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General => The Common Room => The Lighter Side => Topic started by: hilbury on Monday 20 August 07 08:07 BST (UK)
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Most of the death certificates I have bought have fairly ordinary 'Cause of Death'...
Pulmonary Embolism or Oedema, Pneumonia, Bronchopneumonia, Phthisis/Consumption (TB), heart failure, etc.
Recently I received the death certificate of my maternal Great-grandfather which has an interesting cause of death.
It says: 'Concussion due to fractures of the skull and miningeal haemorrage caused when he fell from a roof while engaged in fire guard practice. Accidental PM'
It got me wondering...
What interesting things have you seen written in the 'Cause of Death' column on Death certificates?
Hilary.
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Hi Hilary
I had one that simply said Visitation by God.
But the most interesting one ::) was John Funnell who was run over by the wheels of his cart.
Kerry
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This one is interesting :'(
1.Broncho pneumonia due to
2. Confinement to bed after sustaining 3 fractures of the ribs,clavicle and pelvis, when deceased .....fell off his float drawn by a pony - Accidental.
Kooky
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I had one that just said 'decline'
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My grandfather's on Scotlandspeople reads:
Comminuted fracture of skull with resulting laceration and destruction of the brain substance caused by motor cycle accident.
The death shown beneath his on the same page states:
Gunshot wound of the head.
The saddest my g.uncle:
Died of Wounds, France and Flanders
Liz
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My GGGG Grandfather died of palsy. I found an interesting death for my GGGGGG Grandfather who fell down the coal mine, although that was in 1780 and was on parish registers, not on a certificate.
Andrew
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My sad one is great granddad - "Suicide by hanging whilst of unsound mind"
No idea what lay behind that. No wonder Dad never spoke about him.
meles
PS Any jokes about unsoundness of mind running in family will not be welcome. Though possibly true! ;)
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There is a topic on Rootschat for "Saddest Death in Your Tree" and I've posted some on there, but as for strange...
1866: "Suppuration of the scalp from three [...] wounds". (the writing is tiny and I've never been able to work out exactly what the wounds were caused by, but this was a 73 year old lady, so I'm assuming they were from a fall :'( )
1873: "Burnt to death by a house taking fire through an explosion of composition used in the making of fireworks - accidentally - instantly" (there's a long story behind this one, but basically this lady was 72 and died with two of her grandchildren when the house where they lived on the 1st floor burnt down because the guy on the ground floor decided to dry his fireworks composition next to his fire ::) :'( )
Prue
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The only other death I have which is unusual, is that of my 2xgt gr father's brother.-
Thirtieth December 1874. In a shed.....
"Suicide in a state of insanity, hanging himself by a rope to a hook in a beam" :(
Kooky
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It looks like we all have one or two strange ones.
Perhaps is was a 'thing' in the late 1800's to put more details into the cause of death.
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The oddest death:
1879 great grandad, Diseased kidney and rheumatism. (I suspect it was the kidney rather than the rheumatism that killed him)
The saddest death:
1903 Grandad's little sister, Whooping cough and Bronchitis aged 2 years and 3 months. I know lots of children died of this, but what makes this sadder is her parents didn't have a photo of her, so had one taken of her when she'd died. Nobody knows what happened to the photo...thankfully. I do have my great grandmothers mourning brooch which HAD a lock of little Maggie's hair in it. The little glass back to the brooch has long gone along with the hair.
Beverley
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It looks like we all have one or two strange ones.
Perhaps is was a 'thing' in the late 1800's to put more details into the cause of death.
It was certainly the case that newspaper reports were much more graphic than they are today. The house fire I mentioned above was written about in great detail, almost like a novel rather than a news report!
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One of my ancestors supposedly died of catarrh!! :o :o :o
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My sister-in-law's ancester had just visited his 'local' and was riding home on the shaft of his cart. The horse kicked him in his chest killing him and he fell off the cart and was then run over by the wheels.
