Family history has a habit of bowling you a googly from time to time. There I was, having one last rustle through the newspapers, and apart from a couple more funnies – Viscountess Mina’s apartment in Paris was apparently decorated like an exotic Turkish boudoir, with huge floor cushions in place of chairs, while the Stratford Advertiser claims Viscount Edgar enticed young women to his home by inviting them to come and play his pianos – I thought we were just about done.
And then I searched plain ‘Riboldi’. Hundreds of hits, of course, though mostly variations of the original story about my 2x great-aunt Catherine Mary’s adoption and the judicial hearings.
But in December 1882, the Sheffield andprinted an intriguing piece headed ‘Startling windfall to a Lancashire mill operative’:
