Call in the Bomb Squad – It’s a Genealogist!

I feel another Victor Meldrew moment coming on… Apparently, genealogists want psychotherapy to be made available for people who stumble across unpleasant discoveries while researching their family history, according to a story in the UK’s Daily Telegraph newspaper. 

An example of this is provided by Diane Mattinson, 48, an office manager from Bicester, Oxfordshire, who discovered that her great-grandfather, James Phillips, had never married her great-grandmother, Elizabeth.

"It was a bombshell," said Mrs Mattinson. 

Er, excuse me, a bombshell is what happens practically every day in Iraq, and the result is blood and death. Discovering that your great-grandparents weren’t married doesn’t even register on the Richter scale of bombshells. It might cause an ant to stumble, but that’s about it, Diane.

Physical and mental abuse may call for counselling, but genealogy? The world’s going mad, I tell you.