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Find My Past Blog - Ask the expert – elusive death entry

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  • Find My Past Blog - Ask the expert – elusive death entry

    Our resident expert Stephen Rigden, pictured below, answers your queries.
    From Rosalind Vincent:
    ‘This is a partly military question. My great-grandfather Thomas Hall, born 1813, was a serving soldier during the 1840s and appears in the 1851 census as a soldier living in Dover Castle. He married during 1851 and left the army and may have received an allowance as a Chelsea Pensioner. He was attacked during his work as a prison warder in 1863 and died later due to his injuries. I have been unable to trace his date of death or his burial place in Leicester where he lived, but he had died by the 1871 census. Would there be any record of when his army pension ceased to be paid and could he possibly be entitled to be buried elsewhere as a former soldier?’
    Stephen says:
    ‘Thanks for your question about your great-grandfather Thomas Hall. It seems that he had an eventful life. He was born in Atherstone, Warwickshire in 1813, started working as a ribbon-maker and, according to his Chelsea pensioner discharge papers, joined the 1st Btn, Rifle Brigade in Leicester in 1831.

    Pte 815 Thomas Hall served with the Rifle Brigade in North America, Malta, the Ionian islands (Corfu and Cephalonia) and Cape of Good Hope, including in the ‘Kaffir War’ of 1847. He rose to the rank of Corporal and was awarded three good conduct badges. He was discharged in August 1852, after 21 years’ service, being unfit for further service due to chronic rheumatism dating from his time in the Cape, when he had to sleep out at night without bedding.
    He was 39 years old upon discharge and his stated intended place of residence was Atherstone. As you know, however, he became a prison warder in Leicester County Gaol – one of many discharged soldiers who found work in the prison and police services – and is enumerated there at the time of the 1861 census.
    I searched the British newspapers on findmypast.co.uk for references to the incident in the gaol, and found several references – which you may have seen already. In the first, in the Leicester Chronicle of 12 December 1863, there is a report from the Winter Assizes detailing how, on 14 November, he had been brutally struck over the head with a lead pipe by a disgruntled prisoner named James Wells.
    In a later Leicester Chronicle, dated 8 April 1864, the report on the Easter Sessions includes a statement on warder Thomas Hall not being able to resume his duties due to his injuries, resigning from his post and being considered for a weekly pension of six shillings. Next, in the Chronicle from 2 July 1864, there is a reference in the Midsummer Sessions report to his injuries rendering him unfit for further service, even as a storekeeper, in the prison, and being replaced.
    Finally, there is a confirmation of the weekly superannuation allowance of 6s in a Leicester Chronicle of 22 October 1864, reporting from the Michaelmas Sessions. This appears to be the last mention of the incident, and I couldn’t trace a subsequent report of death. In other words, at the age of 51 years he was incapacitated and presumably living off his army pension and the modest weekly pension from the prison service. He does not seem to appear on the 1871 census so, as you say, it is likely that he died between 1864 and 1871.
    This is where your problems begin. Thomas Hall has, of course, a very common name and the civil death indexes show multiple candidate entries from December quarter 1864 to June quarter 1871. There is neither an Atherstone nor a Leicester entry for a Thomas Hall in that period. No age at death is given in the indexes before 1866, making it impossible to tell from an 1864 or 1865 index entry whether it relates to an infant or a pensioner.
    You could apply for copy death certificates for various entries in registration districts surrounding Atherstone and Leicester. Given its speculative nature, however, that could prove not just time-consuming but expensive (each death certificate costing £9.25). I am not aware of any records identifying cessation of army pension payments (which is not to say that they do not exist, for instance at The National Archives in Kew), or of army out-pensioners (those not resident at Royal Hospital Chelsea) being buried away from their places of death.
    In these circumstances, I think you might want to undertake local research. There were no fewer than seven Anglican parishes in Leicester by the mid-19th century, although the county gaol was situated in the ancient borough of All Saints and, in the absence of a street address, you may want to focus attention on this parish to begin with. I suggest that you do two things. Firstly, you could consider contacting the local family history society – in this case the Leicestershire & Rutland Family History Society – for help and advice. If you do not live locally, they may be able to undertake a search on your behalf, or to put you in touch with a reliable professional researcher.
    Secondly, you could approach the Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester & Rutland, which is located in Wigston Magna. You are likely to discover that the family history society and/or the record office will have helpful resources and suggestions. They may, for example, have indexed the parish burial registers, or they may have other local newspapers which might have reported the newsworthy death of an old soldier and warder. Finally, L&RFHS has indexed the records for Leicester’s vast municipal Welford Road Cemetery, which opened in 1849 and could well have been the place of burial.
    Good luck with your continued search!’
    If you’d like to send your question to Stephen, please register or opt to receive newsletters in ‘my account’. Stephen only has time to answer a couple of queries each month but if yours wasn’t answered this month, you could be lucky next time!


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