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General => The Common Room => Topic started by: GrahamSimons on Sunday 26 January 20 21:28 GMT (UK)
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I'm looking at our parish records - transcribed and printed in Victorian times so at least I'm not dealing with handwriting issues!
I've now found two burials for men in the 1560s, both noted in the register as "wch spylt himselfe." The remainder of the burials just have names and abode; some are anotated poor, but there is nothing else on the deaths.
Has anyone have any clue as to what this might mean? I'm curious......
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According to this book (found by Google): "Punishing the Dead?: Suicide, Lordship, and Community in Britain, 1500-1830" it means he suicided.
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Hmmm - that's ever so helpful. But also raises another question. I thought suicides at the time were not supposed to be buried in consecrated ground. So how or why did he get into the register? Were suicides buried outside the churchyard somewhere but still recorded?
I'd love to have a day's conversation with the Rector of the day. Come to think of it, I'd love to have a conversation with the Rector today, but we are in an interregnum and have no Rector!
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There's an interesting forum on this subject here:
https://www.british-genealogy.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-61132.html
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Thank you for both of those references. Fascinating!
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There is a suicide (pre 1900) in our local yard.
Burial register states "buried without service".
Pauline
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It may even be that if he "spoilt himself" it may not directly have been suicide, but that his lifestyle / behaviour contributed to his demise?
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The Oxford English Dictionary the word spylt (i.e. spilt) as an archaic past tense of the word 'spill' which meant to destroy by depriving of life; to put (or bring) to death; to slay or kill. or to destroy or kill (oneself).
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Ah, I'd got a slightly different meaning lodged from earlier reading. Thanks for the correction.
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....and here's another cryptic comment in the Greystoke burial register, this time from 1769:
Mary Johnson of Berrier, wch dy'd at Great Blencowe, an innocent young woman
Has anyone an idea what that comment might mean? There are no others like it in the register; a few women are identified as a young woman and a very few as unmarried.
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I hope it wasn't that being "innocent" was so unusual? OH suggests that she might have been what in my youth was called "simple"?
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I hope it wasn't that being "innocent" was so unusual? OH suggests that she might have been what in my youth was called "simple"?
Elsewhere in the register, there's someone described as an Idiot, so I don't think so...... I wondered whether she had come to grief in some way?
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Until the 1881 census, there was a difference between "Imbecile or Idiot", and "Lunatic". Meanings change.
Martin
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Until the 1881 census, there was a difference between "Imbecile or Idiot", and "Lunatic". Meanings change.
Martin
This one was 1797, which would pre-date the official Census definitions, I think.
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I wonder if she had been hauled up before the church courts and found not guilty? Or been unjustly libelled or accused? Just a thought, pure speculation.
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....and here's another cryptic comment in the Greystoke burial register, this time from 1769:
Mary Johnson of Berrier, wch dy'd at Great Blencowe, an innocent young woman
Has anyone an idea what that comment might mean? There are no others like it in the register; a few women are identified as a young woman and a very few as unmarried.
Maybe the innocent is to do with a sexual assault. She would be innocent of being 'unpure' if she was sexually assaulted as it wasbt her fault.
I've never seen such a comment before.
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OH suggests that she might have been what in my youth was called "simple"?
This, I think. From the OED:
innocent, adj. and n.
adj. 3 b. Deficient in intelligence or sense; silly, half-witted, imbecile: cf. B. 3b. Now dialect.
1548 Hall's Vnion: Henry VI f. clxix That he was either a childe, whiche had nede of norice..or an innocent creature, whiche muste be ruled by a tutor.
1548 Hall's Vnion: Edward IV f. ccx He was a man of no great wit, suche as men comonly call an Innocent man, neither a foole, neither very wyse.
1688 in J. Barmby Churchwardens' Accts. Pittington (1888) 342 To John Dods for keeping the innocent boy, 1l.
1706 Phillips's New World of Words (new ed.) Innocent, inoffensive,..harmless, also simple, or silly.
a1825 R. Forby Vocab. E. Anglia (1830) (at cited word) ‘An innocent man’..is an extremely common expression for a silly fellow.
n. 3. (a) A guileless, simple, or unsuspecting person; one devoid of cunning or artifice. (b) One wanting in ordinary knowledge or intelligence; a simpleton, a silly fellow; a half-wit, an idiot.
c1386 G. Chaucer Canon's Yeoman's Prol. & Tale 523 O sely preest, o sely Innocent With coueitise anon thou shalt be blent.
1578 J. Lyly Euphues f. 34 In bodye deformed, in minde foolishe, an innocent borne.
1593 R. Harvey Philadelphus 91 That he might do what he list in the kingdome under such an innocent and milksop.
1598 Faversham Par. Reg. (MS.) Buryed, Margery, an innocent from the Abby.
1694 R. L'Estrange Fables (ed. 6) ccccxxxviii. 475 There was just such another Innocent as this, in my Father's Family.
1706 Phillips's New World of Words (new ed.) An Innocent, an Idiot, or Ninny, a silly, half-witted Person.
1814 W. Scott Waverley I. ix. 123 ‘He is an innocent, sir’, said the butler... Waverley learned..from this colloquy; that in Scotland..a natural fool [was called] an innocent.
1838 G. P. R. James Robber I. vi. 118 The man is a poor innocent whom I have known this many a year.
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Thank you for that: looks very much like the best interpretation! So as suggested, a bit smarter than my "idiot."
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When I was young, there was a young man in the area, never went to school when he was a child, so not able to read or write, I believe he was damaged at birth, someone told me many years later. He was good with the farm animals, but rarely communicated with people of any age, and left to himself often tended to wander round, not always fully dressed, and it made some children frightened. There was actually no harm in him, he was generally known as "Silly-----".and I remember hearing an old person say of him: "He's not naughty or nasty, he's simple, and innocent"
-And that was largely what I was basing my interpretation of the entry on. It sounds so much nicer than "idiot", doesn't it?
TY
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It sounds so much nicer than "idiot", doesn't it?
Only because of shifts in the usage of all three words.
Personally I can't see anything wrong with the term 'simple', or the expression my mum used (" a bit backward") but they'd be deemed offensive now. A pity as they're all such gentle words.