WDYTYA? 100th episode - Twiggy

So, what better way to round off this series, and air the 100th episode of Who Do You Think You Are? than with Twiggy - someone whose name caused family tree puns left, right, and centre last night!

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Twiggy wanted to know about her mother's family - of which she knew very little, and found a story of desperation, crime, and poverty. The poor of London often ended up in such dire conditions as Twiggy discovered, and it was not unusual for a child's father to 'desert' - particularly when they couldn't make ends meet.

The criminal great-times-however-many-grandmother of Twiggy was sentenced to hard labour for passing counterfeit coin into trade - which led to an argument in my house as to how you can get change for a farthing. A farthing was a quarter of a penny; it turns out (thank you Wikipedia) that there was such a thing as a half farthing in circulation from the 1840s until about 1870 - always good to learn a new random fact!

The episode was a bit more interesting than I've made it sound here - particularly the death by bargain hunting. Shopping can be dangerous, it is, after all, a contact sport.

So, the end of the series. Have to fill up my Thursday nights now, and start looking forward to the inevitable next series - hopefully another 10 years and 100 episodes to go.