Curatorial Heart Attack #2 (Almost)

Mining the pages of the Bristol papers from 1820 until 1840, for traces of the family Floyd, and what riches there were...and what potential sorrows.

Keeping in mind that Margaret Floyd, Emma's younger sister, was banished from the family by 1841, and sent to Ann Sophia's sister's menage, imagine my train of thought when I discovered, in the 1830s, in Bristol, one Margaret Floyd, arrested for theft, creating a public disturbance and prostitution, and ultimately sentenced at the general quarter sessions in 1838 to seven years' transportation.

Oh, well (modulo Margaret's putative birth in 1830), that all makes sense, and shines quite a different light on Emma's obsession with homeless and outcast women, not to mention the separation...

But that's not our Margaret.

Margaret-the-transported was born in Gloucester, in 1812. Thank heavens for the anal retentiveness of the clerks-pronounced-with-an-a in the British penal system, and the Church of Latter Day Saints for providing all that yummy data so we can help them identify folks for their baptisms-for-the-dead rituals.

Margaret, my apologies...