Unearth the Past: A family history & genealogy podcast

Ep 12: Exploring 19th Century Death Records

• Dr Michala Hulme • Season 1 • Episode 12

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Are your ancestors whispering secrets from the 19th century, waiting for you to discover them? Embark on a thrilling journey with me, Dr Michala Hulme as we unearth these enigmas etched in death and burial records. Together, we'll decode the cryptic handwriting on pre-1812 records and navigate the Civil Registration Index, a treasure trove waiting to be explored.

The 19th century was a time of trials and tribulations, its harsh realities reflected in child mortality rates. Urban areas teeming with life were also packed with perils for the young ones. Gain a new perspective on your family history as we harness the power of the 1911 census and shed light on common causes of death such as TB, cholera, and convulsions. How did these adversities shape the journey of your forebears? Let's trace the roots together. 

Lastly, we'll step into the somber world of 19th-century burial practices. Uncover the rise of joint-stock cemetery companies and the advent of municipal cemeteries, the silent witnesses to the cycle of life and death. How did the 19th-century burial acts shape these landscapes of remembrance? Let's find out together. 

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Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome back to an oath of the past, a brand new family history and genealogy podcast brought to you by me, dr McKayley Hugh. So this week we are going to talk about my specialist subject. That's right, folks. If I was going to appear on mastermind, this is probably the subject that I would be discussing, and that is death. So how has your week been? Has it been good? How's your research gone? Do you hate your ancestors or have you managed to find them all? Have you jumped over that brick wall or smashed it down? Even better, have you got on? Send me a message, let me know in the comments.

Speaker 1:

My research week has been pretty good. I don't think I hate anyone. This week I've been researching Victorian crimes, which is always a pleasure never to and that's because I am filming this week. I'm filming in the evening a TV show that we should have filmed a couple of weeks ago but unfortunately we couldn't because it got cancelled. So, yes, I'm filming that this week. So I've just been going over what I need to know. I haven't done all the research for this show. There is an amazing team of researchers that have done all the research, so I'm just checking just to see if I can find anything else to add.

Speaker 1:

A massive thank you, by the way, to every single person that is listening to this podcast. I can't believe it. We've made another chart. I know what's going on. Yeah, thanks for listing. We've made another chart. I can't remember what it was. I think it was hobbies or ledger or something on the apple. So thank you very, very much. Somebody did ask if I'm on the TikTok. I have got a TikTok account, but I've not got a clue how to use it. But we are on YouTube, so I do put these videos up on YouTube so you can see them.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so let's get back, then, to what we should be talking about today. Now, I think for most of us well, for me, when we are researching any person in our family tree or somebody else's family tree, we want to know how the story starts, don't we? So we want to know a year, ideally a date of birth, for somebody in our tree, and we also want to know how that story ends, and anything we can get in the middle is a bonus. But I think, for most people, especially when you look at your family tree, you know you want a year of birth and you want a year of death. Now here in England, if we are looking to find out when and where somebody died, we have the Civil Registration Index.

Speaker 1:

Civil Registration I know we've mentioned it before on this podcast was introduced in 1837. And this is when you legally had to register a birth, a marriage and a death From Civil Registration. A knock on of this was that we get something called a death certificate. If you haven't seen a death certificate, it's a really interesting document. I'm actually looking at one now on my screen from one of my ancestors who died in 1885. And we get information such as when and where the person died, the name and surname, sex, age, occupation, cause of death, signature and description and residence of informant. I think that is really interesting. Just as I think witnesses are really interesting on a marriage certificate, the informant is also interesting on a death certificate because it can potentially lead you on to new people that you didn't know about and it may help to expand your family tree even further. So always pay attention to who is registering that death. You also get the name and the signature of the registrar.

Speaker 1:

Now these can be ordered from the GRO in the UK, which is the General Registry Office. I think it's wwwgrogovuk. If you go on there you can order them. I think you can also search the register on there. I don't use that to search the register. I actually use either Find my Past or Ancestry, but there are some details that you will need in order to purchase that death certificate. So make sure that when you find the record on the Civil Registration Index you make a note of all the details on there, especially the place where it was registered the district. You're going to want to know the volume number, the page number and a few other details. So I just make a note of everything on there and then you will be able to figure out what you need when you go onto the General Registry Office and order your certificate.

