Thought I'd give the latest Resource a try. Oh dear, greatgrandfather might have gone to prison for two months with hard labour for leaving his wife, thus obliging her to go on the parish of East Dean. Evidently, he came back and lots more children and that's how I am here today.

Funny, you aren't a Hopkins are you?? I found one with my name who had done the same thing!

Not sure if he is one of ours or not, but he went to the nick twice for the same thing!

I guess there was a lot of it about at the time. :-0

I hadn't come across it before. One doesn't like to draw attention to criminality in the family, however......James Griffiths, 1861. It all seems to fit except possibly the curly hair. Sudely must be Sewdley/Soudley. I think we were the only Griffiths's there at the time. There was another one later.

My trip to Gloucester Archives last year helped me uncover new information about my great-grandfather, Oliver William Bowdler.

In 1922 he was committed to one month's hard labour in Gloucester Prison for neglecting to maintain his wife. (At the time she was in Westbury Workhouse and her husband was supposed to be paying maintenance towards her upkeep.) On release he agreed to pay 10 shillings a week. So far, he's the only ancestor I've found who has "done time"!

Oh no Janey, not yours as well. As well as my ggrandfather, which I fessed up to, his father may have got 6 months with hard labour for stealing a bag of potatoes in 1830. He could have been transported for that. Perhaps he got away with it, relatively speaking, because his wife was pregnant with my ggrandfather. Just to complete the picture, my grandfathers eldest brother was always up before the beaks for being drunk and disorderly.

I wonder what 'hard labour' actually consisted of. An ancester of mine spent a month, with hard labour, in Littledean jail for shooting his brother-in-law.

This may give a bit of an idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labour

I knew about breaking rocks for roading, treadmills, and picking oakum, but it looks as though our ancestors were a bit more creative than that...