I have been trying, for well over ten years, to find any record of the death of my maternal grandmother, Ellen Elizabeth Wilkinson nee Forster, without success.
She registered her mother’s death in 1913 in Birkenhead, following which she disappeared from trade directories which had shown her up to 1913 in Birkenhead and from the house she lived in in Birkenhead at the time her mother died.
She later lived in Liverpool, which is where both her children were born and family tradition has it that she died about 1916, but I have checked the GRO indexes, more than once, from 1913 right up to 1940, without success, by which time her son, my uncle, mentions her death in his war diary in the early 1940’s, without being specific about when or how she died, but implying that it was some years earlier. ("I have been recalling my life right from when my mother died up until the time I joined the army")
I have checked for remarriage, but again, found nothing and have visited the registrars’ offices in both Liverpool & Birkenhead and gone through their record books for both death and remarriage, but again nothing came up. There is no mention within the family of there being anything odd about her death, like having drowned with no body having been found. There is also no suggestion of remarriage, but I felt it best to check.
She did not emigrate , but had she done so, she would have taken her children with her I’m sure.
An elderly relative once said “When Nellie died Harry (her son) came to live with us for a while when I was about six” “ implying nothing unusual, other than that the death was about 1916/17
I have also followed up the possibility of her having been buried somewhere unexpected away from home, by going through all deaths of variants of her name in the GRO indexes, but drew a similar blank.
I have also checked the burial records of all likely cemeteries in Liverpool and Birkenhead, without success.
I can think of no other lines of approach so I have come round to wondering whether any research been done into the likelihood of deaths going unrecorded and if so, what was the outcome please? After all, it is theoretically impossible to bury a body without a certificate, a copy of which should reside with the registrar with another copy going to the Registrar General for inclusion in his indexes, the other going to the undertaker as authority for burial.
Any light you experts can shed on my mystery would be greatly appreciated as I am now at a total loss as to where to go next.
Many thanks,
Rob7upp
