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At the start of her episode of Who Do You Think You Are?<\/a><\/em>, The Only Way Is Essex<\/em> star, media personality and businesswoman Gemma Collins says she knows nothing about her mother\u2019s side of the family. Her mother Joan was \u201cleft at the hospital\u201d as a baby and grew up in foster care.<\/p> \u201cShe never talks about it,\u201d Gemma says. \u201cI just think it\u2019s too painful for her to go there. It would be so nice to know where my mum\u2019s from and just put all the pieces together.\u201d<\/p> Joan agrees to talk to Gemma about her origins for the first time. Joan was brought up by a foster family since she was two weeks old. She was temporarily sent to a children\u2019s home<\/a> when she was thirteen for playing truant at school, which she found traumatic.<\/p> Joan has very few memories of her birth mother, who was also called Joan Williams. When she was four, she remembers her mother came to visit and brought her sweets and played a Rolling Stones record. When she was a teenager, her mother once wrote to her asking her to bring her cigarettes, despite not having seen her in years. Joan also had a cousin, Christine, who she was close to.<\/p> \u201cHer mum was in and out of her life,\u201d Gemma says. \u201cHow confusing must that have been for my mum?\u201d<\/p> Gemma wants to find out more about Joan and why she gave up her daughter. She visits Epsom in Surrey, where her grandmother was admitted to two mental hospitals, and meets historian Kirsty Arnold to look at her medical records. Joan was first diagnosed with schizophrenia and admitted to a mental hospital at the age of thirteen. After she gave birth to her daughter at seventeen, she was forcibly committed to hospital again. Gemma notes that it\u2019s significant that she, her mother and her grandmother all had personal struggles when they were thirteen, as she struggled with self-harm at that age.<\/p> Gemma meets psychiatrist Dr Claire Hilton, who tells her that schizophrenia was much more widely used as a diagnosis for teenagers in the 1950s and 1960s than it is now. Joan was also placed under a \u2018fit person\u2019s order\u2019 when she was pregnant with her daughter, putting her in care, as pregnancies out of wedlock were stigmatised at the time. Gemma\u2019s mother\u2019s foster care records show that her mother did continue to visit her as a child. It looks like Joan\u2019s daughter was taken away from her, rather than her giving her up.<\/p> \u201cThat information that I received upsets me,\u201d Gemma says. \u201cTheir actions left my mum feeling like she was never good enough because her mum didn\u2019t want her.\u201d<\/p> There\u2019s also some good news \u2013 the makers of Who Do You Think You Are? <\/em>have tracked down Christine, Gemma\u2019s mother\u2019s cousin. Gemma\u2019s overjoyed to meet Christine and her daughters.<\/p> Christine tells Gemma that her mother and Gemma\u2019s grandmother were among the four daughters of William Williams and Daisy Dutton, from Tower Hamlets in the East End of London.<\/p> Gemma goes to Tower Hamlets to meet historian Fiona Rule. She says that William Williams appears in the 1901 census<\/a> records as a one-year-old. His family were living on Dorset Street. In Charles Booth<\/a>\u2019s poverty maps, it\u2019s classified as \u2018Vicious, semi-criminal\u2019.<\/p> In the 19th<\/sup> century, Dorset Street was notorious for its connection to the Jack the Ripper murders \u2013 three of the serial killer\u2019s victims had connection to the street and one of the murders took place on the street. In 1901, there was another murder on the street, and the Daily Mail <\/em>wrote an article condemning Dorset Street as \u201cThe Worst Street in London\u201d. Jack McCarthy, the Williams\u2019 family\u2019s landlord, held a public meeting refuting the newspaper\u2019s claims.<\/p> \u201cI think it\u2019s awful to be misrepresented in life,\u201d Gemma says. \u201cI\u2019ve had a lot of that. At the end of the day we\u2019re made of strong stuff, because we didn\u2019t have silver spoon beginnings\u2026 I\u2019m really loving the fact that my family are from here, and I also love the camaraderie of them fighting for their rights.\u201d<\/p> Gemma now wants to find out more about William Williams\u2019 father, also called William Williams, and his mother Thirza. Records of the Whitechapel Workhouse infirmary<\/a> show that William senior died there in 1902. Thirza was left a poor widow with three children \u2013 William, Nora and Julia. Records show that Thirza had her daughters rebaptised as Catholic so they could attend Crispin Street School, a Catholic school that provided them with an education and care.<\/p> \u201cIt just shows the determination of Thirza,\u201d Gemma says. \u201cShe wants to get her kids out of the squalor, she wanted a better life for them\u2026 It brings tears to my eyes, \u2018cause my Mum was a real powerhouse in our family\u2026 She always pushed me and my brother to do really well, so she must have had a lot of Thirza in her.\u201d<\/p>