The Inside Story on 'The Lathley Yarn'

If you haven’t done so already - you can listen to ‘The Lathley Yarn’ on Apple, Spotify, Amazon and many other podcast services. I’d urge you to listen to the episode in full before reading on - as this article contains a few minor spoilers…

I have to confess I was a little sceptical that I could build out a whole story based on the contents of a single letter… but The Lathley Yarn has turned into one of my favourite episodes!

I spent a great afternoon with Lynda (along with her husband, John) after being introduced by their son - who is another dad at my kids’ school.

What’s great about Walter’s letter is that it provides four or five intriguing ‘nuggets’ of information that would have been very hard to prove or disprove back in the 50s when Lynda and her sister Juliet were first told about it. This allowed their imaginations to run riot - and one can easily see how ‘fact’ has become legend as the generations pass.

Today, of course, Lynda has the opportunity to interrogate some of those facts a bit more forensically - and we can start to piece together what fits and what doesn’t.

The one big bonus in this story is the scarcity of ‘Lathleys’ that have ever lived in this country. It was therefore quite easy to connect them to the Goodwin clan - and this has been the main part of Lynda’s research. There are many Goodwin ancestors who have ‘Lathley’ as a middle name, and that has fuelled the legend still further.?

Separating fact from fiction

As with any legend, the passing centuries have put paid to solid foundation and certainty. By the time The Lathley Yarn made it to Walter in the early 20th century, it had no doubt already been tweaked, embellished and embroidered many times.

One thing is pretty clear though: Lynda’s great-great-great-great-grandfather was called Leathley Goodwin and his dates are very similar to Nelson’s. It’s fair to say this is the only person in Lynda’s direct family tree who could possibly be a candidate for our mystery dueller.?

There is some dispute over his exact details. The problem with ancestry databases is that the data is all user-generated. This guy appears in numerous family trees, but different people have attributed different records to him. But there are some undeniable facts, backed up by census data and other records:

• Leathley Goodwin was born in 1757, married to Anne, and had four daughters during the 1780s
• His first naval records are from the Seahorse in 1795, and he served on several other ships, with the last record from 1801
• By 1805 he had married a second time to Mary and had a son, George (16 years after his last daughter was born)
• He died in Cambridge in 1806
• There are subsequent records of George living in Bethnal Green?

These SORT of back the theory that Leathley Goodwin MIGHT have fought in a duel in 1795 and fled to sea after that - returning six years later when the dust had settled. BUT…

• He never went to Oxford University. And if you don’t believe me, check out the Alumni Oxonienses for yourself!
• There’s nothing to suggest he ever lived in Bethnal Green - only his son George years later
• There’s no record of Mary being Italian or a cobbler’s daughter

The part that I think needs more digging is the idea that the Lathleys were once wealthy landowners - and their errant son sacrificed everything to save his own skin. There seems to be little evidence of a wealthy ‘landed’ family named Lathley in the 18th century - so maybe that bit has been exaggerated.?

Or maybe the records really were burned in the bedroom fireplace as the scoundrel lay on his deathbed! We can never know for sure…

If you’re going to talk about history - get a good historian!

I totally lucked into getting Richard Hopton on board for this project. I hope you agree he has everything you could possibly want… the voice, the encyclopaedic knowledge and authority - and even the ability to shock with a perfectly placed ‘F-Bomb’ when you least expect it. He was great! I would say, buy his book, but I believe it is currently out of print. Perhaps you could start a movement to get it going again! It’s called Pistols at Dawn - published in 2007.

Please share The Lathley Yarn with the ancestry sleuths in your life!

More and more people are using ancestry databases to trace their family histories - so no doubt you know a few people who might enjoy this story. It would be fantastic if you could share The Lathley Yarn with the historians and ancestry sleuths in your life!