Find My Past Blog - Facts and famous people in our death records

[Family Tree Forum]

Following the recent launch of our improved death records search, we’ve been delving into the records to see what we can find. As well as our own ancestors, we’ve discovered records of some famous people that have passed away over the centuries. Our research also uncovered some interesting facts around which counties have the highest number of registered deaths.

The famous people we unearthed include Florence Nightingale who died in 1910, Arthur Conan Doyle, the British author of Sherlock Holmes, who passed away in 1930 and Brian Jones of Rolling Stones fame, who died in 1969. Interestingly, John Doe, the name often used to describe an unidentified body, appears 228 times within the records.

We’ve also discovered some regional trends. Despite Greater London being the smallest county by area, it has registered more deaths per square mile than all of the UK’s largest counties due to its higher population as the country’s capital. We found 16,660 deaths per square mile in Greater London, compared with Lancashire’s 9,949. Yorkshire, however, comes in at number 10 with the lowest number of deaths recorded per square mile, despite being the biggest county by area.

Here are the full details:



County

Number of deaths registered

Area
(square mile)

Deaths per
square mile

London 10,112,560 607 16,660 Lancashire

11,829,032

1,189

9,949

Warwickshire 2,970,034 763 3,893 Staffordshire

3,347,361

1,020

3,282

Durham 2,924,671 1,015 2,881 Glamorganshire

2,259,498

845

2,673

Cheshire

2,282,643

905

2,522

Essex

2,778,636

1,420

1,957

Kent

2,699,401

1,442

1,872

Yorkshire

9,495,461

6,000

1,583



Have you made any interesting discoveries while searching the death records? If you haven’t had a chance to search them yet, give it a go now - you never know who you might find…



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