The furthest I can go back is my granddad Billy born 1878. He was quite a character and "lady's man".
He married twice having five children with his first wife and four with his second (my line).
He died in 1963 and I remember his sisters, both in their nineties, crying and saying he had died so young, 85, because of his wild womanising ways.
He was only 5' 2" and never had to go to war because he was excused for being too short. He was definitely a bantom cock and would out drink and outfight any challengers.
He lived through desperate poverty and told me there were times when he had walked to length of Macclesfield canal looking for watercress and herbs to put on bread as that was all they had to eat.
He had lived his life pretty much as he wanted when married to his first wife but his second wife, my grandmother, was a bit of a shock, she put a stop to his drinking and once knocked him senseless for coming home drunk. He behaved himself for the rest of his married life but when she died in 1940 he got legless at her funeral.
He staggered upstairs to bed and swore blind for the rest of his life that she had come out of the bedroom and thrown him down the stairs for being intoxicated. He never went up the stairs again and had his bed moved into the dining room where it stayed until he died in 1963.
