Things we’re told about our ancestors when we’re children can stick fast in the mind. Particularly if they conjure up a vivid image and have a hint of horror about them.
So it was with my mum and her great-grandfather, John Anthony Riboldi. His eldest son, also John, was born in London in 1861 and lived with my mum, her parents and siblings in Lancashire during the 1920s and ‘30s, when Mum was a little girl. She remembers her grandfather as a very kind but quiet man, who rarely talked about his past, but one day he told her that when his father John Anthony Riboldi died, ‘we danced on his grave’.
Quite a picture…
