[lang_en]Beckham’s ancestor was a scavenger[/lang_en]
[lang_en]Census data reveals that David Beckham is the descendent of a scavenger while one of Amy Winehouse’s immigrant ancestors was a humble fruit seller.
Forms from the 1911 census, which is online, show that the multimillion pound fortunes of the footballer and pop star would have been unimaginable to their forebears.
The documents shows that Beckham’s great-great-great grandfather, John Beckham, born in 1846, was employed by a London borough council as a scavenger, while his great-great-great grandfather William Beckham, born 1870, was working as a cart or van driver.
William lived with his wife Harriet and seven children in a house in Walworth, south London, at the time the census was carried out. His eldest daughter Martha, 19, was working as an artificial florist and his second eldest, Mary, was employed as a dressmaker. Two of the 10 children born to William and Harriet had died by 1911.
Winehouse’s background was similarly lacking in grandeur.
Like many European Jews, her maternal ancestors emigrated from Russia to London in the 19th century and were living in Spitalfields, east London, in 1911.
Abraham Grandish, born 1855, worked as a hawker selling fruit while his daughter Fanny, born 1895, was employed as a waterproofer. Her four younger siblings all attended school and a sixth child had died.
Debra Chatfield of findmypast.com website, which digitised the documents, said: “We knew Beckham and Winehouse had backgrounds in England and Wales so we did some research into their families to find out who their ancestors were.
“We used public records, birth, marriage and death indexes, to trace their parents and grandparents. It’s a relatively simple exercise.”
Beckham and Winehouse have not been told of the discoveries made about their ancestors’ identities, she added.[/lang_en]


