How do we include “messy” parts of a person’s profile, such as murder or suicide.

Question

Am dealing with a close relative who’s peccadillos were front page news where it happened.

Comments

Factually, as dispassionately as possible.  

Don't dwell on any "gory bits", as anyone wanting to know that part can go find it for themselves, or hang out forever wanting.

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Agreed - even if the newspaper spelled it out in blinding color, I usually tone it down to black and white and stick to the facts that are necessary to explain, and try not to peddle any fish stories (you know - where the tales grow taller with each telling). So if he had an affair, I leave it with just that. Not who he had it with. Although I might mention if it was a short-term or long-term scenario if that's important. If he committed a crime, I mention that he committed a crime on xx date at xx location. That he was arrested and sentenced to xx sentence. I often leave out the victims names intentionally, as someone can look those up elsewhere, and if you do put them in there, you need to be very delicate. Those are real people with real families and things can get touchy when someone believes you're glorifying the perpetrator when a member of their family suffered for their "fame".

So as Melanie said - just the facts. And only as many as are absolutely necessary to get the message across. If there's a link to additional details, you can add that and let others look there for all the gory details.

Answer 1

I would bear in mind that this is a genealogy site. However, lives of living people can be affected by the perception of negative comments. If it really isn't necessary or add value to the biography, I would err on the side of caution. In the case of well known public figures (JFK for example), there is no shock value. It can always be added later if you are undecided, but if you are hesitant you may want to hold off on it. The question is whether it adds value or "fluff" to the biography. Ultimately it is your decision.

Answer 2

Interesting discussion.... I had an ancestor who was hit by a train. His younger son matter-of-factly declared it a suicide (based on things his father had said near the end), and that was the story passed down among that son's descendants (of which I am one). The deceased's wife, however, was said to have been livid... not so much because she had lost her husband, but because of the shame it would bring on the family. Thus, there were two different "official stories" (theories, actually) passed down through the descendants of the older son (my distant cousins); either (a) the deceased had some kind of seizure and got stuck on the tracks, or (b) he was hard of hearing and didn't hear the train whistle. To this day the older son's descendants continue to insist that it was not suicide, even though that ancestor died many, many decades before anyone now alive was born, and the last people who actually knew him are long gone.

The death certificate states he was killed by being struck by a freight train. That is not in dispute; how he came to be on the tracks is. I am the profile manager for this particular ancestor. and have chosen not to include anything at all concerning the different theories. Even at the time of the event there was no way to determine the truth.

Answer 3

As usual, my philosophies on this subject are at odds with perhaps the majority of Wikitreers (or just those on G2G). I prefer to be honest about these kinds of things, which I don't see as "sensationalism", but rather as an acknowledgment of the fundamental humanity of the subjects of these profiles. We are all here for genealogy, and genealogy is the study of human beings and how they live, love, and die. Human beings are capable of wonderful and also horrible deeds and misdeeds. I also believe that by omitting these 'unpleasantries' we perpetuate a false perception of the past as somehow better and less complicated than the present -- when the reality is, every era of human history has been complicated. There has always been murder, there's always been suicide, there's always been rape, there's always been affairs and children born out of wedlock.

Comments

There is a difference, however, in factually reporting events, and going into full and gory details.

"Name died in 1913, aged 46 years, of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, survived by his wife and three daughters."

Or ---

"Name put a gun into his mouth and pulled the trigger, spattering brains, bone fragments, and blood across the nearby furniture.  He has left a devastated family of a wife and seven children, two of them sons."

One is a factual report, that may have some genealogical bearing (due to the possibility of inherited mental issues), the other is just "satisfying" the prurient interests of some people, and has no genealogical value at all.

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But no one has been advocating recording everything in bloody detail like in your example -- just discussing whether it's appropriate to include that these events happened at all. I trust that most Wikitreers would know not to sensationalize or glorify certain behavior. Honestly, our problem on Wikitree has never been having biographies that are TOO detailed.

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But some have discussed that in the past.

Honestly, our problem on Wikitree has never been having biographies that are TOO detailed.

commented by Jessica Key 

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You had me laugh aloud at that one!  

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I've never seen discussion to that effect, only discussion that is very much in tone with this one. Some Wikitreers would have biographies so dry, they would be nothing but a recitation of dates and places. Others get the vapors at the thought that the entire human population does not descend soley from Sunday School teachers and nuns. I'll never get over the woman who was scandalized to find out that her great-uncle Somesuch had stolen a horse in 1901. My grandfather shot a man and I don't act so delicate as all that.

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I have a distant relative who murdered someone and confessed in a letter to his own father. All of the details were published in a newspaper at the time. This person left no direct descendants. I think it's reasonable to excerpt the details from the newspaper, with no commentary from myself.

One might want to be more sparing when a person is within living memory, but you'd not want to leave gaps. Many people are interested in the genealogy of their own families because of unusual events, NPEs, or because they weren't allowed to ask questions about a person growing up.

