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What keeps you awake at night?

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  • What keeps you awake at night?

    Last night I was googling to look for more info on my 3 x great grandparents Richard Lock and Marianne. They lived and died in Shoreditch - Richard - a sawyer- dying from gangrene of the leg in July 1865 at Shoreditch Workhouse Infirmary. I have his death cert and an extract from the Workhouse book when they released the files to Ancestry in 2011. I have yet to find Marianne's death.

    1865 Lock Richard death Shoreditch workhouse 3.jpg.jpg

    I found a Lancet report for July 1865 on this particular workhouse. Imagine my horror when I read this:
    " A poor fellow laying dangerously ill with gangrene of the leg had had no medicine for three days, because, as the male "nurse" said, his mouth had been sore".
    The rest of the report makes appalling reading describing the conditions, treatment and care of these patients -see here.
    I couldn't sleep properly last night and was up at 4.30 this morning.
    This may or may not have been MY 3 x great grandfather but he died at that time and in those conditions. Some times it's better not knowing all the details.
    Kat

    My avatar is my mother 1921 - 2012

  • #2
    I know exactly what you mean Kat. My grandparents had a daughter who was born at home in 1911, but died three days later in Liverpool Children's Hospital. On her death certificate it gave the cause of death as "inanition 3 days" and Googling led me to the definition of exhaustion caused by lack of nourishment.
    Further research led to the likelihood that the baby was born with some sort of problem that meant she could not drink and simply died of thirst as it happened relatively quickly. That image stayed with me for days and I felt I had to know where she was buried.
    As I have no other connections to Liverpool I decided the best course of action was to ask Liverpool Records Office to search for her burial - initially they searched all the available burial registers with no success. A horrible thought then came to me that perhaps she had ended up as a medical specimen due to whatever was wrong with her (this was at the time of the scandal about organ retention from post mortems).
    I hadn't expected the Records Office to go the extra mile - but they did and the researcher found an old receipt book that showed my Grandfather had purchased a small plot in Everton Cemetery and she was buried there. Relief was tinged with tears when I received a copy of the reciept as it stated that no undertakers were involved and there was no service - simply a grave had been opened and closed. It seems my grandfather had collected her body from the hospital, carried it to the cemetery and placed her in the grave himself. I cried on and off for days about this which is mad as I never even knew my grandparents - I think it was just the sadness of the whole thing.
    I agree that sometimes it is better not to research too far, especially where medical things are concerned, but it certainly makes me incredibly grateful that I live now and have access to modern medicine.
    Helen
    Support the S.O.P.H.I.E. campaign, Stamp Out Predudice Hatred + Intolerance Everywhere.

    Visit the website at http://www.sophielancasterfoundation.com/index1.html

    http://www.illamasqua.com/about/sophie/

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    • #3
      I often have a little cry about things I find even things not connected to me , and lie awake going over things in my head for ages.

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      • #4
        Two things in my own tree haunt me.

        My great great grandfather, a horrible man by all accounts, who was a big embarrassment to his upwardly mobile sons and was palmed off into digs. I eventually sent for his death cert and was horrified to read that he had died of cancer of the mouth, tongue and throat. As this was in 1898 I expect he either starved to death or choked to death.

        The other thing, much earlier, in 1766 was "Jane Green found dead in a field of childbed and her bastard stillborn infant". Jane was 19 and had called the banns but no marriage had taken place. The father of her dead baby married three weeks after her death, may he rot. Jane was from a good family and it breaks my heart to think she died alone, probably terrified, in a field.

        OC

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        • #5
          I wondered about the NSW Death Indexes which showed five family members with sequential index numbers in the 1930s - it was obvious they must have died together. House fire, car accident I thought ?, I hunted through the newspapers and found that all five had died in a flash flood while they were away camping on their summer holidays at the beach.

          Mother, father and three boys and a daughter and two other boys camped nearby - they were all dragged away from the beachside campground in a torrent of water in the middle of the night. Some local men managed to rescue the daughter who was caught in a tree, but only some of the bodies were every found.

          It worried me for a long time, how could one young girl deal with such a tragedy - all the publicity while she was trying to recover her health, let alone cope with the loss of her parents and brothers and the terror she must have felt on the night.
          Diane
          Sydney Australia
          Avatar: Reuben Edward Page and Lilly Mary Anne Dawson

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          • #6
            i learned less than an hour ago, that an uncle was murdered by native peruvians during the bolivian war. he was one of many 'white' people murdered in 1899. he was murdered alongside a 14 yo boy, the son of the manager of the farm uncle was with. they were tortured, their skin removed from their hands to make gloves, and their feet too. before they had their heads bashed in. it was weeks before they were discovered. i can't imagine the terror they would have felt. or the pain they would have been in. or what type of monster could inflict that upon another human being. especially a child. 14 years old. but i had to ask about getting a death cert from bolivia. now i don't need one.

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            • #7
              I was just reading about your relative kylejustin, quite horrific. Young men in my tree who died in WW1 have caused me to dwell on what might have been, along with my 75 old boys from the school where I work who also died in that conflict, I can only research them in short bursts otherwise I get too maudlin.

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              • #8
                my god Kyle thats horrific made me feel sick what they must have gone through, all the stories are terrible , and it does not matter how long ago things happened it is still upsetting.

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                • #9
                  I searched for years to find out about the railway accident which killed my great grandfather in 1858. I often wish I hadn't found it. He walked across the street, as usual, to the station where he worked at 11p.m. to un-hitch a goodswagon from it's engine. By 11.10 he was carried back across the street a mangled wreck. The goods wagon was wider than the usual ones and he was crushed to death between it and a tunnel wall. To make it worse he left 6 children, my grandfather, the youngest, was only a few months old.
                  I can't imagine having a husband/father one minute and he'd gone the next.
                  Cath.

