Jodie Whittaker found researching her family tree for 'Who Do You Think You Are?' to be "slightly heartbreaking".
Jodie Whittaker
The 'Doctor Who' star discovered her war-hero great uncle was actually abandoned by his teenage mother when he was a toddler while filming the show.
She said: "You fear this is a young girl being taken advantage of...
"It’s just the idea of a little kid being left behind. That is slightly heartbreaking. I wonder if she saw him again.”
Jodie's great great grandmother Eliza Clements got pregnant after working in London as a servant for a 45-year-old man, who was married with two kids.
She returned to Lincolnshire aged 18, and gave birth to Jodie's great uncle Walter in 1893, and three years later she married and moved back to London with her husband.
She went on to have eight more children, but they left Walter behind.
He turned 21 during World War I in 1914, initially signing up at a military hospital in Southampton before joining cavalry regiment the 10th Royal Hussars the following year.
He was wounded in battle in 1917, recovered at hospital in England and re-joined his regiment in France. But in 1918 he suffered a serious shrapnel wound and died at a hospital in Manchester.
Jodie added: "I want to protect him and go ‘don’t do it’. He’s doing it probably knowing he isn’t going to come back. Bricking it, but doing it – that’s a hero to me.”
Jodie broke down in tears when she discovered he was buried in East Finchley, north London, which is where his mother Eliza had lived.
The actress said: "I'm going to cry now. She got to bring him back to her home."
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