Famous Names Inequality has always been a feature of our society. Rich people tend to leave more trace as individuals in the pages of history. However, many records cover rich and poor, allowing us to catch at the memories and echoes of the famous and the unknown. Once their testimonies are discovered, the lives these people lived rival the saddest, or funniest, or wildest of inventions.
Famous people appear in the records for much the same reasons as others.
They come into contact with taxes or the law courts, they are born, marry or die, they leave wills and sometimes letters. Others are famous because of work done for the state, as soldiers, sailors or diplomats, and their reports and papers become part of the records. There are many famous names scattered among the public records. Nell Gwyn, Captain Bligh, Jane Austen, Karl Marx, Florence Nightingale, Mahatma Gandhi, Harry Houdini, Charlie Chaplin, Sir Winston Churchill and Sir Elton John are all recorded in one way or another. It is the records that bring to life the stories of people, whether famous or infamous, well-known or unknown.