Overview

• Ross Kemp discovers his great uncle Albert Chalmers was a violent alcoholic who threatened his mother and was blacklisted from British pubs under the 1902 Licensing Act.
• Chalmers' actions led to imprisonment, a three-year sentence in an inebriate reformatory, and eventual institutionalization in a psychiatric hospital in 1914.
• The actor reflects on his family's omission of Albert's story from oral history and the personal impact of uncovering this hidden past.
• Kemp draws parallels between early 20th-century responses to addiction and mental health and ongoing challenges in modern UK prisons.
• The episode of BBC1's 'Who Do You Think You Are?' featuring Ross Kemp is set to air on May 6, 2025.