When they all die young

[Phoenix]

My Domoney ancestor died when she was 33. Not unusual for a young married woman in the 1830s, but several of her siblings died as teenagers, as did several of her nieces.

Do you follow up deaths with certificates? Her sister was only 47, and just makes it into civil registration. If we ever do get really cheap pdfs (the GRO site is being updated in a few days :)) I'm tempted to have a blitz, to see if I can find out whether these were sad coincidences, or family health problems.

[kiterunner]

Have you looked in the British Newspaper Archive to see whether any of them were mentioned in the papers?

[Phoenix]

They are not really the sort of people who appear in notices at that period, Kite. (Unlike Great Aunt Kate, whose suicide a century later has finally popped up, but frustratingly without feeling the need to say that my grandfather identified the body)

[Olde Crone]

Yes, if pdf copies turn out to be really cheap I shall be following up a few deaths. One which drives me mad and is absolutely NOTHING to do with me or mine, lol, is the death of a young high born woman who got into trouble, the trouble was farmed out in great secrecy and the high born woman died a year later. I'm bursting to know why she died and am flabbergasted that the descendant of this story isn't interested!

OC

[Merry]

I would do the same if pdfs suddenly became much cheaper.

I did buy two certs for people I wouldn't normally have done because mother (53) and her only child (28) died one day apart in 1845. It turned out the mother died from infection of the liver (three weeks). Her daughter died the following day of disease of the valves of the heart (uncertain). So, did the shock of her mother's death lead to her own? That's how I interpreted it.

[HarrysMum]

Husband’s 5x great grandfather, David Kirkby fathered an illegitimate baby ( David Benone Rigge) with Mary Rigge.
David went on to marry Agatha Sawrey.
Mary Rigge died a year later of ‘a broken heart’ according to William Wordsworth.
This was all in Hawkshead, Lancs.
Baby David was brought up by Mary’s parents and was later apprenticed in London.

I often wonder if Mary did die of a broken heart. Far too early for certs.

[Kit]

I often wonder if Mary did die of a broken heart. Far too early for certs.

I'm sure I've heard recently that this is believed to be possible. I can't tell you when or where I heard, or read, this though.

[Kit]

Back to the original post. My grandma and her siblings all had an illness in their teenage-ish years (there were 12 of them). All 12 died of heart related conditions from this illness (I've forgotten which one, sorry). Two boys died in their early 20s, I did buy the certificates, and the rest did go on and have families before dying. But my Dad speaks of Frank and Jimmy often and he was not born, or thought of, when they died, so his Mum, aunts and grandparents all spoke of them frequently.

[Merry]

Was it rheumatic fever? My aunt had a heart condition that started in her 50s and the Dr said it would have been caused by RF as a child. My gran was very indignant about this as, "Our sort of family don't have RF"!! lol

[Kit]

lol Merry, not sure what sort of family gets it, nor to be honest what RF actually is.

RF does sound right. I got confused with scarlet fever but talking to Dad the other day, he knew it wasn't scarlet fever. I have about 3 copies of the death cert but am too lazy to look it up.

[crawfie]

I have one family (mother , father, 3 children) who all died within 12 days of each other in 1783, in Netherlands. No death certificates available at that time, but I was sure it had to have been something out of the ordinary. I finally found out that there had been a dysentery epidemic in the village which killed off 108 people, in a place with a population of 600.

[Olde Crone]

Crawfie, I have something similar in my tree. The first six children all died within 23 days of each other, of smallpox. (Noted in the burial register, many others dying in a two month period). The parents went on to have another 13 children, only three survived to adulthood, only one had children and the mother outlived all her children. Interestingly, the mother grew up on a dairy farm and I wonder if that gave her immunity to smallpox.

OC

[HarrysMum]

There was an epidemic in the Hawkshead area. The PRs actually have “ he brought the sickness here” or words to that effect on one burial. Something you don’t really want on your headstone.

Toni……I have read the same thing about broken heart illness. William Wordsworth wrote his first ballad about Mary Rigge.

I did get a death cert for one of my husband’s uncles who died at five days old. Turns out he had a protein C and S deficiency which caused bleeding into the skin. Must have been horrific for his mother.