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                  • #10
                    My 4xg-grandmother married at 15. By the time she was 19 she'd had 3 children, and buried 2 of them. It struck me the other day that my daughter is now 19, and I was trying to imagine what she'd be like if she'd gone through the same experiences.

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                    • #11
                      Some horrific stories. My great grandfather Charles Ward died when he worked in a brewery and fell into a hot tun of beer and died from scalding. I agree you sometimes think about these stories for ages

                      Steven

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                      • #12
                        i have a 6 year old aunt who died in 1904, she was either helping move oats sacks, or playing in them, when one fell on her and suffocated her. i can't imagine the grief of the parents. she was the only daughter too.

                        i bet most people have a relative who died quite nastily, and they have no idea until they get a death certificate.

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                        • #13
                          yes Kyle your right I try not to think about mine, hope your feeling better now?

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                          • #14
                            yes val, i am thank you. it's hard to not get down when you come across something like that. it's really the first time information about a relative has been upsetting. i guess when you focus on someone for so long, you get to 'know' them, it becomes more personal.

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                            • #15
                              Earlier this week,checking All Saints, Newton Heath burials for 1860s I noticed on the same page was a burial of two sisters aged 18 and 14... parents names were also shown... this has for some reason stayed with me for a few days

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                              • #16
                                This has haunted me since I found out the circumstances about ten days ago...
                                I already knew of the two brothers who had both died in WW2, one in France, the other in Burma, who were awarded 2 MCs and a VC between them, and both under 30 when they were killed.
                                I then found a married younger sister who was present when the younger son's posthumous VC was presented to their mother. I then found two children of the sister's marriage. She died aged only 35 on the same day as her 7 month old daughter so I imagined something like a car accident. I also found out that her son died aged only 21, so again i imagined some sort of accident. This was all some time ago and I had not been able to find out anything more about the circumstances.

                                Then, just recently, I came across a post re the VC brother that mentioned in passing that his sister had committed suicide so the obvious chilling conclusion was that she was also responsible for her own daughter's death on the same day.

                                I then unexpectedly found the sister's death certificate online which said that she killed herself by carbon monoxide poisoning at home in the family car. A contributory cause was recorded as insanity but with its onset being only minutes before she died which makes me think that there had not really been any previous indication of her state of mind. I'm surmising that she might have been suffering from unrecognised/untreated post-natal depression. The informant was her husband.

                                I then found a death record for her 21 year old son who was pronounced dead on arrival at hospital from gunshot wounds. I was horror struck as I scrolled down the page. He too had committed suicide by shooting himself in the chest. Again, this happened at home, with his father being the informant.

                                There are so many aspects here that are so tragic - all three children dying violently before their parents, a 35 year old being so lost as to kill herself and her daughter, leaving her husband and 8 year old son behind, a 21 year old student choosing to end his life as he did. Another thing I can't get out of my head is the husband/father returning home on two separate occasions in his life to find his wife and two children dead in such awful circumstances.....
                                Last edited by Karamazov; 18-03-13, 17:02.
                                Researching:
                                HOEY (Fermanagh, other Ulster counties and Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada) BANNIGAN and FOX (Ballyshannon, Donegal, Ireland and Portland, Maine, USA) REYNOLDS, McSHEA, PATTERSON and GOAN (Corker and Creevy, Ballyshannon, Donegal, Ireland) DYER (Belfast and Ballymacarrett) SLEVIN and TIMONEY (Fermanagh) BARNETT (Ballagh, Tyrone and Strangford, Down)

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                                • #17
                                  Gosh that is a really terrible find, Karamazov, as are all of the above. We never know what we are going to find in our history or what will happen within our own lifetime and family. Sometimes knowing all is not such a good thing but we should be prepared to find awful things as we set out on our journey.
                                  Kat

                                  My avatar is my mother 1921 - 2012

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                                  • #18
                                    Originally posted by Katarzyna View Post
                                    Gosh that is a really terrible find, Karamazov, as are all of the above. We never know what we are going to find in our history or what will happen within our own lifetime and family. Sometimes knowing all is not such a good thing but we should be prepared to find awful things as we set out on our journey.
                                    I agree totally Kat with what you have said, that is SO sad Christine, it really brings whole idea of finding out every snippit of info into vivid reality.

                                    nothing much does surprise me these days, though if I had come across all that sadness in my search it would have taken me a good while to recover from it.
                                    Julie
                                    They're coming to take me away haha hee hee..........

                                    .......I find dead people

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                                    • #19
                                      There are some very sad stories here - I also find it hard to stop thinking about some of the things I have found. One of the saddest in my family is my great grandmother, who married age 19, and had 4 children including twin girls. One twin died at 6 weeks from 'diarrohea' then another baby died at 7 months from the same cause. Three months later my g'grandmother died of TB aged 24. So by the time he was 5 my grandad had lost a brother, a sister and his mum. He then had a very hard upbringing, but stayed close to his remaining sister. Sadly, she also died of TB aged 21.
                                      I knew my grandad, he was a very quiet man, and my own dad had no idea of the family history, just that my grandad had a tattoo 'in memory of my sister' - he never even knew her name until my research. My dad often says now that he wishes he had known this years ago, it would have given him a very different light on his father.

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                                      • #20
                                        Karamazov's post above has reminded me of a neighbour we had when I was a child. She was a horrible witch of a woman and all the local kids were terrified of her - she would come out of the house and scream and shriek at us for no good reason. Our mums were strangely tolerant of her.

                                        Many years later I mentioned this woman to my mum and she told me that the woman had lost all four sons in WW2 and her husband had died of a heart attack. Her only daughter also died during the war, in childbirth.

                                        OC

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