Speaker 1:

Now, if you have a look at burial records before 1812, you're going to know that they really do vary in quality. Some of them are absolutely pants. Some of them are really really difficult to decipher, especially ones written in the 18th century. It honestly look it might just be me and you guys might be listening to this going no problems whatsoever. I find them really difficult to read. I often have to use my magnifying glass. It's not actually glass, it's plastic. I'll let you into a little secret it's got a light on. I got it off the Tintor web. It wasn't that dear. But I often have to use magnifying glass and you know they are. They are difficult to read, so take your time with them. I have no idea how these people got a pen license, folks, because the writing is worse than my doctors. It's often quite, quite hard, quite hard to read, as I've said.

Speaker 1:

Anyway, after 1812 and the introduction of something called the Roses Act, which basically was an act for making sure that parish records were preserved and they were also better regulated, in other words, to make sure that everybody was keeping coherent parish registers, we start to get standardised forms for parish registers, which makes researching a lot easier because it's not just like some random sentence in the middle of a book. They now have proper columns for each part of the register. It's really useful for us because it just makes research so much quicker and also you can understand it better. You can make it actually what people were saying.

Speaker 1:

There are two things that you need to be aware of when it comes to death certificates, and that's two changes that occurred in between 1837 and now. The first one is if you are looking at a death certificate pre 1866, you are not going to get an age at death, so you're not going to get you know. We think John Smith died and he was 78. That's not going to be on the form. You will get an age at death, an estimated age at death, in most cases after 1866. From 1969 you actually get an accurate date of birth. Again, the year for me has been out on a couple of death certificates. Nevertheless the actual day and the month has been correct. So again, I'd just err on the side of caution with the year somebody was born. It can be just slightly out.

Speaker 1:

Now, before I go on and talk to you about how and where people were buried, I thought it might be useful just to discuss life expectancy. So when you get your death certificates and you're looking at them and you're thinking, you're trying to you know, work out whether that was particularly old you know that was an old age to die in the Victorian period in the 19th century or whether it was a young age, I thought it might be useful just to talk a tiny bit about life expectancy. So do you have a rough idea of what life expectancy was like in the 19th century. Well, I can tell you that it really did vary, and it varied on a number of different factors. Obviously, if you lived in somewhere that was more rural, somewhere was more agricultural, it wasn't as built up and you weren't living in one of the highly populated towns with the smog and the smoke of all the factories, the chances are you were going to live longer. For example, in 1841 the life expectancy of a man born in Surrey was about 44 years, where in Liverpool it was just 25 years. In Bristol in 1851, life expectancy was about 39 years, where, if we think about Manchester, it was only 32 years. Now, the average life expectancy in England and Wales between 1851 and 1900 varied between 41 years and 46 years. In Birmingham, life expectancy varied in 1851 from 37 years up to 1900, which was 42 years. So we've mentioned that the average life expectancy varied in the second half of the 19th century in England and Wales between 41 years and 46.

Speaker 1:

But what about children? I think that was the one thing. When I started researching my ancestors and I'm sure you guys have found the same I was shocked at the number of children that had died in my family tree. I don't think I realised, in terms of infant mortality, how high it was in my own family until I started researching my family tree. The life expectancy of children varied. It varied whether you lived in the countryside or whether you lived in the town. It also varied depending upon how much money you had, you know, could you pay for health care for your child.

Speaker 1:

If we take Manchester as an example, in Manchester one in four children died before their sixth birthday. So one in four children died before their sixth birthday. I remember reading that statistic when I was doing the re, when I was researching my own family that are from Manchester, and I couldn't quite believe that one in four children would not make their sixth birthday. Thinking about those statistics then, and in terms of our research, that's why it's always worth checking in between census records to see if your ancestors had any children that had sadly passed away. The 1911 census is obviously great because it tells us how many children were born alive and how many children had died, which can then help you to go on and look for potential birth records, baptism records or burial or death records. It is useful, the 1911 census, and that's one thing that I do. I know, I know I say it's my favourite census. But that's one thing that I do miss from the 1921 is that we just don't get that information. But yeah, always check in between the censuses.

