Strange Cause of Death

[hilbury]

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.

[WHS1899]

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

[PrueM]

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!

[oldtimer]

One of my ancestors supposedly died of catarrh!! 

[Su]

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. 

Su

[meles]

And they say driving's dangerous!

meles 

[avm228]

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

Anna

[lizdb]

things havent changed much have they - I can imagine that happening these days (the compensation bit)

[oldtimer]

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.