Ed Balls: Teen kiss shame of my navy hero ancestor
Ex-MP is happier to learn of political rebel in family tree
If you’re a man in your 40s with a load of kids, don’t kiss 16 year olds
ED Balls has blasted an ancestor accused of kissing a teenage girl when he was a surgeon in his forties and a dad of eight as “an idiot”.
Former Labour MP Ed, 54, said the discovery on Who Do You Think You Are? about his great x3 grandfather on his father’s side was upsetting.
“If you’re a man in your late forties with a load of kids, you don’t kiss 16 year olds,” he said. “I had to go back and tell my dad, who was disappointed.”
But he is happier to learn of a farm labourer on his mum’s side who is jailed after defending his livelihood. Speaking ahead of the episode being shown on BBC One this month, Ed said: “I went in thinking we were going to be boring Norfolk farmers.”
He discovers William Dunbar worked as an assistant surgeon on HMS Victory, treating crew during the Napoleonic Wars.
But when he took on a post at a workhouse in Kent in 1841, Dunbar is accused of kissing the workhouse owner’s daughter.
Ed, whose youngest daughter Maddy is 16, said the historian tried to make him feel better. He said: “She was saying, ‘surgeons were often scapegoats’. And there’s a report a few years later about the workhouse owner and the daughter being accused of cruelty. Maybe my ancestor, she says, was being set up? We’ll never know.”
On his mum’s side, agricultural worker Christopher Green was jailed in 1822 for lobbing a threshing machine into a pit.
“This was a rebellion against machines, a political act,” Ed said. “I’d have probably done it.”
Green is later charged with stealing a sheep but a jury at Norwich Castle found him not guilty, realising he was rebelling against poor pay.
Ed added: “The easy thing to do would’ve been to hang him. I ended up feeling pretty proud.”
Who Do You Think You Are? BBC1, November 23, 9pm. nicola.methven@mirror.co.uk
@mirrormeths
ED BALLS