Speaker 1:

Now, by the 1840s, social reformers who were working in urban areas were starting to put pieces of the jigsaw puzzles together. They were starting to understand a bit more about the link between life expectancy, poor living conditions and the spread of disease. At this point there's no provision for waste. You have families squashed in back-to-back properties, each family living on a floor, some living in a basement. Below ground level, people are keeping pigs in the yard. You've got waste matter coming down the street and, if you're living in a basement, coming into your basement. So all these factors, plus the fact you know the towns are really highly populated and people are literally living on top of each other, all these factors made it a breeding ground for the spread of disease In Manchester. Just think about this for a minute in Manchester, on Parliament Street, 380 people shared one privy. That's 380 people sharing one privy, one loo. Now, I don't know about you, but I struggle just sharing a toilet with my other half, let alone another. You know 379 people. Now, before I go on to talk about how people are buried.

Speaker 1:

I thought it might be useful to just look at some common causes of death. So what may you see on a 19th century death certificate? Now, some you may recognise, such as bronchitis. I don't think I really need to explain what that is, but there are others that you may not. So, for example, have you heard of consumption? No, yes. What about TB? So consumption was just another name for TB. Now TB, it's a bacterial infection. It's spread by coughs or sneezes. It mostly affects the lungs. One of the early signs, or a sign that you had TB in the Victorian period, was the fact that you coughed up bloody mucus. So that was one of the signs. I don't know if you've watched I can't remember what period drama I watched but I remember watching a period drama and as soon as one of the main characters started coughing up bloody mucus, straight away I was thinking this is not going to end well, they're going to kill him off. Other symptoms of consumption or TB include chest pains, fever and night sweats.

Speaker 1:

Now, one you may have heard of I've actually not come across anybody in my family tree that's died of this is cholera. Now, the first appearance of cholera was in 1831 and there was a particularly bad outbreak in 1832. There are also outbreaks in 1848, 49 and 53 to 54. And it was after the second outbreak that John Snow not of the Game of Thrones variety suggested that cholera was not in fact airborne, it was actually coming from contaminated water. Now, symptoms of cholera included diarrhea, nausea, but one of the main problems was dehydration and some people, it is reported, could lose up to 20 litres of fluid a day 20 litres Now nowadays. If you are sick for a long period of time, obviously you would be admitted to hospital. They'd probably put you in a drip and they'd get some fluids in you. That isn't an option at this point, so there was no way really of getting the fluids into somebody once they started suffering from the effects of cholera.

Speaker 1:

Another cause of death which you may see especially on a child's death certificate is convulsions. We sometimes call that fits or maybe a seizure. Often convulsions is just a symptom of something else, so the chances are they were suffering from something which was giving them a fever which was making the child convulse. What's one of the biggest causes of death in children, alongside diarrhea? Again, children are losing fluids. There's no way of getting those fluids back in and that's why diarrhea was one of the biggest killers. Something else you may see on a death certificate is natural decay, which is just another word for old age.

Speaker 1:

Have you come across any sort of obscure causes of death in your family? I mean, I did come across somebody who died from rabies, which we don't really hear about here in the UK. It seems to be pretty much extinct, but I remember somebody dying who was doing research out of rabies. Also, loads of workplace accidents and loads of accidents relating as well to new infrastructure. So I think I came across a couple of people last week who was researching, who died, for example, because one of them fell in their canal and somebody else was crossing the railway line and it was foggy and they didn't see the train coming. Health and safety was pretty damn non-existent in the 19th century. So you do get a lot of workplace accidents and accidents, as I say, relating to new forms of infrastructure.

Speaker 1:

So we spoke a bit about death and life expectancy, but what about burial? Where would you be buried if you died in the 19th century? Well, if you died at the beginning of the 19th century, the chances are you would be buried in the local parish burial ground or in the local churchyard. There are loads of parish burial registers now online so it is worth having a look and just seeing if those records are available. If not, they're probably in your local archives.

