The Saturday briefing
KNOWLEDGE IS POWER
YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED
Is there anything you’re yearning to know? Send your questions, on any subject, to the contacts given below, and we will do our best to answer them...
Q
At the end of The Shawshank Redemption, Alfonso Freeman appears in the credits. Is he related to Morgan, one of the main stars?
James Paterson, Salcoats, Ayrshire
AYes,Alfonso is Morgan’s son and he had a small part in the 1994 film, playing a prisoner who shouts “fresh fish” as the character Andy arrives. The mugshot shown of a younglooking Morgan was actually a picture of Alfonso. He was also in Morgan’s film Se7en, playing a fingerprint technician. Alfonso, who worked in telesales, was in his 20s when he first met his dad.
And whether it’s a spot of nepotism, a useful likeness, or a convincing dynamic, relatives do sometimes share the screen.
Angelina Jolie’s daughter Vivienne was five when she played a young Aurora in Maleficent – apparently other children were too scared of Angelina’s horned costume. In Tomb Raider,Angelina’s father JonVoight played her dad.
In Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince, Ralph Fiennes’ nephew Hero played the 11-yearold version of his character, Voldemort.
Benedict Cumberbatch’s parents made a cameo as his mother and father in Sherlock.
Q
Why is George Washington’s grandmother buried in a graveyard in Cumbria? Jan Harris,
Blackpool
A Mildred Gale, the paternal grandmother of
George Washington, died in Cumbria in
1701, aged 30, and is buried in St Nicholas’ Church inWhitehaven. But she was born inVirginia and had three children with her first husband, Lawrence Washington: John,Augustine and Mildred. Augustine would go on to father Founding Father George – America’s first president. After Lawrence died, Mildred married George Gale, a merchant from Whitehaven.
They met when he was in America buying tobacco, which was one of the chief imports to Whitehaven at the time.
Back then,Whitehaven was at the centre of trade with theWest Indies, importing exotic spices, sugar and rum, which explains the creation of Cumberland rum butter, a delicious buttery mix of the three that is still spread on bread and crackers today. Mildred made the long journey across the Atlantic to Cumbria in 1700, while pregnant, and with her African slave, Jane. But not long after giving birth, she died
from a fever. Her infant and Jane are also buried in Whitehaven next to her.
Custody of Mildred’s three children was left to George, but after a legal challenge from relatives, they were brought back to America.
George Gale eventually followed and settled in Maryland, where he founded a small settlement he named Whitehaven.
Q
Is it true that before 1950, the Royal Family paid money to parents of triplets?
Richard Kidd, Andover, Hants
A
Queen Victoria established the Royal Bounty in 1849, the practice of giving a sovereign (a one pound sterling coin) to each triplet. It followed a visit to Ireland where she witnessed the financial hardship one mother of triplets was experiencing. Often, women were not told if more than one baby was suspected, as it was thought it would scare them – rarely all babies survived and deliveries were even more dangerous.
To receive it you had to apply to the Privy Council, and to qualify, babies had to be alive at birth and the parents British subjects, married and in
“necessitous circumstances”, although this condition was scrapped in 1938.The payment lasted until 1957, with the bounty then seen as more of an honour from the monarch, rather than money of use.There are records of families across the Commonwealth receiving it.
Triplets born in March 1926, to the wife of William Stevenson, an unemployed labourer from Ilkeston in Derbyshire, were known as the Ilkeston triplets.
According to a newspaper report, Stevenson was “obviously perplexed” by this increase in his family, adding: “When I knew, it knocked me over.”
He received the £3 bounty and a baby food manufacturer also offered to supply the children with food for as long as they needed it.
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