I saw this episode some time ago, and it was repeated here in Australia on TV last night.
Roy, am really interested in what you said about MORE abandoned wives and chldren of Joseph Forsythe Johnson. It would have made the programme even more compelling if they had mentioned this.
I am wondering if the wives kicked him out rather than him abandoning them, hence them declaring him dead (this may just have been what they told the children, which subsequently got passed down the generations) .
Although the programme implied that his wives knew nothing about his other life, I find it hard to believe that they can't have suspected (or known) that Joseph had other women if not children. They probably didn't want their children to know what kind of man their father was, and thought that by posing as widows they would keep face be seen as respectable. I don't understand why he admitted to fathering these additional children. Perhaps he was so well known that he couldn't hide behind an alias?
The programme did give Joseph a bit too much of a warm fuzzy feeling - Bruce made a few disapproving comments about his ggrandfather's antics, though by noting the similarities between his and Joseph's lives, he seemed to accept that Joseph was just 'a bit of a lad' rather than the philanderer he was.
