Good point, Mike, but doesn't necessarily prove the book got it wrong.

Sam Weller is from Pickwick Papers, Dickens' first published foray into fiction writing. It was originally issued as a magazine serial, and apparently, was doing badly at first, until Weller turned up as a 'comic cockney' - 'mockney' character. The transposition of 'v' and 'w' was the comic idea of the cockney, whether it occurred in reality or not. I don't think Dickens was trying to be realistic in Pickwick, he was trying to be funny.

Anyway, I became interested in Charles Rice because he has a place in my family tree. He's not a direct ancestor, but after his wife died in the mid 1850s, he moved in with my (recently widowed) great-great grandmother Elizabeth McKay until his death in 1876. When my great grandfather William McKay married in 1867, Charles Rice was a witness and signed the marriage certificate. It's strange to find that he was a semi-pro pub singer.

Non-genetic inheritance is an interesting concept.

Andrew