Spanning 250 years and six generations of one family, A Stream of Lives includes mini-biographies of thirteen of my ancestors who lived in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Their experiences illustrate the dramatic changes in lives of British people through the period.
The following people are featured:
- A country vicar who founded a coastal town and harbour
- A religious merchant with links to slave-owners
- A professor of medicine who became Birmingham’s first coroner
- A community of mill-owners who got rich on wool
- A landowner who married a parlour-maid and became embroiled in a famous trial
- A sea captain who made many voyages for the East India Company
- A girl’s recollections of eighteenth century life in West Yorkshire
- A pioneering prison governor and explorer who was murdered in Australia
- A poet who became prime minister of New Zealand
- A philanthropic banker in Rochdale who bust the bank
- A craftswoman who nursed wounded soldiers through WW1 and WW2
- A young widow who became a local politician
- A soldier who fought in WW2 and became a champion golfer.
