Mary Emmet, My Scandalous Ancestor

I never knew we had a scandal in the family – I always thought my family was boring and nothing ever happened to us lot.  Funny how stuff like that gets hushed up for decades.  I’m glad I found out about Mary Emmet while my gran’s still around to talk to, because she still remembers all the gossip from when she was a kid, and she can talk about it till the cows come home.  I’ve decided that’s the most interesting way to do research into your family tree; talk to the ancestors you’ve got who are still alive.  Plus gran loves it when I bring Suky round to visit her; she reckons she’s the spitting image of my mum when she was a baby, which is hilarious because Suky’s half Chinese and she’s got black hair – and mum’s blonde.  Or maybe she’s not a natural blonde… ooer. That’s one family secret she’ll probably take to her grave.

But back to Mary Emmet.  It all came out when I was talking to my gran about Suky and I said something about being the first generation of my family to get together with somebody from a different background and have a mixed race kid.  Gran said something about how “you young people always think you’re the first to do everything” and I thought, oh no, here we go, she’s going to go on about how hard it was when she was my age, living on Scotland Road with the whole family in two tiny rooms, and we young people don’t know we’re born blah blah blah.  Instead of which she told me that back in 1920 her mum’s little sister Mary had run off with an Indian guy.

Turns out this guy was a film director making a silent movie, and he got Mary to be in it.  She was working as a chambermaid at this guesthouse along the Scottie Road and he was a guest there.  Mary kept it secret that she was acting in the film because in those days it wasn’t that respectable, and with our family being strict Catholics back then (we’re all pretty ‘lapsed’ nowadays) she knew they wouldn’t approve.  So the first any of the family knew about it was when Mary turned up on the doorstep with this Indian guy and told everybody they’d just got married at the Registry Office.  According to my gran, my great great granddad tried to take the poker to him, so him and Mary turned round and scarpered straight out of the house again.  Brilliant.

Gran can’t actually remember anything useful, like what the Indian director’s name was, or what the film was called, and whether you can still get hold of it.  She’s not even sure where they went after they hot-footed it out of Liverpool, although she thinks it was America, because family legend has it that a letter arrived with American stamps on it a couple of months afterwards.  But gran says her mum told her that my great great grandad burnt it, so they had no way of getting in touch with Mary.  How frustrating is that?  I find out about this amazing story and then the trail goes stone cold.

Except then I had a brainwave.  Check out the registry office records.  At first I thought I was going to have to schlep all the way over to the register office in the cotton exchange with Suky in the buggy, but then I had a brainwave and checked the internet.  And yes, you can look up marriages online, then order a copy of the certificate by post – brilliant.

So the certificate arrived in the post a couple of days ago, and there it was: Mary Emmet was married to Shanta Rao Dutt on 6 June 1920 in the Liverpool Register Office.  So then I put “Shanta Rao Dutt” into google and you’re not going to believe this: they’re only doing a whole event about him in Liverpool this summer as part of the Liverpool 08 celebrations.  It’s being run by an organisation called Nutkhut, and when I looked them up I realised I’d seen one of their things a couple of years ago.  They did this show in 2006 called Bollywood Steps, where they had masses of dancers doing these amazing routines outside on the steps of the Catholic Cathedral, with fireworks, fountains, the lot.  I loved it – and even Harry got into it, to his own surprise!  So I’ve sent them an email to see if they can help me find out something about my great great aunt, since she was this guy’s missus.  They’re probably really busy, but hopefully they might be in touch with the family or something like that, and they can pass my message on.

Suky’s just woken up so I’ve got to go and make her tea now – I’ll keep you posted!

Tags: Docker and the Rose, Family History, filmmaking, liverpool, Liverpool 08, Mary Emmet, Movieplex, nutkhut, shanta rao dutt