If you could shout at someone from the past....

[JenB]

Since we are shouting out a few people, I'd like to add Shute Barrington to the mix!

Thank you for adding Shute Barrington. I was going to add his name a few days ago then completely forgot.

Here he is in all his glory. https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/shute-barrington-17341826-bishop-of-durham-17911826-43613  Family historians with ancestors in the north-east owe him a great debt.

[clairec666]

Think of the unexpected consequences if we could go back in time and actually change something, we could be the cause of a world war or something like penicillin not being discovered, through tampering in the course of history.

For example an anti-bomb protestor could go back and prevent the atomic bomb being developed (perhaps a worthwhile achievement), but possibly resulting in the world being totally destroyed by chemical weapons.

I'm sure I'm not the only person here who wouldn't have been born if it wasn't for WW2. So preventing Hitler being born might be a worthwhile intervention, but would prevent me from existing.

Hopefully if I encouraged vicars and parish clerks to use nice readable handwriting and record as much information as possible...… That's less likely to have an impact on major historical events, but could have a major positive effect on our research.

[River Tyne Lass]

I agree that meddling could have other consequences, potentially disastrous but I think if we could time travel it might sometimes be very difficult to resist.  Just as well I am stuck in the here and now.

Talking of good things coming out of war - I think that despite all the hard work/efforts of the suffragettes/suffragists I don't think women would have received the vote without the Great War.  Up until then I think it was generally assumed that women were incapable of having any rational or worthwhile thoughts and that they were best off confining themselves to the home spheres and letting the more 'intelligent' men in their lives speak for them and manage how things were run and how their money was spent etc.  However, I think that because of necessity when women were needed to step up in droves to do work previously done by men and they managed to keep the country running so well on the home front .. all of this false belief about women and their lack of capability began to (albeit gradually) fall apart.  So that is one thing I am grateful for .. that the women then were amazing on the home front and I believe it was this that eventually led to women getting the vote without unconditionally.

Claire, I totally agree with your comment on handwriting and providing more detailed information.  If only some of them could have travelled to the future to see how important this matter is to enthusiastic family historians. . I would also remonstrate with our ancestors and would say .. " Please try to be more truthful or careful about your answer on place of birth and try to be consistent with this on each census.". I would also say to them expand a bit more . . "I want to know more than just you were born in Ireland .. Ireland is a big place .. where was your home town/village?"

I would also remonstrate with the editor/publisher of the Illustrated Chronicle - great as that newspaper was and that this has supplied us with many war ancestors' photos.  My moan about this newspaper is that the print of some of the articles and death notices is incredibly small.  I would ask them if they thought their readership was made up of educated birds of prey  as only such creatures could be expected to read some of the tiny print without difficulty.

Some of the early editions of other newspapers such as the Shields Daily News was the same.   So I would say them - please increase your print size so people can stop reading without having to have their nose on the page to do so.

[coombs]

I'd go back to 1600 and be part of the UK government back then to make it mandatory for baptism registers to put mother's maiden name, marriage registers to have parents names of spouses and burials to have an age listed. It would make it easier for us genealogists but I would have it enacted so that it is easier to prove relationships when it comes to probate and inheritance disputes.

[jaybelnz]

I would time travel in a wink if I knew I would meet up with the wonderful Jamie Fraser of Outlander fame!  Sigh!!! 

[Guy Etchells]

I agree that meddling could have other consequences, potentially disastrous but I think if we could time travel it might sometimes be very difficult to resist.  Just as well I am stuck in the here and now.

Talking of good things coming out of war - I think that despite all the hard work/efforts of the suffragettes/suffragists I don't think women would have received the vote without the Great War.  Up until then I think it was generally assumed that women were incapable of having any rational or worthwhile thoughts and that they were best off confining themselves to the home spheres and letting the more 'intelligent' men in their lives speak for them and manage how things were run and how their money was spent etc.  However, I think that because of necessity when women were needed to step up in droves to do work previously done by men and they managed to keep the country running so well on the home front .. all of this false belief about women and their lack of capability began to (albeit gradually) fall apart.  So that is one thing I am grateful for .. that the women then were amazing on the home front and I believe it was this that eventually led to women getting the vote without unconditionally.

snip

Not so women did in fact have the vote far earlier than that, they could vote in local elections and a few could vote in the parliamentary elections.

Cheers
Guy

[Nanna52]

Australia gave women the vote in 1902 in federal elections and the states followed in the next few years.  New Zealand was even earlier.

Clairec666 I'm with you, my parents met during WW2 and I doubt they would have otherwise as dad was a country boy and mum a city girl.

[Caw1]

Mine too, Nanna! Although they were both living in Egypt before the war but I doubt their paths would have crossed if it hadn't been for the war..

Just picking up some of your points RTL... yes, it would be great if ancestors had put down where they were actually born and been consistent on each census, again with their actual birth dates.... but here's the thing.. some of them had no idea where they were born if they moved from that place as a child or exactly how old they were. Literacy wasn't the norm so filling in documents had to be done by someone else.. causing discrepancies perhaps because of local dialects and the person giving the information couldn't read it and say 'oh that's not correct' as they weren't able to read in the first place.
I wonder too how much of saying where you were born was to do with poor law payments, if you couldn't prove where you were born you couldn't be sent back.
Most of my ancestors seem to originate from London and there are certainly lots of boroughs within London making it difficult in some instances to pin them down! Oh for family who came from anywhere and stayed in that anywhere for large portions of their lives... it would make my job a great deal easier!
It is half the fun, and frustration, of FH to put on your detectives hat though isn't it!

Caroline

[Ayashi]

Imagine if someone came up to you today and started shouting at you, saying that you are their great great great grandmother/father and all the things you did wrong 

It'd be hard to go back in time and watch your x great grandparents proudly cradling their new baby and thinking "that one dies, and I know how", especially with a gruesome death like burning. I've thought about this with my 2xgt grandparents and their 11 children.

The birth order was William, Thomas, Thomas, Joseph, Mary Ann, Elizabeth Jane, Ethel, Elizabeth Jane, Olive, Charles Edward, Nora. The first Thomas was born prematurely and died within hours. The first Elizabeth Jane was born weak and died after 9 days. Charles Edward died at a few months old- we speculated on here that it might have been heatstroke. My ancestor was Olive and the mother would already have been pregnant with Nora when Charles Edward died. If I knew why Thomas was born premature (such as a fall or some other external trigger) then maybe he could be saved- but if he was born full term, this would affect the date of conception for the subsequent baby and all other subsequent babies, presumably then preventing the birth of Olive and therefore unwriting my line and preventing my birth. Same with Elizabeth Jane. However, if I saved Charles Edward (and sadly if we are right then his death probably was preventable), all children would still exist but then how might his being alive affect things? Would Olive still have met her husband? Who knows.

My grandmother's sister married my grandfather's brother- I believe that is how they met. My own parents met when they both got invited to a joint birthday party, although mum recognised him from church and apparently they'd already been introduced the year before but mum didn't remember. So if there was ever a moment like Back to the Future where two people need to dance together in order for me to be born, that party was apparently it.

Ayashi