cutting from the local Mirfield newspaper about Sergeant Alfred Stewart's return from France, which stated that he had been promoted to Sergeant at the front and that he was suffering from shell shock.

Alfred had been promoted to Sergeant Major by 1942, and in 1943 he volunteered to join the Parachute Regiment at the age of 38. In August 1944 he took part in Operation Dragoon in the South of France. Patrick met a 92-year-old man called Dick Hargreaves who served with Alfred and heard that they had protected the Allied HQ in a village, which Patrick then visited.

In 1945 Alfred was appointed Acting Regimental Sergeant Major of the 2nd Battalion of the Parachute Regiment. The Regiment had lost a lot of troops at Arnhem and Alfred helped to rebuild the Regiment.


Patrick's eldest brother Geoffrey always suspected that Alfred wasn't his real father. Patrick visited the Registry of Deeds and looked at records of the Dewsbury Petty Sessions from the 15th of May 1925 which showed that Gladys Barrowclough brought a bastardy application against Alfred Steward. There was a document which showed that Alfred appeard in court and acknowledged the child, and was ordered to pay 10s per week until the child was 16 years old. So it seems that Alfred was indeed Geoffrey's father.

Patrick then met the Vice Chair of the charity Combat Stress to find out about shell shock and its connection to domestic violence, and then went to see his brother Trevor in Mirfield to share his findings with him.

As usual, I'm not in charge of the remote, so probably won't see it until tomorrow!

I struggled to stay awake, I found it really boring.

Likewise!

They didn't even mention that Geoffrey's birth was re-registered after his parents' marriage, which might have been of interest to family historians.

Isn't history what family history is all about? If you don't understand the events surrounding the decisions our dead ancestors made, even ones as closely connected as one's father, by knowing some of the social history also of the time, then personally I don't see the point in doing any family research at all. Its not just about collecting names, places, and dates.

I enjoyed it. Just because it focused on his father didn't make it boring at all. He had a violent father he didn't even see up to 5-years-old... and by looking at archives and the history of the time helped him to understand and accept him as a fellow human being.

Yes but..... it got , shall we say, a little tedious?
As it was all it covered, just the generation pre Patrick.

I think they could have covered it as well, in less time though.
I'd like to have known where his mother came from too , and about his grandparents.

It DID help Patrick understand what made his father tick, but it didn't add a lot to what makes him who he is.

I wandered off long before the end, popped back once or twice to see if it had improved...not impressed.

Yes, history is important but this was a history lesson about the war. We could, as serious researchers, have found out all that background anyway, common to many other men, not just his father.

I felt this programme was more about Patrick coming to terms with his father. Interesting and compelling for HIM - but of little interest to anyone else - a bit like looking at someone else's holiday snaps! I really did not feel this was family history.

OC

I didn't feel very enthusiastic about this programme when I read the review in the Radio Times and didn't watch as my Mum is staying with me and we saw a dvd of "The King's Speech" instead.

After reading your reports I don't think I'll bother with seeing it on catch-up.

The husband felt he was watching a WW2 documentary on Military History, not WDYTYA - tend to agree.

Alfred was clearly a troubled man guilty of domestic violence. By concentrating purely on his military service, we learnt nothing about Alfred's earlier life and whether that, too, affected him. Where was he born? Who were his parents? Did Alfred's father serve in WW1? If the family were not from Mirfield, what brought them there? Was it mining? Gladys's father, Freedom Barrowclough, worked in the coal industry.

I still haven't watched the program, but if Alfred is the one from South Shields, his father isn't at home in 1911, nor 1901 or 1891 and I don't have time to try and work out who he was right now. Was at home enough to have 10 children though!

This must be the parents as Jane says married 30 years in 1911 and at least one child has middle name Cossom:

Marriages Mar 1881
COSSOM Jane Tynemouth 10b 301
STEWART James Irvine Tynemouth 10b 301

Here is the unseen footage, but again, it's about what life would have been like for his father in the army:
http://www.whodoyouthinkyouaremagazi.../footage/13789

I suppose the researcher looked at dad's upbringing, but couldn't see anything to warrant a mention in the programme. Perhaps they should at least have devoted a couple of minutes to it, if only to say they had found nothing of consequence. I suppose the programme isn't supposed to be teaching you to do your own tree, just telling the interesting part of someone elses.

Just been reading a Daily Telegraph article from 2007 about PS written by Nick Barrett, as well as a few other interviews in newspapers. Again quite a bit is abt his father, inc much of what was aired last night. Before WW2, Alfred worked as a labourer and post man. He was sober during the week, but could become violent after drinking at the weekend. Alf was also a committed trade unionist and Labour supporter. PS's first memories of elections were aged 6 when he was left outside a polling station.

