What was the saddest death in your Tree ?

[peterb]

It's about  time  for someone to break into Monty Python's Four Yorkshiremen sketch.

"And if you tell that to the young people today, they won't believe ya"

Cheers,

PeterB

[JAP]

Far far too many sad deaths.  Here's one very sad tale.

The father of my Gran (Ada) died in the 1800s when she was 7.  He left his widow aged 29 in a land (NZ) where she had no relatives - with 6 children under 10 and a seventh on the way.

That was sad but ...

Gran and her sister Flo buried four little ones in Melbourne, Victoria in the same grave in less than 3 weeks in a measles epidemic in 1898.  Already Flo had buried little Annie there - she  died aged 5 days in 1892.  Then, in 1898, Flo buried Charles 4y 11m on 12 April, Percy 2y 6m on 22 April, and her last remaining child, Hughey 7m, on 1 May.  I can only think that my Gran, Ada, must have come down from the country to help Flo leaving her two littlies (aged 3 and 1) behind(?) but taking her eldest child, Eugene 5 - and Eugene too succumbed to the epidemic and was buried on 18 April with his little cousins.

The fates hadn't finished with them.  Both Flo and Ada had daughters in 1899.  In 1900, Flo and her husband and baby Violet went to the country to be with Ada - and Flo's husband died there that year.  And Ada's little girl died there aged 2 in 1901.

My dear Gran worked her fingers to the bone and would have given you her last penny.

And, PeterB, had she lived into the Monty Python days, despite everything she'd been through, she would have had a good laugh (even if it was through tears) at your post!

JAP 

[Keith Sherwood]

Hi, Mobo,
Posted my tale, and then went to bed, and have only just discovered your response this morning buried under all these other sad tales - it's not exactly "lighter side" reading is it?
Noticed that in my hasty post the man who died under the omnibus, John Kershaw, had his name accidentally mutated to "James" half-way through - my error.  Also, the place that his daughter Mary, 9, and Raleigh, only 3, got put into was called an "Asylum for Fatherless Children", though I have since discovered that it was more like a boarding school; today it has a thriving old boys/girls network who remember their days there with affection...
Keith

[SPaceY]

I have came across a family member who gave birth to 7 children 1 was a stillborn and 3 died all a year or 2 after their births. The 3 that didn't die had also lost children of their own, luckily 2 of the 3 both had other children that didn't die young.

SPaceY

[JAP]

This is all getting very morbid ...

Grandma Lizzie's little sister, Maud died aged about 13.  Grandma named one of her own daughters after Maud.  Yes, you guessed, little Maudie died in 1911 aged 7 (all of Lizzie's other children survived - did Lizzie ever wonder whether she should have given her little daughter that name?).

Grandma Lizzie, an ancient unemotional person, once mentioned Maudie to me when I was about that age - quite out of the blue - and said "You never forget".  And I remember my mother saying that the doctor had purged little Maudie thinking she had been eating green plums - actually she had appendicitis.  And that she remembered the hearse with white horses decorated with white plumes.

I guess we all have sad present day stories but those of the past seem to have involved so very very many young deaths.

JAP

 

[ozwendy]

The saddest one in my tree is the 18 year old brother of my greatgrandfather. The family story is that he was murdered. I found an article from a local newspaper, dated Dec. 1890, which reported his body being found. The article went into vivid description as to the condition of the body. It seems he walked home from the pit along his usual route, but never made it home, His body was found the next day next to the railway track, away from his normal route and they were awaiting the coroner's report. Now I will have to find the report or a later article to see if he was murdered.

The other sad thing about this death is that as the years went by four babies from the family (over three generations) were put into the same grave. My greatgrandfather's 3year old and 3 mth old daughters, who died two weeks apart in 1917, probably from the flu and my grandparent's first child who was born in 1925 with some sort of deformity and died weeks later. There is another one, but we haven't worked out exactly who he is.

Aren't we lucky that times have changed and these sorts of tragedies are fewer.

Wendy

[Mobo]

 

I don't think the subject is at all 'morbid' JAP - in those days death was part of life and therefore more acceptable.  It's only todays society with it's preoccupation with 'self' which can't handle the cencept of mortality.

 

[joboy]

I agree ............ certainly not morbid ........ it's a matter of the facts that one unearths whilst studying their forebears.
Great uncle George died on Christmas Day 1891 ......... he was a handsome cab driver ......... worked the West End and that Christmas he must have been particularly busy around the theatres .......... worked all day and well into the night ........... and died ......... he was only 47.
The post mortem stated 'The doctor found him in bed ..... his body was cold and he looked like a man who had been frozen........ his limbs were intensely cold and he suddenly expired .......... conclusion;
'Congestion of the brain,diseased heart and lungs adherent'.
The poor soul was doing his best to provide for his family whilst very,very ill.
joboy

[Mobo]

 

How sad joyboy !!

It would be nice think that our forebears can see their descendants remembering them in this small way - their plights weren't probably given much attention back then !!