Epilepsy and Exhaustion?

[Sally]

Does anyone know anything about Epilepsy please, or indeed have experience of it.

I have a death cert (my wretched son in law's family again) and the poor chap went in the space of 6 years from having a decent job and fathering children, to being in the Workhouse and dying of Epileptic fits and exhaustion.

His wife was still alive, but had to give up their cottage and by the next census was living as a lodger and working her fingers to the bone as a charwoman.

Was the exhaustion a result of the fits, or part of the condition? I know very little about it and Google is not a massive help

[Durham Lady]

Sally, yes if epileptic seizures come close together then they can cause severe exhaustion. There wasn't much in the way of treatment and sufferers were usually put into an asylum or workhouse.
One of our daughters is epileptic and my husband's late aunt Cissie born 1891 was too. My F in L told me the Dr's wanted to lock her away but the family wouldn't allow it so she was kept at home and cared for. After her parents died she lived with my in laws until her death in 1960. Sadly she fell onto a gas fire during a seizure and died from the burns she received.
When our daughter was diagnosed my F in L would never use the word epilepsy and always refered to it as K's little bit of trouble:)

[Sally]

Thank you so much for that Daphne -how dreadful that people were treated so appallingly back then, and it is a tragic tale of your husband's Aunt.

Thank goodness that your daughter lives in enlightened times.

You have explained a lot

[Olde Crone]

I think there is a condition called something like epileptic staticus, where repeated fits occur and if untreated can still cause death today from exhaustion.

I lived near a huge epileptic colony as a child and teenager. The patients were in there for life and the colony was extremely rural (tidy them away out of sight). It had its own burial ground and someone has transcribed all the graves of these "forgotten" people - he discovered that he had a previously unknown brother who had lived and died in the colony.

That was in the 60s and 70s.

OC

[Durham Lady]

Yes you are correct OC. It's called Status Epilepticus. Our daughter was hospitalised several times as a child with it, it means the seizure doesn't stop without medical intervention. On 2 occasions our daughter's heart stopped but luckily we were at the hospital when that happened.

[Nell]

My husband had a gt x 3 grandfather who was in a lunatic asylum in one census, apparently because he had epilepsy. I presume it was severe, there was no treatment and he would have been safer under supervision than at home. Of course epilepsy is a disturbance of the brain, hence him being placed with lunatics, though now we would regard that as unnecessary.

There are several children at the school where I work who have epilepsy, but only one has ever had a fit at school.

[Rachel]

Hi Sally
At the risk of boring you silly ...

http://genealogistsforum.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=6220


There are some fascinating and well written observations :)

[Sally]

OC - that may well be what happened in this case. Certainly there is no full stop or space in the writing on the death cert.........just Epileptic Fits Exhaustion.

Thank you Rachel, I had a read through that and it is fascinating.

I did contact the Essex Archives office and they were really helpful in their reply, but unfortunately no records survive for the Rochford Workhouse during the relevant period which is a great shame. They also checked (without my asking) for a burial for this chap, but there is no record of one in Rochford so they can only assume that his body was taken elsewhere.