From one photograph, a life restored.
Paul Chiddicks — Stories Behind the Records
Paul Chiddicks has been researching his family history for more than 35 years. Now 61 and recently retired, he lives in Cheshire, England, with his wife, having moved there from his native Essex around 30 years ago. Paul writes Stories Behind the Records on Substack and pens the regular “Dear Paul” column for Family Tree Magazine (UK). He is a founding contributor to Genealogy Matters Magazine, where his column Between the Lines explores the universal themes of memory, identity, and legacy found within family history records. An active member of several Family History Societies, Paul volunteers weekly with a local group in Cheshire and helps manage social media for the North West Kent Family History Society.
Robin Stewart — Genealogy Matters Magazine (Host)
Robin Stewart is a genealogist, curator, and writer with more than forty years immersed in family history. She is the founder of Genealogy Matters Magazine and GenStack, and the creator of the GenStack Coterie, a community for writers, researchers, and creators who treat genealogy as an act of stewardship. Robin is the author of Creative Agency and is completing her next book, Stewardship Matters: A Storyteller’s Guide to Preserving Family History.
Jane Chapman — BJNL’s Genealogy
Jane Chapmanhas been researching family history since the early 1990s and incorporating DNA evidence since 2013. In 2024 she started a one-place study, and her two Substack publications — BJNL’s Genealogy and Kyeburn Diggings One-Place Study — draw on her family archives.
Lisa Maguire — ancestory
Lisa Maguire earned her PhD in History from New York University, where she studied modern Europe. Through original archival research and creative nonfiction, she uses her family’s experiences to explore immigration, identity, religion, politics, and community in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Canada.
Lynda Heines — Heines Sight
Lynda Heines is a writer, textile artist, genealogist, iris lover, and cat herder. Her sister’s death in 2023 pulled her back into writing about her ancestors and her own life journey. She lives on a small piece of land in Newburgh, Indiana.
Julie Dove — A Sense of Occasion
Julie Dove is a writer and researcher exploring food, memory, and the legacies we leave behind, weaving historical research and vintage recipes into stories that honor the women who rarely wrote their own down.
Anne Wendel — Grandma’s Granny’s Family Album
Anne Wendel is a lifelong genealogist and retired reading teacher who pairs family memories with photographs and research to keep her ancestors’ stories visible at Grandma’s Granny’s Family Album.
In 1901, a little girl stood before a camera in East London. Her name was Adelaide Springett, and her photograph became an enduring image of Victorian poverty. In this episode, family historian Paul Chiddicks joins the GenClub panel to talk about the article he wrote uncovering Adelaide’s life — moving beyond names, dates, and records into the deeper work of restoring a forgotten person’s story.
Paul walks the panel through how he first encountered Adelaide’s photograph, the research process that pieced together her life from birth records, census returns, workhouse and hospital records, newspaper reports, and family testimony, and the ethical responsibility that comes with telling someone else’s story. The panel — Jane, Lisa, Lynda, Julie, Anne, and Robin — bring their own close readings of the article, exploring questions of dignity, resilience, and what the historical record can and cannot tell us.
The conversation returns again and again to one central question: was Adelaide ever happy? And to Paul’s guiding belief:
“If we’re not their voice, who will tell their stories?”
1893–1986
Photographed by Horace Warner in 1901, Adelaide has been called the “poster girl for Victorian poverty in London.” Paul Chiddicks’s research follows her from that photograph through a life of hardship in Spitalfields and the East End, into her later years — restoring her from a symbol of poverty into a fully remembered person.
Guest: Paul Chiddicks — Stories Behind the Records
Host: Robin Stewart — Genealogy Matters Magazine
Panel: Jane Chapman (BJNL’s Genealogy), Lisa Maguire (ancestory), Lynda Heines (Heines Sight), Julie Dove (A Sense of Occasion), Anne Wendel (Grandma’s Granny’s Family Album)
Produced by: Genealogy Matters LLC
Images: used with permission and courtesy of Paul Chiddicks.
Music:
A Voice in the Distance by Giorgio Dal Monte, License # 1462342917
Where Our Story Begins by J Scott Rakozy, License # 8298508776
Northern Light by Allen & Bright, License #7000175817
Ezra’s Muse by Allen & Bright, License #1327694102
Escape by Allen & Bright, License # 3691468390
A.I. Generated Music, Roots and Branches. Generated by Genealogy Matters on Suno. Copyright 2025
© 2026 Genealogy Matters LLC. All rights reserved.
No portion of this video may be reproduced, distributed, or republished without written permission, except as permitted by law.
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