Interesting Death Certificates, and the stories behind them?

[Sally]

Hello people, it's so long since I have been on site that I am not even sure if this is the right place to put this!

Anyway, I have just more or less finished another line of the family and was trawling through all the Death Certs in my folder. A few of them are a break from the run of the mill Consumption etc., and I have tried to imagine the story behind them. For instance:

One chap, from a wealthy background and with a wife and 9 children took to the drink in a serious way, and finally died of the DT's in a Workhouse. Did the fact that his parents and three of his siblings died in rapid succession, followed by the emigration of the rest of his siblings drive him to the bottle? Certainly, before the others emigrated they sold off the family business, and as he was the only one still interested in working in the business then perhaps he was outvoted.

One of my husband's ancestors cut his throat after his first wife died (Consumption of course!), followed by a disastrous affair that produced a child, followed by an equally disastrous marriage. He then discovered that he had cancer, and ended his life in a dingy room.

There are more, but I wondered what other people have lurking in their certificates, and what they have managed to piece together.

[Olde Crone]

Not as dramatic as yours, but the two death certs which stopped me in my tracks were

My 2 x GGM, Mary Green, died aged 32 giving birth to her eleventh child. She died of "unstoppable haemmhorage (sic) two days". She must have realised she was going to die.......

My 2 x GGF, James Holden, a horrible man by all accounts, but he died in a lodging house of cancer of the tongue and throat in 1898.....again, he must have known he was dying and I cannot imagine the agony he was in...either starving to death or choking to death.....

[JayG]

Got a great great grandfather who had his spine crushing in a mining accident, he lived 2 days after it happen & I can only imagine the pain he would of been in.

From the newspapers reports i've found he wasn't supposed to be where he was when it happened. Basically he jumped in the tub that was coming up out of the mine & told to get out as it was full & wait for the next one. On getting one he was crushed between the tub & the roof.

[Nell]

Husband's great-grandfather, Jenkin Lewis Evans, died of shock from injuries sustained after he'd been run over by an underground tram in a mine in South Wales. I haven't got the inquest yet but can only assume he was badly mangled and hope death came fairly swiftly. This was in 1912.

In my own family

great-grandfather Thomas Matthews died of heart disease in Holloway, London in 1879. It was his 14th wedding anniversary and his wife, my gt grandmother Emma, gave evidence to the inquest that he had gone out to deliver milk as usual but she'd been fetched when he died and went to find him in the next street to where they lived. An eye-witness in a house in the road described seeing Thomas clutch the iron railings outside the house before falling back onto his churns.

My great x 3 grandfather John Mealing cut his throat in 1884. He had lost his wife two years earlier. Their eldest son had used a cut throat razor John had given him to kill a pregnant woman to whom he was engaged. The son was found innocent on the grounds of insanity and spent the rest of his life in Broadmoor. The really awful thing was that John didn't kill himself outright, but lived for 20 days and died in the Cirencester workhouse.

[Kit]

I have a family with 12 children, one of which is my grandma. 5 of the 12 died of heart problems that occurred as a result of having rheumatic fever as children or teenagers. Two boys died at the age of 23, the other 3 lived longer, marrying and having children and grandchildren.

My grandma died in her 50s just after I was born, I met her but don't remember it, of course. The other 2 lived to an older age but their heart problems from childhood killed them.

It is possible some of the other 7 died from the same cause but I don't have to certs to know for sure.

[marquette]

In 1864, my husband's great-great grandmother died 10 days after the birth of her 11th child, and the baby girl died two, nothing too unusual. BUT two years later her husband, g-g grandfather, committed suicide by hanging himself in the barn, while of unsound mind, leaving 10 orphaned children aged from 20 to 4 years.

That GGF's uncle also committed suicide in 1879, while overburdened from his work as a CofE minister. His death certificate says he died from self inflicted strangulation, which is quite difficult to do. From the inquest, he went behind the shed to the large woodpile and dug himself a hole to hide in, then climbed into the woodpile where no one could find him. He put a rope around his neck and tightened it with a piece of wood until he strangled to death.

My great-great grandfather also drank himself to death in 1888, dying of DTs, while he was the publican at Captains Flat NSW. It was ten years and one month after the death of his wife who he had married when they were both just 18. In 1881 he had been made bankrupt over a copper mine which ended up in Royal Commission with all the attendent notoriety and his youngest daughter died in 1883. More than enough reason to take to the drink, coming to Australia for a new life certainly did not live up to his expectations.

Diane

[ElizabethHerts]

The most unusual discovery I have for a death, but I have no certificate, is for OH's 2xgt grandfather.

He disappeared in 1832 and we couldn't find his burial or any clue about his death, just that his wife was left a widow. We though that for ever this might be a brick wall.

His name was Charles Lamb and he was a gunsmith in Whitby. We know he travelled to London on business. In fact, he was born in Huntingdon and married in Halesowen, Worcestershire. We think he was probably apprenticed in the Midlands - Birmingham, perhaps.

However, about 14 months ago I had an e-mail from OH's cousin - he had found Charles Lamb's death! We ended up knowing far more about his death and his last 24 hours or so that we had ever imagined..... The cousin found this by googling in Google books!