One of my ancestors was killed breaking his neck when he fell from a hay wagon, and another was killed at the turnpike whilst speeding on his horse and cart. :o
Su
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And they say driving's dangerous!
meles ;)
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My sister-in-law's ancester had just visited his 'local' and was riding home on the shaft of his cart. The horse kicked him in his chest killing him and he fell off the cart and was then run over by the wheels.
This is very similar to the way my 6x g-grandfather died in 1791. The inquest report shows that his job was to deliver new beer barrels to the local Suffolk inns and collect the empties. On the night of his death he'd helped himself to a few gallons along the way, fell between the shafts of the cart and was killed by being run over by the cartwheels. He left a widow and 10 children; his (destitute) widow was ordered to compensate the brewery for the buckling of the wheels which ran him over :o
Anna
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things havent changed much have they - I can imagine that happening these days (the compensation bit)
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My grandma had two siblings killed in road accidents. The first, her brother, was run over by a milk float on his way to school. The way the newspaper report of his death reads, he and his friends were fooling about, running after the float when he fell under it.
A couple of years later, his sister "a tall and precocious girl" was watching some pigs being delivered to a neighbour, during a blizzard. A boy was left in charge of the horse, but she climbed into the driving seat, at which the horse bolted and threw her out, smashing her head on a lamppost.
Although my grandma didn't die until the 1970s, she never told any of her children about these tragic accidents to her brother and sister.
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AVM and Sue
Seems to have been a regular type of accident. According to my mum, her grandfather was coming back from market - drunk - when he fell from his cart and died. I've yet to get his death certificate to see if that was true.
Liz
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"Abcess in the back" was the cause of my GGGG Grandfather's death. We think he may have been involved in the Bradford chartist riots in 1840, and injured.
Also "Drowned while in a state of temporary insanity" for my GG Grandfather, who committed suicide.
I have recently ordered the death certificate for my great grandfather's brother, who I only just discovered - he died aged 12 and I couldn't not order it - I'm dying to know what happened (no pun intended).
Andrew
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I've recently been doing some work for LancashireBMD transcribing death certificates and checking ages at death etc.
The strangest cause of death I have seen so far was for a little boy aged 10 in 1891 and goes like this:
'Killed by being struck on head by Coconut thrown from a Coconut Shy in Coconut Alley by boy's young friend. Accidental.'
Strange but true...
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I have read all your posts with interest.
I havent got any really unusual deaths yet, but it is only me that since researching my family tree, I find myself wondering when I have a death of how they passed on and I have to admit that when I get certificates through the post I do get excited.
Am I a bit morbid??
Regards
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This thread would have been handy two minutes ago...
Greatx5 grandfather, John Bruce. He was struck by lightning in 1864 aged 69.
It's in the saddest death thread.
Sorry for posting twice...
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Not mine,
but found a record of someone thrown into the Leeds/Liverpool canal by his horse, he drowned.
Margaret
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poor horse ...... was the man OK?
;D
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sorry, it was the man that drowned, no idea what happened to the horse.
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Don't know if you would call it strange.....definitely sad....and very definitely ghastly .....a great grand uncle suicided a few years after WW1 by drinking Lysol. He had been badly wounded in the stomach during the war, and from then on his activities definitely indicate he suffered what would now be known as post traumatic stress syndrome. :'( :'(
......dee
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I've got chronic alcoholism. Well, not personally. Though some might disagree. Great-great-grandmother, died in the 1890s. Her grandfather was a farmer and innkeeper and her father was a publican. These days, the connection would be obvious.
I was in the records office earlier this week looking through the records for Colne St Bartholomew. In the late 1700s. they started putting in cause of death (actually the column's simply headed "disease"), and there are lots of "decline", "old age", "child-bed", but every now and then you see smallpox ravaging through the township, and then there are the unusual ones - I saw at least two young children who "burned to death"; one young woman who fell of the bridge and drowned in the stream. There was also one, who died of old age: but at the ripe old age of 102, in the late 1780s, and buried with full military honours.
