Reality TV star Gemma Collins has revealed that she was a teenage tearaway who played truant and had screaming fits. “I went through a period of self-harm and a really weird phrase,” she admitted on Who Do You Think You Are?
In last night’s episode, she discovered that her maternal grandmother Joan was exactly the same in her early teens.
But Joan lived in less tolerant times. She was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and twice packed off to a mental hospital – once when she was pregnant with Gemma’s mother, also called Joan.
Gemma not only found out more about her grandmother but discovered a family link to Jack the Ripper, and one ancestor who died in a workhouse hospital.
The star of The Only Way Is Essex even found family links to the county stretching back to 1778, when ancestors James and Sarah lived on Foulness Island.
Gemma Collins not only found out more about her grandmother but discovered a link to Jack the Ripper, and one ancestor who died in a workhouse hospital, on Who Do You Think You Are?
The star of The Only Way Is Essex even found family links to the county stretching back to 1778, when ancestors James and Sarah lived on Foulness Island
A remote area even now, it was known in the late 18th century as a hiding place where criminals could escape from the law.
‘A lot of people came here to hide,’ said a local historian. ‘You’ve got people here who were only known by their nicknames.’
Four times great-grandparents James and Sarah weren’t villains, though – they farmed and looked after their 12 children.
Gemma’s research began with mother Joan, who knows little of her own ancestry. She was taken into foster care at the age of only two weeks and contact with her real mother was very rare.
She recalled only three, rather bizarre encounters.
When Joan was four, her mother turned up with a copy of Honky Tonk Woman by The Rolling Stones. She played it, handed over some sweets, and then left abruptly.
When Joan was a teenager who’d not seen her real mother in years, she received an unexpected letter.
‘She asked me to take her a packet of cigarettes,’ Joan recalled. ‘I just went in, had a cup of tea, and then said goodbye. Times were different then, I suppose’.
‘A lot of people came here to hide,’ said a local historian. ‘You’ve got people here who were only known by their nicknames’
Gemma’s research began with mother Joan, who knows little of her own ancestry. She was taken into foster care at the age of only two weeks and contact with her real mother was rare
The Ripper connection comes from Gemma’s great-great-great grandfather, William Williams.
He lived in a squalid house in Dorset Street, near Spitalfields in London, with 30 others, sharing a bedroom with his wife and three children.
That was in 1900, but 12 years earlier Dorset Street was at the centre of the Jack the Ripper mystery.
Ripper victim Annie Chapman lived there when she was murdered in September 1888. Another victim, Mary Jane Kelly, was found two months later November in Dorset Street itself.
No wonder this newspaper once described the notorious thoroughfare as ‘The worst street in London – where criminals are trained.’
It was great-great-great grandfather William who died in a workhouse hospital, probably from an infection he picked up after being treated for simple lumbago, lower back pain.
That left his wife Thirza with three children under the age of 10. She managed to get them into good schools by having them baptised as Catholics.
‘She really held her family together,’ said Gemma. ‘If I ever have a little girl, I am going to call her Thirza.’
