Maybe I've been reading too many genealogical mystery thrillers..

[LizzieL]

If you have an ancestor who was the victim of a crime or some other injustice, have you ever been tempted to trace the descendants of the perpetrator? Or conversely, if your ancestor was guilty of some crime, have you ever traced the descendants of his / her victims?

[JanPennington]

Not quite what you mentioned but I found a great uncle who died with a friend trying to rescue two other friends (girls) and I ended up researching the families of all four of the drowning victims.
And my son went into London and found the memorial to them.
Jan

[Nanna52]

Not a victim of crime, but my great uncle George James was killed in a mining accident in 1885.  A Daniel Crosthwaite was awarded a certificate for bravery when he climbed down the rope to help him after he was hit.  I hope his descendants know about his bravery.
Don't want to meet descendants of the engine driver involved though.  I'd probably say the wrong thing.
A couple of news reports.

http://www.rootschat.com/links/01kfw/

http://www.rootschat.com/links/01kfx/

[LizzieL]

I found out some time ago that my grandmother's first cousin was implicated in a fraud, he and his fellow directors of the company involved were sued by one of the people who had bought shares as a result of "over ambitious" advertising. I recently researched the shareholder's descendants and fortunately they hadn't become destitute by my relative's actions as I feared might have happened.

And I did find some descendants of the victims of a robbery carried out by my great great grandfather's brother's wife's brother. They are fellow Rootschatters!
http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=248682.msg5380458#msg5380458

I'm now trying to find what happened to the family of the man, one of my husband's ancestors accidentally ran over and killed with his cart in 1850.

[Liz_in_Sussex]

A while back I spent many hours trawling through the coroners records for Sussex looking for my ancestors.  I was disappointed that the same names kept cropping up as part of the jury but never as the accused (or victims). 

Then I struck lucky  and found the case of my mother's 9xGGF's brother (on her father's side) found guilty of the manslaughter of the wife of the Forgeman he worked for.  And then the horrible truth dawned - the poor victim was my mother's 11xGGM on her mother's side.

I don't suppose it ever occurred to them that 300 years later their descendants (my Mum's parents) would be bring the two families together!  I think it's safe to say also that neither of my Grandparents knew the story.

During those 300 years there are well documented power struggles between the two families in Mid Sussex (they never moved very far at all) which have been preserved in documents such as Churchwarden's notes and 'donations' to the Church - each vying for greater prominence and the accumulation of land and property!

Liz 

[trish1120]

Lincolnshire Archives;

Barton on Humber
Trial date:
3/9/1839
Mary CLAYTON
Stealing a piece of blond and goods the property of David Holdsworth, draper, from his shop

David is my 2nd Great Grandfather.

Poor Woman was 35 and was Transported, sentence 7 years.

[Ayashi]

My 4xgt grandfather Mark Brady got into a drunken brawl with two of his shipmates and ended up caving someone's skull in with a handspike. He was in Newgate Prison for something like 19 weeks before going to trial at the Old Bailey. One of the doctors at the trial said that if the victim took care of himself he could go on to make a full recovery. I wasn't interested so much in descendants but I did wonder what happened to the victim and how he fared from that point on. Never did find him, sadly.

[jaybelnz]

A James Cavanagh took a potshot at my 3x great grandfather, a landowner in Ireland.  Notice in the newspaper noted the names of the victim and his attacker, and stated that the bullet had been stopped by the victims clothing and he was unharmed.  At the trial, the offender was found guilty of attempted murder and sentenced to a public hanging outside the County Local Jail.

I'd just love to know what it was all about!!  Was it a robbery, was my ggggrandfather a bad landlord, or did the offender have a grudge or owe him money!  Will pigs ever fly??? 

It's a shame that there are so many things we will never know about our ancestors, good things and not so good things, and perhaps it's good that we don't know it all! 

[Erato]

Well, I've got someone who was a victim of a very notorious serial killer [Louise Peete] and, yes, I did investigate what became of her one known descendant.