RootsChat.Com

I have one death cert where the man died in the workhouse infirmary and in the margin it reads
For Clayton read Cleaton,
For 63 read 57 years
 For General Labourer read Gunmaker
Corrected on the 16th June 1893 by me
George Shread registrar on production of a statutory Declaration by  Catherine Cleaton and Henry Walter Deeley 

 

The 2nd wife of one of my ancestor's committed suicide by drinking sheepwash containing arsenic. It didn't kill her for several days by which time she had 'confessed' to her husband what she had done and a doctor had been called.
 The inquest was held at the local inn
"The jury returned a verdict of felo-do-se,(sic) and she was buried the same night, between the hours of nine and twelve, without funeral rites. " Northampton Mercury  Jan 1856
According to the Wikipedia article on Felo de se, it was by then quite rare for juries to return this verdict, with juries giving  people the benefit of the doubt saying that they were non compos mentis at the time of the deed.

I and my father have both had autosomal tests at 23 and me. Initially I did mine because I'd done some courses in genetics and developed an interest. I didn't even consider it's use in genealogy
I later had my father tested because  this would enable me to see whether people I matched DNA with, matched on my mothers or on my father's side. It narrows the field considerably.
I have lot's of matches on both sides but they are only of any use when the other person also has a family tree; then just occasionally you may be able  join the dots and make a connection . I recently found a match on my mother's x chromosome with a person in Canada. It transpired that we shared the same 5xg grandmother. He hadn't got back that far and I hadn't traced this sibling line across the Atlantic. 

Ethnicity is a different matter though. It's mildly interesting but no more than that.  My ancestry is firmly rooted in the Midlands with all 16 gg grandparents born there (12 of them from Northamptonshire). I think my results are exactly the sort of mix I would expect in central England .   
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/mar/18/genetic-study-30-percent-white-british-dna-german-ancestry
 
50.0% From Mother (she has all of g grandparents from Northamptonshire)
23.9%British & Irish
6.7%French & German
3.1%Scandinavian
16.1% Broadly Northwestern European
0.1% Ashkenazi
0.2% Broadly European

 50.0%From Father  (4g grandparents from NTH, the rest from the West Midlands, a couple of whom might have recent ancestors elsewhere)
 34.7% British & Irish
4.6% French & German
0.4% Scandinavian
9.3% Broadly Northwestern European
0.1% Ashkenazi
0.7% Broadly European
< 0.1% Middle Eastern & North African
< 0.1% Broadly Middle Eastern & North African
0.3%Unassigned