Before I explain the title I want to give some backstory on me and my family line. I am an Aussie currently living in Detroit, Michigan after moving from North Bondi, Sydney. I have known for a while that my mother’s side is quite special and has multiple syndromes and mental health issues in their family. For example, my mum suffered from depression and PTSD among other things, even though I was quite small when she passed away during my sister’s birth I still remember how my mum would have bad episodes where she would lose the job she currently had and lock herself inside of her and dads room for days.
But let’s get to the meat of the story before I get too sentimental and become unintelligible.
As I said me and my family moved to Detroit pretty recently for a job propositions that me and my dad got as engineers for a firm. When packing up all the stuff back in our home I noticed a small book that said “Family tree” and then my mother’s family name. I had never heard of this book so I took a break from packing and started to read through it and immediately found my grandmother (not my grandfather because he wasn’t in my mum’s life) and started to trace back from there. I immediately found out that I had a lot of doctors in my family which was a surprise since I only knew of mental health issues and not much else. After going through 4 generations I got more information that was new, and that was that my mum’s lineage was originally from the UK, it makes sense due to the British colonization and such but still didn’t know 100% until now.
I continued to scroll through the book and read all the stories and descriptions of who my ancestors were when I finally reached a guy I think 9 or so generations ago, his name was Elmer Barnfield and he was a Doctor with his own clinic in London. His description was almost eerie to read, I don’t currently have the book with me but it stated something like this,
“Elmer was a very successful doctor in London and was famed for performing surgeries with skills not seen in a man before. He lived most of his life with his daughters and his wife in a very affluent neighbourhood and in a very big apartment. Sorrow struck his household when at only 17 one of his daughters died after being found in an area known by locals as somewhere prostitutes used to work. Elmer was never the same after that and has a mental breakdown that landed him in a mental institution where he lived for 2 years. He was released on 7th August 1888.”
At that point, I stopped reading as it felt like I had heard that date before, I then googled “What happened 7th August 1888” and what I got back was “The First Jack the Ripper Murder”. “He was released the date of the first confirmed Jack the ripper murder” I said to myself in utter shock. I then went to his daughter’s page to find out the location where she had died and it said Whitechapel, England, I then looked at Elmer death date and it said 10th November 1888. That’s when it fully registered in my brain, I am related to Jack the ripper.