Speaker 1:

In the 1820s we get a new form of burial site and that comes by the way of a joint stock cemetery. Joint stock cemeteries were private companies and they were formed by entrepreneurial businessmen and they were funded through the sale of shares. Now some of these cemeteries were built for religious reasons. Particularly those in the 1820s were built by non-conformists. However, in the 1830s it's more likely that these were built for financial gain. If you have been to London or you live in London, you have probably wandered around one of these privately owned cemeteries. So you may have heard of the Magnificent Seven, which includes Highgate and Kennsel Green. They're privately owned cemeteries. Now the records for these cemeteries may be held at the local archives or may still be with the cemetery, and that's because some of these cemeteries are still privately owned and some of them have now been taken over by the local council. So if you can't find the burial registers for a privately owned cemetery, it is worth checking with the cemetery themselves just to see who holds their records.

Speaker 1:

Even the arrival of joint stock cemetery companies was not enough to solve a real problem, and that was in urban areas there wasn't enough burial space to bury the dead. By the 1840s most church yards were overcrowded and it became a real concern for health reformers that the dead would now become in a health risk to their living. Some church yards actually started to bury the bodies above ground level and then what happened was waste matter from those coffins started to seep onto the road where people were walking. So it did actually become a real health risk. So what happened, I hear you ask? Well, in the 1850s a series of acts called the burial acts were introduced and they started in London and then moved outside of the metropolis. The acts called for the creation of new cemeteries and we know them today as municipal cemeteries, often on the outskirts of the town, so they weren't directly in the centre of the town. And the acts also gave the burials inspector the power to close down any burial site that he deemed was a threat to human health. So if you have been researching your ancestors and you get to sort of the 1850s, 1860s and are wondering, you know why they're not buried in the local church yard with all your other family members. The chances are they are probably been buried in the municipal cemetery because that local church yard had a closure order on it, meaning that it couldn't take any more interments. Now, burials didn't see straight away in grounds that had closure orders on them, but there were restrictions placed on them straight away. So it might be. For example, they could only bury people in existing graves, so if a family owned a plot and somebody died, they could put somebody in that plot, but the burial ground or church yard, whatever was not allowed to open new graves. So, as mentioned, the act also facilitated the growth of municipal cemeteries. They are our big cemeteries that are run by the council. Most of them are still operational today and are looking fantastic, thanks to local friends groups. I think most cemeteries now have a friends group and some of them have even got green flag awards, which is amazing.

Speaker 1:

There are variations in where municipal cemetery registers can be found burial registers. Some of them are online. Remember me telling you a couple of weeks ago I was working on the burial registers at St Helens. Well, the St Helens crematorium and cemetery is online, which is fantastic. There's no fee. You can go on and you can search. Now, manchester cemetery registers are online, but if you want to view them online there is a fee, so it is worth bearing that in mind.

Speaker 1:

There's also don't forget deceased online and findagravecom. They have some records on there. I think findagravecom also has some recordings of the memorial stones. Obviously that's useful if somebody has recorded the memorial stone because there is a headstone. However, there may not be a headstone in some of these large cemeteries that were built in the Victorian period. The headstones have gone because they are, you know, they're at risk of toppling over or whatever.

Speaker 1:

So what about types of grave then? Types of burial plots. So if you are wandering around the cemetery, the most expensive plots normally line the walk ways and are closest to the chapel. There are regional variations, but in most cemeteries you'll find that the most expensive plots are at the front and they're the ones that line the walkways and are closest to to the chapel. Prices varied for a child in the mid-Victorian period if you wanted to bury them in what is known as a public grave. Sometimes people call it a paupers grave, although that's not quite correct because not everybody in there was buried by the state. But if you have somebody buried in a public grave with several different people who aren't family, who aren't kin. A price for that was about seven and six or nine and six, depending upon the cemetery and depending upon the age of the person being buried. In the plot Alongside public graves, we also have family graves.

Speaker 1:

That is where the or sometimes called freehold graves. That is where the freehold is purchased from the cemetery. Often they contain several different members of the same family. They're really really useful if you're doing your family tree, especially if there is a headstone, because it can help you link different people and it can help you potentially go further back or broaden your family tree. So they are really useful if there is a headstone.

