Findmypast uncovers McGregor’s tattooed, criminal ancestors

An investigation by Findmypast reveals McGregor’s ancestors were often sent to jail, and were also tattooed. McGregor’s paternal great-great grandfather Albert McGregor, who was born in Born in 1878 and lived in Kingstown (modern day Dún Laoghaire), was imprisoned in Dublin’s Kilmainham Gaol five times throughout his life. After serving a brief stint in the prison for possession of “concealed” goods he enlisted in the Royal Irish Fusiliers when he was 18,  After leaving the forces in 1899 he was charged with assaulting his wife Mary, Conor’s great-great grandmother, and was sentenced to another 14 days. In May 1905 he was back in the jail for assaulting a police officer, and later that year got a scar under his eye in a fight with his brother, Ryan, although that did not result in incarceration. The following year he was back in jail twice: In April for a month for stealing a pound of bacon, and in July for seven days for public drunkenness. Army records show that Albert had three tattoos: His name on his right forearm, a large inking of a man’s head – possibly his own – on his left forearm, and a dot on the back of his right hand. Albert’s wife Mary was also sentenced to a week Dublin’s Mountjoy Prison for drunkenness in 1901, when she was just 22 and raising three young children.  in 1905, she was sentenced to a further seven days for using “profane and obscene” language. In 1923 their son, also called Albert, was sentenced to seven days in Kilmainham for “feloniously stealing a quantity of cigarettes”, at the age of just 19.