Who is Britain's Deadliest Family?

So, who is Britain's deadliest family? Obviously, by "deadly" I don't mean the stereotypical set of chav's who dine on a daily diet of chips, crisps, crack, fags and Red-Bull, dress in matching terry towelling tracksuits, drip in Lizzie Duke gold(plated) chains, and have almost as many brain-cells as they have teeth, whose snaring pit-bull is their intellectual equal, who wear a sovereign ring on each finger to stop their knuckles scraping on the floor, whose social high-point was "kicking off" in a (let's be honest, "pre-rehearsed") spiteful spat on Jeremy Kyle, and who most of their neighbours avoid because they're a little bit "shouty". No, by "deadly" I mean a family with whom death has become synonymous, almost as if death follows them about. 

Maybe you're thinking of Sawney Bean, the 48 strong clan of cannibals who reportedly murdered over 1000 locals in East Lothian during the 1500's, feeding on their limbs, torsos and brains (as if the contents of a haggis wasn't bad enough)? 

Perhaps it's the hideous West's who have popped into your mind; Fred & Rose West, the serial killer couple who, from 1967 to 1987 murdered 12 young women and girls, including their own daughters? ​

Or perchance, having just watched the excellent Tom Hardy in Legend (an awful title but a highly watchable film), it's the East End's terrible twosome, those terrifying twins, Ronnie & Reggie Kray who fits the bill? Well...?

Sorry, it was not either of them​. 

You see, in Britain we have a population of over sixty-four million people, but - thankfully, unlike America - we have an incredibly low murder rate, which averages out at roughly three hundred people per year, just over one person per day (a high proportion of which are sex workers*). And yet, if you were to look at your family tree, it's very unlikely that any of your families will befall a colossal personal tragedy, such as one murder every two or three hundred years. 

Where-as Britain's deadliest family has a higher mortality rate than most others when it comes to murders, executions, assassinations, and mysteriously unexplained deaths. So, who are they? They are, of course, The British Royal Family - a dynasty beset by tragedy. 

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​Unnatural Deaths in the British Royal Family (1000BC to today)

• 31 August 1997 - Princess Diana - unexplained car accident / murder
• 13 June 1981 - Queen Elizabeth II - assassination attempt by Marcus Sarjeant
• ​29 April 1970 - Queen Elizabeth II - assassination attempt in Lithgow, Australia
• 20 January 1936 - King George V -  died by lethal injection 
• 17 July 1918 - The Russian Royal Family - murdered by the Bolshiviks

Note: One of the nine children of Queen Victoria was Alice who married Louis IV Grand Duke of Hesse-Darmstadt, one of whose seven children was Alexandra, who married The last Czar of Russia, Nicholas Romanov II.

• 21 January 1919 - Prince John - epileptic seizure (an excellent documentary - Prince John: The Windor's Tragic Secret, who was hidden from the public)
• Seven attempts to assassinate HRH Queen Victoria in 1840, 1842 (twice this year), 1849, 1850, 1872 and 1882. 
• 25 October 1760 - King George II - dies drinking hot chocolate on the toilet
• 8 March 1702 - King William II & III- died of pneumonia, having fallen from a horse
• 19 January 1600 - King Charles I - guilty of treason and beheaded
• 8 February 1587 - Mary I "Queen of Scots" - guilty of treason and beheaded
• 12 February 1554 - (Queen/Consort/Lady) Jane Grey - guilty of treason and beheaded, she is England's shortest serving monarch, hence she's known as the Nine Day Queen
• 13 February 1542 - Queen Katherine Howard - beheaded on the orders of Henry VIII
• 19 May 1536 - Queen Anne Boleyn - beheaded on the orders of Henry VIII (again)
• 2 April 1502 - Prince Arthur of Wales - died of "sweating sickness" five months after his wedding to Catherine of Aragon, the illness remains a mystery to this day
• c 1483 - King Edward V & Richard, Duke of York - dubbed "The Princes in the Tower", both were imprisoned in the Tower of London, supposedly on the orders of King Richard III, the date and causes of their deaths remain unknown 
• 21/22 May 1471 - King Henry VI - imprisoned in tower of London and murdered
• 21 February 1437 - King James I - assassinated by a Scots group by Sir Robert Graham at the Friars Preachers Monastery in Perth
• 14 February 1400 - King Richard II - imprisoned in Pontefract Castle, where he was either murdered or starved to death, no-one actually knows
• 21 September 1327 - King Edward II - was supposedly murdered by having a metal tube and a red-hot poker inserted into his anus by Sir John Maltravers of Dorset (I bet you £50 that Sir John went to Eton, just saying)
• 19 March 1286 - King Alexander II - assumed he fell from his horse riding home
• 2 August 1100 - King William II - mysteriously killed by an arrow through the heart on a hunting trip with some "close friends"
• 12 November 1094 - King Duncan II - killed by Máel Petair of Mearns

A pretty deadly family wouldn't you say? And there's probably a whole heap of other murders, mischief, misery and mysteries I haven't uncovered as I've mostly focused on the Monarchs, the Queen, their kids, and anyone who happened to "cark it on the carzi" or died with "a red hot poker up their arses". But if you know of any others, please let me know in the comments section below. Now that's a family history I bet they don't tell on a guided tour of Buckingham Palace?

* Sex-workers in the UK are 42 times more likely to be murdered than the average person
** yes, I know it isn't Linda McCartney, this is called sarcasm

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Michael J Buchanan-Dunne is a writer, crime historian and tour-guide who runs Murder Mile Walks, a guided tour of Soho’s most notorious murder cases, hailed as “one of the top ten quirky & unusual things to do in London” and featuring 18 murderers, 3 serial killers, across 21 locations, totalling 75 deaths, over just a one mile walk.