Genealogy Chat

Katazyna Yes, they did have dancing!!!!They were awarded either £5 or £10, plus 30 shillings allowance 'for liquor'. As this sum was about half a year's wages for some people, it was an incentive to commit murder. The mind boggles! Marjorie (surrounded by cobwebs, unironed clothes, dirty dishes etc)

I love your pieces too Marjorie, but I really don't know how you find the time to read as well as the time spent on these boards. Thanks all the same though. Kath. x

Marjorie I love your snippets of info - I would love to rummage through your bookcase! I hated history at school but I am intrigued with it now and will have to get my head into a book again but since I started this lark I can't keep off here or Ancestry! Debby

Makes you want to weep, doesn't it, what they put children through back then I'm sure a lot of it was out of financial necessity but nonetheless, they were still little children doing an adults job

Lou Yes, it was because I could find the grave of my 3 x GF but not the b**** registration of death, that I began to suspect this! Incidentally, the youngest person to be charged with Poisoning with Intent to Kill was a ten year old girl. This poor little mite had been sent away to be a Maid in someone's house. She missed her Mum terribly but was told by her family she had to stick it out. Somewhat simplistically, she worked out that if her Mistress died she would be sent home, so she poisoned her with enough Arsenic to kill an army. With unusual mercy, the court found her guilty, sentenced her to one weeks hard labour and then released her into the 'perpetual care' of her father. Marjorie

Aha, so that's where great great uncle John went - bumped off by his less-than-faithful wife and buried in a bog somewhere up there on the Lancashire moors. Seriously though, you would have thought they would have clamped down on it earlier than 1926. Good grief, there were a few women with the vote by then (weren't there?). It's all a bit within living memory, isn't it. Frightening. Tina

sorry marjorie, thought it was going to be one of your hilarious dittys, very interesting none the less!! makes you wonder doesnt it?

Fascinating as always Marjorie No stipulation either that the person had to be dead before you could bury them which is a bit disturbing! It does make you wonder whether this is where some of our untraceables are though....6ft under but no certificate! Lou

Before 1926, Death Registration and Certification was pretty haphazard. In the early days of Registration, it was apparently quite sufficient to stick your head round the Registrar's door and tell him Auntie Maud had died. He would ask what of, and fill in the REGISTRATION OF DEATH CERTIFICATE> (This is not the same thing as a DEATH CERTIFICATE, which is filled in by a Doctor or Coroner.) You did not have to produce a body, nor any good reason why the person had died. Sometimes, the Registrar, if he was doing his job properly, would ask for more proof, but more often than not, didnt bother. So off you went with your Registration of Death Cert and claimed the Insurance money, or more likely if you were poor, the Burial Club money. Or, alternatively, if you could find a Doctor willing to issue a cause of death certificate, that would do instead - many Burial Clubs did not even ask for this.And many of these certificates were issued by Doctors who had not ever seen the patient, alive or dead. It became apparent that the system was wide open to abuse - many suspicious deaths were going unrecorded, but typically, it was the smell of financial fraud which finally geared the Government (pushed by the Insurance Companies) to pass a law in 1926 which said 'No death can be registered without a Death Certificate stating natural causes, or a Coroner's Order for burial'. I thought this was interesting proof of my suspicions that it was possible to bury someone without registering the death. Marjorie (PS - taken from 'Poisoned Lives - English Poisoners and their Victims'. This book contains a mass of fascinating social observation of the 19th century.

will i have to make sure ive plenty of dry knicks again for tonight marjorie? am looking forward to this lol

See below in quite a few more minutes.