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I think erring on the side of caution is a good thing when it’s so personal. My grandfather’s uncle was murdered by a man angry over some offense involving his (the other man’s) wife. I don’t know if there was an affair or what exactly went on.  I simply put in the bio that he was murdered and the date. I have a copy of a letter from the woman (written after the event) which I transcribed in the sources.  If anyone wants to read it, it’s there, but it’s not right in the bio.  A descendant here on Wikitree was very surprised, but not terribly upset, to find yes, this man died in the Civil War, but not by an act of war or disease.  If the people involved had lived more recently (maybe had living grandchildren) I probably would not have included the letter.

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My wife's ancestral Uncle (somewhere a few generations back) was one of the two last men to be hung in the state of Florida. It's hard to just plop that into a profile and not explain why he got to where he was being sentenced to hang, and then that leads into why he murdered some guy, at which point you tell the whole story anyway.

But I leave the gory details out - although I suppose there's enough detail there to let people fill in the blanks if necessary. Although I do have to tell the part about Buford T. Justice being brought out of retirement (well, that's what I call him) who figured out the clues, identified who the men were, tracked them down, brought them back to the city for trial, and even protected them from a lynch mob.

As Jessica said, it makes for a much more interesting profile than born xx date, died xx date at a young age of a broken neck.

Answer 4

This is a really good question!

It is important to deal with these facts in a sensitive manner, as individuals tend to have vastly different opinions on how they personally want to deal with confronting information - from wanting to know all the details available to preferring to pretend it didn't happen (especially when it's your ancestor).

I try to cater for this as best I can by including just a brief, minimal, factual statement, followed by something like "For further details please see ...." directing the reader to the source(s) I found so they can read all the details if they wish to.

My advice is to try and put yourself in someone else's shoes, a family member, a loved one (or even a victim, or their family) and consider what might be generally "palatable" despite your own preferences.

(?myself: I like truth and detail, but not everyone does!)

P.S. If I really am not sure I just include the source(s) under "See also:" so I can think about it some more, and come back to it.

Comments

P.P.S. A personal example:

I still haven't decided what to put on my uncle's profile - he died over 60 years ago. Officially it was a suicide, but my mother (who is no longer with us) refused to believe this, insisting that he would never have made the (long) trip from Queensland to Victoria, if he didn't intend to arrive, and personally give the baby gift he had in his car to his sister to celebrate the birth of her baby girl (me) just a few months old. Given the circumstances of his death, it could not have been accidental, leaving the only other possibility as murder. At the time no evidence was found to support this, despite my mother's persistence for some time afterwards. The verdict meant her church would not allow his funeral to be held in their church - she subsequently lost faith in the church (though not her faith).

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Christine, at the risk of veering slightly off topic, I highly recommend the documentary 'The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson'. Without going into details, it's about the reopening of a mysterious death of a notable person and the impact the investigation has on everyone involved. The family discusses whether it's even worth it to open the case after 25 years; after so long, there's very little chance of solving the mystery; but they do so on the grounds that their loved one deserves the dignity of having her death properly investigated. It's a very interesting documentary about a noteworthy person and what happens to the people left behind.

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Thank you

Answer 5

Hi Gordon, I'm not sure if this will help; however, I am including a profile that was rather "messy" for the maternal side of my family. It deals with a several times great uncle by marriage who went to prison for murder, polygamy and abandonment. It made the papers at the time (the 1930s).

We need to take the good with the not so good as long as we don't make the biography, etc. sensational or salacious. I try to report 'just the facts' based on family stories, newspaper reports, etc. He was married to my aunt and I remember her sons, my cousins, both of them were distinguished soldiers in WWII.

Here is the link: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Perry-18631

I hope this helps.

Comments

Interesting and understated profile. Last few words on the profile leave me wondering.

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Leave you wondering about what? Perhaps I can edit and clarify. Thanks!

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Just wondered what he was very good at.

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My grandmother used the expression 'BS,' which stands for bull ****!

Answer 6

My 10th great grandfather was John Billington (Billington-3) who came over on the Mayflower, and had the dubious distinction of being the first Englishman executed (for murder) in America. He sounds like he was quite a troublemaker.... The story can be found on his profile (which I had no part in creating, as I'm still pretty new to genealogy). My point being, the fact that he was a murderer and was hanged for it has not been withheld or sanitized in any way. Of course it's been nearly 400 years since then....

Answer 7

I think it is wise to be cautious.  The suicide made the news in several news articles back in the early 1900’s, my grand aunt’s suicide was newsworthy and several articles were very  explicit in her thought patterns at the time.  There were other suicides in her family.  Before her suicide, there was another suicide in the community that might have sparked her suicide.  I feel responsible enough, that rather than just relay the news, a comment is in order.  Without judging the ancestor, there must be some way to comment that life is not over when bad things come our way. The reader is our audience, not the relatives that have since died.  There must be a way to be truthful, yet socially responsible.