I recently watched Martin Freeman’s episode of the BBC series ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’. The concept of all of this is quite fascinating, as various celebrities were helped to trace their family trees. For the genealogist, the series is of great help in learning how and where to find the various pieces of information necessary to put together the history of their own ancestors.

However, this episode stood out from all the others due to dramatic discoveries in the later stages with the revelation that his great-grandfather, Richard, was born blind and fathered Martin’s grandfather, Leonard, at an advanced age.

Investigators unearthed various pieces of evidence that give us the story of Richard, who became a church organist in Worthing, fathering six children with one wife, who died, and then another six with the second. An ad in the parish magazine then mysteriously refers to his departure from his job and town, alluding to a kind of scandal.

Richard reappears in Hull a few years later with a third wife, but this time she is also blind. They were successful in raising six children (including Martin’s grandfather, Leonard) before Richard passed away at the age of 70.

Upon further investigation, it emerged that Ada had given birth to Richard not six, but 12 living children and, armed with the birth certificates of four of the children who did not survive, Martin sought the advice of a Great Ormond Street expert. . Together they discovered that these four had been born and died of some form of “failure to thrive” within six to eight years.

In the years before and after the turn of the 20th century, the most common cause of this was congenital syphilis, a disease that can also cause blindness, either at birth or in the early years due to glazing of the skin. cornea.

It was learned that Ada had not been born blind, but had lost her sight at the age of three and her older brother’s death certificate showed that he had died a month before she was conceived of ‘constitutional syphilis’ at the age of only three. months. This meant that she had symptoms that were undeniable and could not be classified as mere “growth failure”, confirming that the most likely cause of Ada going blind as a child was the disease itself.

The common perception is that syphilis, in those days, was fatal, going through various symptoms, including a horrible facial rash that eventually caused his nose to fall off, before going insane.

The consensus of the experts was that Ada had been born with congenital syphilis (that is, contracted from her mother and transmitted during pregnancy) and recovered without treatment because in certain cases it is possible for the disease to ‘go out of the system’ over a period of four to six years.

However, having the disease once does not mean that you are immune forever. So her husband, Richard, had reinfected her, and passed it on to his own fetus in utero. She managed to recover for the second time and had more children who were not affected by the disease.

Apparently, if a woman who has had several healthy children suddenly goes through a 6-8 year period in which she has a series of miscarriages, stillbirths, or neonatal deaths, then syphilis is the most likely cause.

The Kassovitz Law of 1875 dictates “the spontaneous gradual decrease in the intensity of syphilitic transmission.” So several births will be miscarriages, then stillbirths, then unhealthy children who die quickly, unhealthy children who survive, and then become healthy children again.

Syphilis is a sexually transmitted disease that first appeared in the 1490s in southern Europe and spread rapidly across the continent, where it was also known as the French disease. Due to his extreme contagion and horrible symptoms, he was as feared as the plague.

Many have said that Henry VIII suffered from it and this was evidenced by the ulcer on his leg and his inability to father healthy children. However, this is not fully confirmed by the evidence, based on Kassovitz’s Law. Catalina de Aragón got pregnant six times. She gave birth to four children who lived for a few months or who were stillborn. He then had a healthy daughter, the woman who became Bloody Mary, followed by another daughter who died within weeks. At that time, Henry also fathered the illegitimate Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond, who died at the age of 17. Anne Boleyn’s first child was Elizabeth, followed by two miscarriages. Jane Seymour’s first and only pregnancy produced Edward VI, who, although not the most robust of children, survived to 16 years.

It wasn’t until 1928 and the advent of penicillin that a cure was found.

In the late 1890s and early 1900s, syphilis was very common and extremely contagious. Most people passed it on without even knowing they had it. If the illness or the method of his contraction had anything to do with Richard’s sudden departure from his respectable job and lifestyle in Worthing, we’ll never know, but it certainly does lead to lewd conjecture.

Statistics show that one in ten people in Britain had the disease at that time. So, as the sexual health expert put it: “Of all the people currently doing genealogy searches, at least 10% have a sporting chance of finding syphilis in their family tree.”

It is certainly a very sobering thought.

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