Last night’s episode of Who Do You Think You Are saw actor Rupert Penry-Jones eager to learn more about his Indian heritage.

Rupert was born in 1970 and he is listed below in the fully indexed birth records on findmypast.co.uk:

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Rupert began his journey by speaking to his mother, Angela Thorne. Angela was born in 1939 in Karachi, India, which was part of British India. We found Angela in our overseas birth records, as shown below.

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For the first five years of her life, Angela’s father, William Thorne, was a doctor in the army. William commanded the 29th field ambulance unit as part of the Indian Army in World War Two. William died when Rupert was 12 and he wanted to learn more about his grandfather’s time in the Indian Army.

Rupert Penry-Jones (copyright Owen Benson)

William was posted to Italy from India and was involved in the Battle of Monte Cassino in 1943, one of World War Two’s most vicious battles. Rupert’s mother told him that William never talked about his experiences in the army, so Rupert travelled to Cassino to find out more.

Rupert met a soldier who served in the battle and paid tribute to how brave William’s medical unit was. William’s unit worked on the front line, treating over 1,500 casualties with no regard for their own safety. William stayed in Italy until 1945 and returned to India where he worked until 1971.

Still with no answer as to his Indian heritage, Rupert went on to investigate his great grandfather Theophilus Thorne. Rupert visited The British Library and discovered that Theophilus was a self made man who did well for himself, despite a humble upbringing.

Theophilus was born in Somerset and joined the army as a private when he was 18, leaving behind his job as a gardener. He arrived in India in 1881 when Queen Victoria was empress of India and the British Raj was at its height. At this time in India there were plenty of opportunities for young men to prosper. Theophilus quickly rose through the army ranks to become major and he looked after ceremonial and state camps. These camps were lavish places where India’s and Britain’s elite paid homage to each other. Rupert learnt that Theophilus was part of the 1911 Delhi Durbar, a mass assembly held in Delhi to commemorate the coronation of King George V and Queen Mary as Emperor and Empress of India.

Theophilus’ army service record lists his marriage to Sarah Jane Todd in 1885 - here you can see them both on the General Register Office Index of Army Marriages in findmypast.co.uk’s armed forces marriages 1818-1994:

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Rupert discovered Sarah Jane’s baptismal record which showed her parents to be Thomas Todd and Louisa Johnstone. They got married in 1866 in South India when Louisa was just 15.

Louisa’s father, Thomas Johnstone, first went to India in 1842 where he was a sergeant in the Indian army.

Rupert travelled to India to find out once and for all if he had true Indian blood. He discovered that Thomas was stationed in Allahabad in 1857 during the uprising in India, when the Indians were rebelling against the British and their western culture. Thomas was 38 at the time and fought to calm and control the rebellion. At this time his wife Louisa and their children were in South India out of harm’s way. Rupert read some of the letters Thomas had written to Louisa which portrayed him as a loving husband and father. In 1857 Louisa received a letter from a commanding officer telling her Thomas had died after falling victim to cholera.

After tracing back six generations of his family in India, Rupert found out that Louisa’s parents were John Smith and Susannah (no surname). Rupert went to Nagpore to find out more about Susannah. Susannah’s baptism record shows her as an ‘Indo Britain’. Susannah’s and John Smith’s marriage record shows her surname as Collum.

Rupert then discovered that Susannah was baptised in June 1817 and the baptismal record showed her parents as Samuel and Elizabeth Collum. Elizabeth was born in 1816 but Rupert was unclear as to whether she was a native Indian or an Anglo-Indian.

Rupert successfully traced his mother’s line back eight generations, spanning two centuries, but never really achieved clarity around the origin of his Indian ancestry.

Last night, Monty Don became the latest celebrity to get the Who Do You Think You Are? treatment.

Monty Don (copyright jo-h)

The episode focused on two branches of his family tree, his maternal Hodge and paternal Keiller lines.

One of the ancestors focused on was Monty’s great-grandmother, Charlotte Augusta Hodge. The programme revealed that Charlotte was one of nine children born to the Reverend Charles Hodge and his wife, Ann. Charlotte was left behind in England when her parents and four of her elder brothers emigrated to New Zealand in the 1850s.

While taking a look at the large Hodge family in the all-new fully searchable birth records this morning, findmypast.co.uk has discovered that there was actually a tenth child – Charlotte’s twin. The image below shows the record of Charlotte Augusta Hodge’s birth in East Retford, Nottinghamshire in the July / August / September quarter of 1846. Nine lines below Charlotte is an entry for a Harriet Vere Hodge, born in the same district.

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The death index for the same quarter of 1846 reveals that Charlotte’s twin died soon after her birth. Reverend Charles and Ann Hodge’s youngest child was born four years after this tragedy and was also named Harriet, presumably in memory of the child they had lost.

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This fresh information may help Monty understand why his great-great-grandmother, Ann Hodge initially emigrated to New Zealand without her husband and family in 1850. It was speculated last night that this showed a wish to escape from her husband. However, we feel that Ann’s emotional state following the loss of one child and the recent birth of another must have played some considerable part in her actions.

Please do let us know what you thought of last night’s episode and what you think Ann’s motivations may have been for leaving her family in 1850.

Our expert Stephen Rigden, pictured right, answers your questions.

