BAFTA-winning actor Toby Jones has starred in film franchises including Captain America and Harry Potter and TV programmes including Detectorists and Mr Bates vs. The Post Office. Acting is in his blood, as his parents were actors Freddie Jones and Jennie Heslewood. At the start of his episode of Who Do You Think You Are?, he says his father was “absolutely convinced” that he had Indian ancestry. He wants to find out if this was true, or just a romantic notion.
Toby starts investigating his family history by meeting his brothers Casper and Rupert. They discover that five generations of women in their mother’s family were actresses, going back to their 3x great grandmother Sarah Thorne, who was the manager of the Theatre Royal in Margate.
To find out more, Toby goes to Margate. He learns that Sarah’s father Richard Samuel Thorne was also a manager, of the Pavilion Theatre in London, and that Sarah founded one of Britain’s first drama schools – something that’s particular poignant to Toby as his own father got his start in acting from a drama school.
A connection to the Potteries
Next, Toby wants to find out more about his father’s family. He meets his old family friend Hilary, who’s researched his family tree. Toby’s father’s family come from Stoke-on-Trent, and the 1901 census describes his great grandfather, Henry Enoch Jones, as a “potter’s saggar maker”.
Toby goes to Stoke and meets Ben Miller, curator of ceramics at the Gladstone Potteries Museum. Ben tells him that during the height of the city’s role in the ceramics industry, a saggar maker was someone who made saggars – containers to protect the pottery in the oven. He also says that Henry’s parents John and Jane Jones – who Ben is also related to – were married in Meerut, India.
Family tragedies
Toby is thrilled that the rumour of an Indian connection is true, and heads to the subcontinent. In Meerut, he learns more about John and Jane. John joined the army in 1848, at the age of 18. At the time, the army was used to enforce the East India Company’s rule over India. Jane was born Jane Burns and married Michael Gilder, a lance corporal. Michael died in 1855, leaving Jane a widow with four children. She married John Jones just months later, needing to support her family. Tragically, two of Jane’s children died of cholera the following year, and the other two appear to have died as well, although there are no records. John William Jones, Jane’s first child with John Jones, also died a month after he was born.
In 1857, the Indian Mutiny against British rule began. John Jones was with a regiment that marched on Delhi, which had been captured by the rebels. The British besieged the city for three months before recapturing it. John Jones’ regiment, the 52nd, were in the thick of fighting at the Kashmiri Gate.
Toby is shocked by first-hand accounts of how brutal the fighting was: “How anyone recovers from any of this, I don’t know.”
John was ultimately returned to England in 1860 after being injured. Toby now also wants to find out more about Jane. He meets Professor Sini Raj. She tells him that Jane’s father was Samuel Burns, another soldier, and her mother was Mary. Their marriage record from 1828 says that Mary was “Indo-British”, suggesting that she had Indian heritage. It was common at the time for British soldiers to form relationships with local women, but it was unusual for them to get formally married. Toby also takes a DNA test, and the results show that he has 1% Indian DNA, proving his father’s claim was true.
“I’m a little sad that I can’t go back to him with hard scientific fact,” Toby says, “but I also know he wouldn’t have cared anyway. He knew he was. I’m really excited to share it with my own children and wider family.”