However, the DT feature does reveal more about Gladys's family. She was a textile weaver and came from a family of miners, Methodists, involved with the WMCs.

It also states that PS spent much of his childhood in Jarrow. His grandfather was named William Stewart who at some point worked as a stage carpenter.

They said at the beginning that you had to be quite an intimidating kind of person to serve in the regimental police and that seemed to fit with his personality as his sons knew him, but of course he was in the regimental police long before his WW2 experiences. I suppose it just makes me think that we don't know whether he was just the same before WW2 or if it really did change him as they were suggesting in the programme.

Oh, so the one b in South Shields wasn't the right one then!

There are a couple of Alfred Stewarts born in Scotland in 1905 and one age 5-6 on the 1911 Scottish census, in Renfrewshire, with a William in the same household. There isn't much information about the Stewart side of the family in the Nick Barrett article, so I don't know whether Alfred came from Scotland:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1435...detective.html

As I'd neither seen the program or read anything about Alfred I made the mistake of not thinking about him possibly being a Scot. His date of death in England (another assumption by me!) tied in with a birth in Shields, which is where I went wrong! lol

*slinks back under stone*

I'm not sure the programme was the right place for this. The subject matter, ie. an account of one man's career in the Regimental police. Difficult to tell, but he certainly in his photos looked a 'hard' man - tightlipped and never smiling and I'd guess a strict disciplinarian... all I kept thinking was Gawd help those poor soldiers who came up against him (Reminiscent of Mackay in Porridge.:) A dour Scot!

Would have lightened it a bit if they'd told us something of his background, was his own father much the same, so that's where he got the personality. I certainly didn't think 'the war changed him' from what we saw.

And what of Patrick's mother - what a bad time she must have had, let alone the children :rolleyes: Not a happy home life by all accounts.

But a rather too 'personal' sop to a well-known actor and not a lot to do with family history in general.

In the article I linked to towards the start of this thread Patrick said he was hoping to learn more about one of his grandfathers, so I wonder if he was disappointed with how the programme went?

Dug up a few more clues looking at other interviews, etc.

D Tel 12/1/2007 quote: 'My father was born near Jarrow.'

Wikipedia on Jarrow: PS 'spent most of his childhood in Jarrow'.

A message board comment said that in a talk he'd given he stated that his dad came from Hebburn.

I'm sure in the show he said that his mother never left Mirfield. So were the three boys brought up by grandparents?

The family in South Shields could still be the correct one. The grandfather who was a theatre carpenter may have been his maternal grandfather.

Also another posting I saw stated that his grandfather (not specified which) was a Jarrow marcher. However, there are no Cossoms or Stewarts in the list of marchers. Mind you, some were meant to go on the march but were ill.

Ddi they mention if Alfred had a middle name? I picked the death reg from looking at the marriage which had no middle name. The death reg gave a dob of end of March 1905 which is what led me to the Shields birth. It's too much for me to look as I'm on my phone and in the car (not driving, but wobbly!)

James Irvine Stewart died in the late 1920s, so perhaps it was the other grandfather who was a Jarrow marcher? (unless James is the wrong family, but your last couple of posts have made me think perhaps I had the right people all along (by luck, rather than by proper judgement!)

Did they mention if Alfred had a middle name?

Don't recall them mentioning a middle name.

Also have double-checked the 2007 DT article and it did say that the grandfather was named William Stewart.

Also Patrick named his eldest son Daniel Freedom Stewart after his maternal grandfather.

Interesting as that means the Shields one is wrong, and yet:

South Shields and Jarrow are nextdoor to each other!

I'm not entirely sure why I keep wanting to persevere with this! Maybe I should actually watch the programme! lol Might get the chance this evening.

Lots of people in Jarrow claim to have had a relative in the Jarrow marches! Hebburn where PS says his father was born in in South Shields registration district. The reference to William is from the DT article. Poss his materal grandmother remarried?

When your watching freeze the screen and see if you can read any of the documents!

Will do!! lol

Quite a co-incidence, though these things do happen!

I should get to watch it at about 8pm and will have my trigger finger over the pause button :):):) Watch this space after 9pm.............

Not sure if this is of any help.

There is an Alfred Leslie Stewart 1902 Barrow in Furness, Lancashire on 1911 with parenst William Stewart and Agnes Ann (nee Parker).

http://search.ancestry.co.uk/iexec?h...=&pid=30776433

Alfred died in 1980 in Barking & Dagenham, London.

William is a Painter.