A Hanged Man
 

Family stories are difficult to interpret at the best of times. When it is "an ancestor" in someone else's tree, it is even more challenging.

I'm doing a friend's tree, with a tale of a man hanged on Portsmouth Common.

I have discovered a small scale criminal, moving from his home village in Oxfordshire and joining the Royal Marines, having several children before he married his unfortunate wife, continuing his nefarious activities, but stupidly stealing from his fellow marines.

He was court martialled, severely flogged, and sent to Winchester Jail, where he died a few weeks later of a rupture of an abcess on the liver. It's hard not to think that a particularly bad flogging may well have caused his death.

I can't help feeling that the family may well have embellished a rather sad and sordid story for the sake of the children, embellishing it with each generation. (My "came over with the Potato Famine" story, also Portsmouth was patently wrong as our ancestor James Riley died several years before the famine started!)

Do you think I have found the origin of the story, or should I keep on looking?

Was there anything else to the family story, other than that someone was hanged?

Not a sausage. If it was the family name, then this is the only candidate.

Another issue is that perhaps someone was hanged with the same family name so he was claimed as a relation when he was not!

Rather like my mother saying she was related to John Sainsbury and Cyrus and James Clark when extremely unlikely to be the case, or my gran saying she was related to Bombardier Billy Wells despite refusing to acknowledge that she was related to the other Wells in her family (her mother and mother's ancestors).

Would it need to be the family name though?

I think you mean 'only candidate so far'!!

Specifically Portsmouth Common? Is that the area now called Portsea?

Was it still called Portsmouth Common by locals after it was renamed in 1792?

It's the bit by Clarence Pier. If I turn my head, I have a framed photo on the wall behind me.

I'm going to need to bully my friend a bit on this. The trouble is, when you do press for details, people get more confused, rather than more accurate.

It's a good job I'm going out soon because googling, gallows "portsmouth common" turns up a lot of interesting things, most likely all unconnected with your search!