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Cemetery search

ok thats good...i did read that sometimes very young infants were buried in other peoples graves but that no record was made of the grave they were in so yes im afraid trying to find william could prove very difficult if at all

lyn
I did wonder if that sort of burial was recorded anywhere. The family didn't have much money so it would all have been over and done with pretty quickly. I think I remember on the HS2 programme that they found a babies bones in with someone else in Park St, so there are probably quite a lot more similar cases.
 
ok thats good...i did read that sometimes very young infants were buried in other peoples graves but that no record was made of the grave they were in so yes im afraid trying to find william could prove very difficult if at all

lyn
I have met up with this statement also when I was at the old family records centre in London, researching my untraceable gggrandfather and his family, but not only that statement, but also that the only coffin they had was a cardboard box. This was because infant deaths were so prevalent, very little importance was attached to the death, but more importance placed on the living and no mourning for the dead infant. In addition to coming from one of the staff, it also came from a lady who was doing a degree in infant mortality in the 19th and early 20th Century and one reason was that because there was very little attempt at Birth control, the dead child would soon be replaced and my wifes ggrandparents proved this with 13 children in 20years
 
I have met up with this statement also when I was at the old family records centre in London, researching my untraceable gggrandfather and his family, but not only that statement, but also that the only coffin they had was a cardboard box. This was because infant deaths were so prevalent, very little importance was attached to the death, but more importance placed on the living and no mourning for the dead infant. In addition to coming from one of the staff, it also came from a lady who was doing a degree in infant mortality in the 19th and early 20th Century and one reason was that because there was very little attempt at Birth control, the dead child would soon be replaced and my wifes ggrandparents proved this with 13 children in 20years
Yes times have certainly changed. My Grandmothers brothers both died young. Such a lot of loss for one person as her mother died when she was five too. (Grandma and her sister lived till 96 and 97!) Most of the families on Dads side had at least 14 children.
 
Unlikely to have been cremated at that age. Perry Barr, possibly, but it's private and not online.

EDIT: Otherwise a local churchyard, but the records are not online that recent & Birmingham Archives are still closed as far as I am aware. My cousin's grandparents were born in Aston and went out in the 1920s, so he's never been to the UK.

Maurice :cool:
It doesn't seem like there will be any records, I just wondered if someone might have a theory, but it would all be guesswork. I can just imagine the baby being whisked away and 'taken care of' very quickly.
 
I did wonder if that sort of burial was recorded anywhere. The family didn't have much money so it would all have been over and done with pretty quickly. I think I remember on the HS2 programme that they found a babies bones in with someone else in Park St, so there are probably quite a lot more similar cases.
yes i would think you are right there...for years i have been searching for a friends brother who was born at loveday st maternity hospital in 1935 he was a full term still born..my friends mom told her he was buried at key hill or warstone lane..the baby was just taken off her and there was no funeral as such... to date i cant find any records of the exact spot so i am now assuming he was buried along with someone else..very sad really as she will never be able to pay her respects

lyn
 
yes i would think you are right there...for years i have been searching for a friends brother who was born at loveday st maternity hospital in 1935 he was a full term still born..my friends mom told her he was buried at key hill or warstone lane..the baby was just taken off her and there was no funeral as such... to date i cant find any records of the exact spot so i am now assuming he was buried along with someone else..very sad really as she will never be able to pay her respects

lyn
They faced such sadness in those times and grieving just didn't seem to be an option. Grandma lost her mother and 2 brothers before she was 10, then her son later. I have located all the the burial places, apart from this baby and her older brother in Scotland, when they were all in an orphanage. It doesn't seem right that great grandad had such an elaborate grave but his first wife, 2 children and grandchild have nothing to even mark their lives.
 
In the case of the dead two day old we are talking about a bare 18 months after the end of WW1. What was the financial situation of the parents at that time? My own father came out of the Army at the age of 36 to find that his job had been given to a young father with two young children. He was single and was told that he could force the issue, but he would probably put a young family in very great difficulty. In order words he was shamed into losing his job. He eventually got a very poorly paid job making packing cases at Perry Pens in Lancaster Street, known for paying very low wages.

Financial considerations may very well come into the disposal of the child's body. It was a cruel world out there at that time. So many families with no breadwinner father and girls whose husband to be was no longer alive or suffering the effects of the war.

Maurice :cool:
 
In the case of the dead two day old we are talking about a bare 18 months after the end of WW1. What was the financial situation of the parents at that time? My own father came out of the Army at the age of 36 to find that his job had been given to a young father with two young children. He was single and was told that he could force the issue, but he would probably put a young family in very great difficulty. In order words he was shamed into losing his job. He eventually got a very poorly paid job making packing cases at Perry Pens in Lancaster Street, known for paying very low wages.

Financial considerations may very well come into the disposal of the child's body. It was a cruel world out there at that time. So many families with no breadwinner father and girls whose husband to be was no longer alive or suffering the effects of the war.