Speaker 1:

So how did people afford to be buried in the 19th century? Some of them did save in burial clubs. However, saving in a burial club didn't necessarily mean that you weren't going to be buried in a public grave. It just meant you weren't going to be buried by the state. If you were buried by the state and you were what is commonly referred to as a pauper, you didn't have the same trappings of funeral as you would have if, for example, you'd paid for it. There was also stigma attached to being buried by the state to being a pauper. People closely associated it with the workhouse and therefore people saved in burial clubs, so they would have some say in how their loved one was buried.

Speaker 1:

Now, when it came to monuments and memorials, every cemetery was different. Most cemeteries had stipulations on the size of the memorial, so you couldn't have, for example, something too big. If you want to know more about the stone mason that created the monument to a memorial to your ancestor that lies on top of the grave, have a look on the back. Now. My ancestors don't have any big grand monuments. They have sort of your standard headstone. But on the back I think it's either bottom left or bottom right hand corner there is a stone mason's mark. I'm not saying that there are any. There are gonna be any records available of who in terms of stone mason's records. However, some cemeteries not all have something called grave receipts.

Speaker 1:

Now, I have used grave receipts a lot in my research. They give us some fantastic information, such as the dates of the burial, also the time, the name of the person buried and in what section. So, for example, were they in the Roman Catholic section or the unconsecrated section? It also gives us the age of the person being buried, their rank or profession, their last residence and also the parish or district. If somebody was being buried from outside of the parish, they would have often had to pay more than somebody being buried from inside the parish. Also, it gives the mode of internment. So was it a single internment? Was it just one person being buried in a public grave or was it somebody being put into a family plot, for example? It also gives you the section and the number of the grave. If you're not sure, most headstones have the actual grave number on the back of them, so it's worth checking that out when you are coming to try and find it. It also tells you the name of the minister if there indeed was a minister who paid for the grave and how much it costs.

Speaker 1:

Now, once you have such information as the section and the grave number, you can then get a plot plan. Or, if they don't have a plot plan, not every cemetery has a plot plan. Once you've got a grave map which will show you the sections, it will just be a case of going to that section of the cemetery, having a look at the back of the headstones, because there should be grave numbers on the back of headstones. I've been lucky. All the cemeteries that I've been working off do have numbers. There's often missing headstones. You do have to kind of work out where certain graves may once have stood, but if you follow the numbers on the back of the headstones it should lead you to the grave that you are looking for.

Speaker 1:

Now the one thing we haven't yet spoken about is cremations. The first cremation that took place in this country occurred in 1885 in Woking, and by the start of the 20th century there were four crematoriums in the UK and on average there was about 400 cremations a year. So it was still relatively low considering the thousands of people that were being buried. Most crematoriums were, and are still, privately owned, so the records may not be in the local archive. If you are unsure, it's probably worth just sending them an email. I have contacted a crematorium before and there is actually somebody who was in the office who does searches. It has to pay a small fee, but they did a search and gave me information on an ancestor that I had that was cremated in the 20th century. So, as I say, it is worth contacting them because some crematoriums are still privately owned and are not council run.

Speaker 1:

So that is it for my little podcast on death. Obviously, there was only me this week, so I didn't want it. Normally I haven't liked the podcast gone for quite a while, especially when it's me and Paul Often. We record about an hour and a half and I've got to try and get it to about 45 minutes, which I never manage. So yeah, so apologies that it is a bit short.

Speaker 1:

This week, as I say, it was only me and I just felt, even though there's so much more I could tell you. I haven't talked to you about body snatchers, but maybe we'll save that for another podcast. I've got some really exciting guests coming up in the next few weeks, so I really hope you will enjoy what we will be chatting about, as always. Thank you so much for listening and don't forget if you do enjoy this podcast, please remember to download. If you're watching it on YouTube, please remember to like and subscribe, and I shall see you again next week. I didn't think I was gonna be recording next week because I thought I was gonna be away, but I don't think that's gonna happen. So expect a podcast next week and have a good week researching folks. I shall see you soon wednesday, saturday 27th to 8ence Sunday, 10 pm.