Family Historian User Group

Just looking for some pointers on this one.

I have an ancestor who was a taxi driver and found collapsed and unconscious at the wheel of their taxi. The local press had a small report and mentioned the house address they were found outside, but also mention that they were pronounced dead at hospital.

As you can guess my question is where would you record the death? At the address mentioned in the newspaper report, or at the hospital with a note stating the address at which they were found?

I do have another ancestor who collapsed in the street but the death certificate says they were pronounced dead at the hospital, but with no details of where they were found. In this case I have put the place of death as the hospital with a note that they were pronounced dead on arrival.

My feeling is that there is no formal evidence he died in the taxi.
So record the hospital as the Place/Address of death and cite the Death Certificate (assuming that agrees).
Add a Note saying where he was found and cite the press report.

A similar problem occurs in a probate index entries. These may show for example Fred Bloggs, of 16 High Street, Stafford, died In Exeter General Hospital on 12 June 1936.

I cases like this, I always add a residence fact for the home address, and also a death fact showing the hospital as the actual place of death.
It is important to record the residence address, because a) it may be different from his last known address, and b) the actual place of death may have no link to his home address and this explains why his death registration took place in where it did. If I get the actual death certificate, I then add a note explaining how he died.

I have a death certificate for somebody who collapsed in the street and died there. The place of death on the certificate is given as 'outside 16 Bushbury Road' and that's what I recorded; if the certificate had the hospital as place of death I'd have recorded that with a note about the circumstances of the death.

Big thanks you to everyone for your replies, thoughts and recommendations. It appears that we all agree that, in light of no other evidence (until I get the death certificate), the place of death should be recorded as in hospital.

I'm think that I may add a 'Place of Note' fact to record the address he was found outside as I like to geocode as much as I can for mapping purposes.

Whether such a Place of Note would geocode differently to the Place of Death depends on what is recorded in Place fields.
If only 'Town, County, Country' then I would expect them both to be much the same, unless the hospital was a long way off.
If the address is included in the Place field then they will geocode differently.

My mother's step father died on a London underground station platform. The death was recorded as being at the Station.
He did not live near London but travelled there on business about once a week. I have assumed he died while running to catch his train.

Apologies for not replying sooner to this.

tatewise wrote: ↑

23 Jul 2020 09:02

Whether such a Place of Note would geocode differently to the Place of Death depends on what is recorded in Place fields.
If only 'Town, County, Country' then I would expect them both to be much the same, unless the hospital was a long way off.
If the address is included in the Place field then they will geocode differently.

My Place fields are in the Town,County,Country format with the associated geocode values, however, whenever I have an address (obviously in the Address field) then I add a bespoke Geocode source with the relevant address geocode values as private text enclosed in double square brackets [[ which I can then pick up in any relevant queries.