THIS morning's Memories is about a tragedy in 1905 in Shildon (I was about to write "a very sad tragedy" but then I realised that you don't very often get "a very happy tragedy").

The lady in this picture, Ellen Mulholland, was murdered by her nephew and lodger, James Garrigan, probably less than three years after the picture was taken.

Since putting the article together, the family have sent me the names of the people on the picture, which begins to clear up one of the other mysteries of this story: first off, the Echo said that Ellen had seven children, then it dropped to five and yet this picture shows six.

So we have: James Mulholland (1867-1938) and Ellen (1870-1905). Left to right, the children are Francis (born in 1895, who witnessed his mother's murder), Ann (the baby on her mother's knee, 1902-1987), Daniel (standing, 1890-1971), Dominic (seated front, born 1899), Robert (in front of father, born 1900), Mary, born 1897 but died in childhood after the picture was taken and possibly before her mother was murdered, hence the discrepancy in the number of children in the reports.

Life was so tough back then.

Fascinating fact: The grand-daughter of baby Ann, on her mother's knee, is Anita Carey, an actress who has just appeared in Doctors on BBC1.

======================== AS I write, an email has pinged in. It reads: "Dear Mr Lloyd, I was amused to read in your article that ‘reporter’s in 1905 were operating in the pre internet age’. I am so glad that you have cleared this point up for the readers!"

My sentence wasn't meant as a historical revelation. I was trying to say that the Echo printed the "love verses" that lodger James Garrigan had been seen writing before he killed himself and which were found on his body. It didn't know the provenance of the lover verses but as he had written them out, it suggested that he was the author. Back then, it would have been very hard for the reporter to quickly check where these popular words had originated from without looking manually through every book of poetry and songs ever printed. Now, though, you can tap them into google and it immediately allows you to work out the history of the song and even plays a scratching recording of it made in 1928.

I obviously didn't explain myself very well.