Please don't read this if you are eating or about to eat! :o

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=QR2gAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA198&dq=%22Charles+Lamb%22+and+%22Whitby%22+and+%22guns mith%22&cd=2#v=onepage&q=%22Charles%20Lamb%22%20and%20%22Whitby%22%20and% 20%22gunsmith%22&f=false

[Jill]

My poor ancestor Esther Glazier lived a long life in Henley Hill (about 8 houses a mile or so south of Fernhurst) only to have the awful end of burning to death after falling into the fire in a faint brought on by senility.

[Lancashire Lady]

My 3x gt grandmother, Susan Mead nee Bristow, hanged herself from the bedpost in June 1864, when she was 56. The inquest returned a verdict of suicide while mentally deranged.
Her husband had died 3 months earlier of "apoplexy" and her only son had married just a month earlier (though apparently he & his new wife were living with her). The daughter-in-law (who found her) gave evidence at the inquest to say she had been extremely upset by her husband's death. She was described as being of a nervous disposition.
I have formed a mental picture of a somewhat neurotic & highly-strung woman who just could not cope with the thought of life alone. Perhaps I am being a little unfair, but I wondered whether her temperament might have had something to do with her only having had one child, highly unusual in those days.

[Sue from Southend]

I have a father and son who both committed suicide after the deaths of their wives. Joshua Webster senior hung himself and, as many of you know, his son drowned himself in a water butt by forcing his head thru' a hole in the nailed down lid. The coroner recorded that Joshua jnr was drunk and of unsound mind. He left several young children most of whom disappeared.

And I recently found that my 2xgt grandmother died of starvation in Shoreditch in 1863.

I think that all of these tragic deaths tell us so much about life in the 19th Century and how hard it was for the vast majority of people. Even tho' I knew that my rellies were poor and had read loads about life in the Victorian East End these brief descriptions on a death certificate just bring it home so graphically.

[Jill]

Haven't got the death cert myself but have just found the website of someone who has the death cert of my OH's 3x gt grandfather James Harland who apparently hanged himself in Lindfield in 1848 "state of mind unknown", so finding out more will be a project for the summer hols when I will look for newspaper reports at the Brighton History Centre.

[Sabrina]

What some terrible tragedies.

My 6x Great Grandfather's first wife who was buried in 1706, had this note next to her burial entry in the parish register:

"Catherine wife of Samuel Hamlet being frighted into death through her owne foolish dreams interpreted by herselfe"

As her youngest child had only been baptised seven weeks before this, I can only think that perhaps she had postnatal depression.

[Uncle John]

A school headmaster drowned in a well in 1907. Six years later his widow was found strangled.

[Sally]

I find all these absolutely fascinating, and some are so tragic.

[Mary from Italy]

I knew from my research that my grandma had 5 sisters, but she was only in touch with one of them, so I just assumed all the others had died.

I eventually decided to trawl Ancestry for their deaths (this was before they added deaths after 1916), and sent off for the certs.

I was astonished to find that while one of them had died in 1952, the other three had died in the 1960s and 1970s, and only lived a few miles away from us, yet they were never mentioned.

There's no-one left alive to ask, so unless I can find a living descendant who knows more than I do, I shall never know whether there was some kind of fall-out, or they just drifted out of contact.

[Olde Crone]

Another sad trend in my family is the number of deaths from TB in the late 1800s.

These deaths occurred when the various families moved into the city after spending umpteen generations in the country. It decimated my family and is probably the main reason we have all but died out now, lol.

OC

[Jill]

That strikes a chord with me too OC, my father's uncle died 4 years before dad was born, his mother never mentioned him except once when she said "It was his own fault."

Dad's 82 and last year he told me he had often thought his uncle must have committed suicide, it put his mind at rest when I obtained the death cert and was able to tell him his uncle died due to a weak heart and TB. Maybe he did something my granny disapproved of which hastened the end but it was definitely not suicide.

[HarrysMum]

I'd just like to find my Agatha's death.......lol

I do have one that amazed me though. My gg grandfather's sister died in 1864 of ovarian cancer. I didn't realise it had been known about then. Seems like a more modern cause of death.

[Uncle John]

I have one in 1890 dying of uterine cancer at the age of 45. Her husband died 12 years previously in the County Lunatic Asylum of "general paralysis", which I interpret as syphilis. So I wonder if the widow actually died of syphilis too.

[HarrysMum]

Good Point UJ..............this woman was 45 as well. I haven't found her husband's death, although he was still alive when (I think) when she died. He was in the Navy and their only son died aged 21 the following year.

With a name like John Campbell, I think finding the husband's death might be a problem....lol

[alisondaviesbell]

on the death cert for my great gandmother it says she died of malignant disease of the liver, could this be cancer i wonder?

i have 1 relative my great great grandfathers 1st wife, died in Rain hill Asylum in 1877, she lost 2 children prior to being admitted, in 1869 her only son died aged 3, and then in 1875 one of her daughters died aged just 4 months, my guess would be is she died as a result of depression.

also while trying to find answers to why other relatives may have died i stumbled across this page in a Liverpool Website, very interesting reading, not all the years are there but a vast majority are.
some of the inquests are so very very sad and are SO preventable in our modern world...

a mother and her children found in a house after not being seen for days, they had starved to death,
a baby 9 months old playing with a candle had set her clothes on fire died as a result of injuries,


http://www.old-merseytimes.co.uk/deathsandinquestsmain.html