From Charlotte Paton in King’s Lynn, Norfolk:

‘I am trying to trace the family of Lilian (Lillian) Alexander who was murdered in Edingthorpe in April 1901, aged 8. She was born in 1892. She had a sister Alice who gave evidence at the trial of her murderer who was born in 1890. Dad was the ‘late’ Matthew Alexander on Lilian’s death certificate.

I can find nothing on any of the censuses about the family, who Mum was etc. Can you find them and explain why I can’t please?’

Steve says:

‘Many thanks for your question. I think the best way forward for you is actually the simplest - namely, to purchase the birth certificate of Lilian (which you can do online at the official government website). Her death was registered in June quarter 1901 in Smallburgh registration district; the death index gives her age as 8 years, as you say, which means that she would have been born circa 1892/93.

Checking the birth index, you can find her birth in 1892 in Smallburgh. The birth of her sister Alice is also there in 1890. The birth certificate of Lilian should confirm the names of her parents. Once you have the certificate, you could look confidently for the marriage of the parents (to get their respective ages at marriage), after which you can search for their births, his death and so on, as well as finding them on earlier census returns.

Of course, you could speculate that her father is the Matthew in the death index who died aged 54 years in September 1893 but it is always best to work systematically and from what you know to be correct and true, rather than guessing or gambling and taking a wrong step.

Smallburgh is a coastal registration district and one reason why you have not been able to find Matthew in the 1891 census is that he may have been at sea, for instance if he was a fisherman or a mariner.’

If you’d like to send your question to Steve, please register or opt to receive newsletters in My Account.

Following the launch of our fully indexed birth records last week, we’ve uncovered some interesting finds within the records:

• 10 babies named Fish Fish were born between 1840 and 1883, bizarrely, all in Lancashire. The list even includes one Fish Fish Fish born in Blackburn in 1864:

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• 340 Adolfs have been registered - with the last birth listed in the UK in 2005.
• Just five Ringos were registered in 1964 and 1965, compared with 2,414 Georges, 36,877 Johns and 56,170 Pauls.
• Six Dick Turpins were registered between 1854 and 1916 - a highwayman from the 1700s:

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• Four Maradonas were registered in 1986, the year of the infamous ‘Hand of God’ goal. Eight more were registered between 1999 and 2006, including two Diego Maradonas and two Ronaldo Maradonas.
• Eight Peles were registered between 1970 and 1972, following the footballer’s 1000th goal in 1969.
• Eight babies have been given the forename Hercules, with a further 51 bearing it as a middle name.

We also did some research into the birth patterns over the past century and found that the trend for births at certain times of the year has changed. In 1907 and 1908, the peak time of year for births was in quarter two during April, May and June, compared with 2007 and 2008 when July, August and September saw the most births. It’s possible that 21st century parents are more mindful of the school year than they were 100 years ago.

Search our fully indexed birth records today to see who you can find.

We’re very happy to announce that you can now search fully indexed birth records for 1837 to 2006 on findmypast.co.uk

Fully indexing the birth records involved rescanning 170 years of records and transcribing the quarter of a billion names within them. Over 1,000 people have worked on this two-year project.

These records are now the easiest to search complete birth records available anywhere online. The following are some of the benefits of the fully indexed birth records:

• Your search results will be in the form of a list of individual names, so you won’t have to check through pages of records to find your ancestors
• There is a complete 1837-2006 set of records
• The images of the index pages are completely new and very high quality
• We’ve added smart search features including name variants, and highlighting of unnamed children (very common in the Victorian period)
• There are clever search results to get around the quirks of the records, including the GRO’s procedure of initialising second names
• You can now search by mother’s and father’s name at the same time to help find those elusive births

If you haven’t had success finding an ancestor’s birth record previously, it’s definitely worth trying again using our fully indexed birth records - start searching them now.

Next on the list is a project to fully index the marriage and death records which we expect to complete by the end of the year.

As you may have already heard, we’ve tweaked our World Cup offer slightly to ensure that all of you receive the best possible service: whenever England play a match you will be able to access findmypast.co.uk for free for 90 minutes.

All you have to do is make sure you’ve registered on the site (unless you’re already registered in which case there’s no need to do so again) and choose your 90 minutes between 9am Friday 18th June and 9am Saturday 19th June (UK time).

England will play Algeria this evening at 7.30pm - it’s up to you whether you choose to take your 90 minutes of free browsing when England play!

Here’s the competition question we’d like you to answer for the second part of the competition. Search our birth records to find the answer:

How many first names was Ann Pepper, born in West Derby in the Jan/Feb/Mar quarter of 1883, given?

The prize: a digital camera, vouchers for a year’s Full subscription plus more family history prizes.

Keep your eye on the blog for a competition question to answer each time England play. For a chance to win the prize, send us your answers to all the competition questions when England get knocked out of the competition - we’ll give you details of how to enter then. Remember to make a note of your answer to each part of the competition - you’ll need to send us your answers in one bundle after England get knocked out.

You have until 12 July to send us your answers and there can only be one winner. We’ll pick the winner at random from the entries that contain all of the correct answers - the judge’s decision is final. We’ll publish the winner on our blog on 13 July along with the answers to the questions.

Good luck!

*All records available using our Full subscription (including the 1911 Census) will be free: Living Relatives searches and Memorial scrolls are not included.