WHY ONE WOMAN WISHES SHE’D NEVER RESEARCHED HER FAMILY HISTORY... My great-great-great uncle Norman bummed the coalman’s horse...and my other ancestors were even

SHOCK FINDING: greatgreatgreat Uncle Norman AFTER seeing an episode of the BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are? featuring her idol Clare Balding, Emily Stoate decided to trace her own ancestors.

She used the programme’s website for some pointers on how to research records and set off to explore her forebears.

But any hopes of finding links to royalty or moneyed nobility were soon dashed.

Because Emily, of Stoke, Staffs did not find her antecedents in the pages of toff bible Debrett’s, or among the files of the College of Arms – she found them in COURT records.

Many of the 26- year- old’s ancestors ended up in prison or even facing the NOOSE because of despicable and perverted crimes that shocked late Victorian society – and continue to shock today.

Emily said: “The first person I managed to track down was my great- great- great Uncle Norman. He was had up at Warwick Assize Court after ‘ perpetrating an act of wantonness on a horse’. still

“It seems that he bummed the horse that pulled the coalman’s cart, while in drink, and he was jailed for eight years in 1889 and RESEARCH: Emily later died of dropsy in jail.”

Undeterred by her shock finding, Emily continued to follow the branches of her family tree – only to find more family shame.

She wailed: “No wonder my great granny – God rest her soul – never mentioned the family.

“I just worry that these sickos’ genes are in me. Perhaps I should be spayed?”

Here are just some of the rogues that Emily’s recent investigation uncovered…