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So far mine is John Sellick, who according to the family gravestone in Portbury (Somerset) churchyard, states that he "drowned on his passage back from the West Indies." This was in 1831 and he was 30 and we still haven't found out why he was in the West Indies in the first place, maybe working for a plantation owner?
The other rumour is that my Grt Grandfather's brother, George Sellick, died by jumping out of a window during a delirious spell whilst suffering from either pneumonia or TB in 1918. The death cert is in the post to confirm this one!
acceber
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One of my relatives died in 1788 aged 17. The cause of death in the register is
Casually poisoned
which tells us something about the way that the meanings of words have changed over the centuries.
My tree also contains two children who drowned, one aged 6, the other just 18 months.
I've just done a quick count for the Croston burials from www.lan-opc.org.uk:-
Fever: 444
Consumption: 353
Old Age: 190
Small Pox: 135
Decline: 126
Convulsions: 56
Whooping cough: 39
Child bed: 38
Disorder of the throat: 35
Dropsy: 35
Fits: 32
Apoplexy: 25
Drowned: 22
Palsy: 21
Died Suddenly: 21
Measles: 16
Never well: 14
Gravel: 11
Decay: 10
Complication of disorders: 10
Gripes: 6
Cancer: 5
Jaundice: 4
Asthma: 3
Falls: 3
Visitation of God: 3
Excessive drinking: 2
Intemperance: 2
St. Anthony's Fire: 1
What we think of today as non-threatening conditions were very serious for our ancestors. What we think of as serious problems like cancer were rare then, probably because other diseases hit them first. Smallpox, thankfully eradicated now, took nearly as many as old age.
These records also tell us that religion is nearly as dangerous as drink. ;D
St. Anthony's Fire, by the way, is poisoning by ergot, a mould which can grow on stored grain.
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The grandfather of a friend of mine had a death certificate which read:
"shot himself after shooting his wife"
the grandmother's death certificate read:
"shot by husband whilst in a state of insanity"
:-X :-X :-X
My great grandmother died of "specific disease" in 1920. Researching this with various medics they came to the conclusion that this was "syphilis", apparently the incidence of veneral disease increased substantially after wars!
:o :o :o
Amanda
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I was quite shocked to find that my family history software has decided that I'm dead.
The report section reads:
Michael A. W. Strachan was born 28th July 1987 in Fraserburgh. He died.
None of my other living relitives are recorded as having died. Perhaps it's an omen...
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Never trust computers!
And there's the evidence!
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I was quite shocked to find that my family history software has decided that I'm dead.
The report section reads:
Michael A. W. Strachan was born 28th July 1987 in Fraserburgh. He died.
None of my other living relitives are recorded as having died. Perhaps it's an omen...
Oh, that's nasty. I guess it will be true eventually.
Your software can see something in the 'Death' area of your entry, have you tried clicking in that area and deleting even if you can't see anything?
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The strangest one I have is my g-grandfather who, according to his death certificate, died from 'shock and haemorrhage due to fractured pelvis and skull - fell from ladder to street pavement when cleaning windows - accidental', occupation 'window cleaner', AGE 79!
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Best I can remember " struck down by the hand of God and nothing else".
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My only interesting one so far is of Jonas Mallinson, he died when he was accidentally run over by his own cart.
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Strange? Well when you know the character of the man, hardly surprising, although I do know that it doesn't always mean what it appears to mean, and was often used as a term for other wasting, or prolonged illnesses...
The callous Callus William Webb/William Webb/William Challis, after dashing all over the country with numerous female companions, (great grandmother Eliza being one) finally succumbed to EXHAUSTION.
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Hi all
I read of a young girl, Honor Sawyer, who died of 'mortification of the bowels" ....she was young...I felt so sorry for her, that I decided to find her in the census etc ... To no avail.... That's what you call true addiction to searching ...LOL ::)
Deb ;D
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My great great grandfather's younger brother died at 6 months of teething (1863). I did read somewhere that it was possible to buy medicine to help with teething in the Victorian age but it contained small amounts of arsenic.
Margaret