Horatio Bottomley was born in the East End of London in 1860. He had only one sibling - an elder sister named Florence. When he was three years old his father, an ex-tailor named William, died in Bethlehem Hospital (better known as Bedlam).…

Delia Bacon was born in a log cabin in Ohio in the February of 1811. Her father David was a Congregationalist minister who had been born in Connecticut forty years earlier. In 1801 he had tried to establish a mission in Detroit, but it had…

William Corder was born in 1803 in the village of Polstead in Suffolk, England. His father John was a well-off farmer, though as his second youngest son William wasn’t expected to inherit the farm. His father made sure that he didn’t forget…

Ruth Brown, later to become Ruth Snyder, was born in Manhattan in 1895. She came from a working-class family but was determined to better herself. So though she had to leave full time education around the age of fifteen she got a job…

Jack Bee Garland, also known as Babe Bean, Beebe Bean, and several other names besides, was born in December of 1869 as Elvira Virginia Mugarrieta. Jack was the child of a former Mexican consul named José Marcos Mugarrieta and an upper…

William Randolph Hearst was born in San Francisco in 1863. His father George was a former Missouri farmer who had come to California for the gold rush, but had been smart enough to see the money to be made in quartz and silver mining as…

Severin Klosowski was born near Warsaw in Poland in December of 1865. His father was a carpenter who earned enough to give his son a good education - Severin attended a boy’s school until the age of 14, and was then apprenticed to a…

Wallis Simpson was born as Bessie Wallis Warfield in June of 1896. Her parents had been married only seven months previously, undoubtedly due to her impending arrival, but Wallis always insisted that they had been married the previous June.…

Like most people involved in espionage, Moura Budberg was largely a creature of her own invention. She spent most of her life shrouded in lies, but she knew the trick to getting people to believe them. It wasn’t just “a kernel of truth”, as…

Henry Prince was born in 1811 in the city of Bath. His family were well off enough to own property in Jamaica - property which included slaves, as his mother was compensated when slavery was abolished there. His father died when he was…