Maurice :cool:
I've never found any military records for grandad but he was a railway porter when they got married in 1919 and grandma had been in service since she was 14. There was no money to spare and they were staying with her father, who had gone on to marry for the third time and have another five kids. I cant imagine how they all fitted into the house, the twins were put in drawers as there was no cots available. At some point grandma got a prefab house and they were there for quite some time. I have no illusions on what life was like for grandma and I doubt very much she had any say in what happened to the dead baby.
 
nzjrc,

Ironical as my own father was carter for the railway at Curzon Street delivering parcels with his horse & cart. He said that he loved that job and he knew the streets of Birmingham like the back of his hand. Only around 40% of the servicemen's records for WW1 have survived due to a WW2 incendiary bomb on the building in which they were stored. This did not affect officer's records, which were stored elsewhere. Happy to check, but I will need full name & date of birth. If you don't want to post this on the open forum, you can send me a private message (envelope icon top right).

Maurice :cool:
 
nzjrc,

Ironical as my own father was carter for the railway at Curzon Street delivering parcels with his horse & cart. He said that he loved that job and he knew the streets of Birmingham like the back of his hand. Only around 40% of the servicemen's records for WW1 have survived due to a WW2 incendiary bomb on the building in which they were stored. This did not affect officer's records, which were stored elsewhere. Happy to check, but I will need full name & date of birth. If you don't want to post this on the open forum, you can send me a private message (envelope icon top right).

Maurice :cool:
I have mainly done research on my mothers maternal line, but did a bit on grandads line. I never met him but grandma lived with us in NZ for 33 years, she never spoke about him. He was George Stockdale, b Birmingham, 30 May1888. As I say I have never found any war records for him, I don't know where he was then or when he started work on the railways. I doubt very much if he was anything like an officer. I don't think jobs on the railway were war work, I guess he could have had an ailment, but again I am not aware of this. Would be interesting if there were any records. Jane
 
nzjrc,

That's who I thought it probably was, but I can confirm no service records. Four silver war medals for persons of that name but no places of dates or places of birth, so impossible to say whether any one might be him without a service number. I'll have another dig around tomorrow, but I am not too hopeful.

Maurice :cool:
 
He appears on Ancestry on the UK, Railways Employees List.
Difficult to copy as he is towards the bottom of a page. I have done the headings as well and split the page in half otherwise it would be rather small
1617058486253.png1617058526594.png

1617058576028.png
1617058612492.png
 
There are other entries - first shows his transfer to Kings Norton.
1617058927330.png
This one shows he was "adv" - I assume advanced and the changes in his rate of pay. I think he was now a porter not an assistant porter.
1617058998903.png
 
nzjrc,

That's who I thought it probably was, but I can confirm no service records. Four silver war medals for persons of that name but no places of dates or places of birth, so impossible to say whether any one might be him without a service number. I'll have another dig around tomorrow, but I am not too hopeful.

Maurice :cool:
Thanks very much for looking.
 
There are other entries - first shows his transfer to Kings Norton.
View attachment 155260
This one shows he was "adv" - I assume advanced and the changes in his rate of pay. I think he was now a porter not an assistant porter.
View attachment 155261
Thanks very much. I must have missed these ones. His son was also named George who was on the railways too and I have found some records for him. Unfortunately not been able to find anything between known dates i.e 1911 census and his marriage in 1919. Jane
 
nzjrc,

I spent an hour or so scouring the newspaper archives, FMP and a few other sources, but George seems to have kept a fairly low profile and not resorted to criminal activities! In other words I found nothing and he was a good boyt. :)

Maurice :cool:
 
nzjrc,

I spent an hour or so scouring the newspaper archives, FMP and a few other sources, but George seems to have kept a fairly low profile and not resorted to criminal activities! In other words I found nothing and he was a good boyt. :)

Maurice :cool:
Sounds about right, boring in other words!! Thanks so much for going to the trouble. Jane
 
Jane,

If your father was a fireman at the time you left England, I can send you a copy of the Passenger List of your parents' outgoing journey to NZ if you haven't already got it.. If you don't want me to upload it to the open forum, send me an email address via the private messenging system - envelope icon top right of every page.

Maurice :cool:
 
Jane,

If your father was a fireman at the time you left England, I can send you a copy of the Passenger List of your parents' outgoing journey to NZ if you haven't already got it.. If you don't want me to upload it to the open forum, send me an email address via the private messenging system - envelope icon top right of every page.

Maurice :cool:
Yes, I have copies of that thanks. Dad met Mum at the Fire Station when she came to work on the phones. They went to NZ on the sponsored immigration scheme and worked at the Wellington Station. Many years later he and another passenger started a reunion group of Captain Cook passengers which had meetings of around 400 people. Jane
 
Jane,

That was way before the internet & email and the time to have started ideally would have been before you disembarked. You would have then had a ready made self=-help group! :)

Maurice :cool:
 
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