Family Historian User Group

I have a death certificate for the first wife of my gt grandfather who died 21st April 1885

The cause of death shows:

Premature Labour
7mo Twins
     22 days

     9 days
Maria 24 hours

I think i should read this as she gave birth to the twins and died 22 days later. The first twin died after 9 days and Maria after 24 hours. I guess the twins were actually born 31st March 1885

Was wondering if anyone has any thoughts on whether i've interpreted this correctly please?

Thanks
Tony


ID:2105

That's what it looks like to us too, but (out of curiosity) shouldn't the twins have their own death certificates under these circunstances?

ChrisBowyer said:
That's what it looks like to us too, but (out of curiosity) shouldn't the twins have their own death certificates under these circunstances?

I was thinking that as well. But i looked in the full bmd indexes for around this time and can't find either birth or death entries...

Strangely(?) i've also not been able to find a marriage record in the full bmd indexes for his 2nd wife (my gt grandmother). Of course this may just be a case of not having got married. His 2nd wife, as far as i've been able to identify was his 1st wifes elder sister. Another thing i have identified is that his mother and his wives mother were sisters!

If they didn't have time to register the twins' births would they have been able to register the deaths? You had up to 6 weeks to register a birth.

Alternatively they could have been recorded as 'female' plus surname

Irene B

ireneb said:
If they didn't have time to register the twins' births would they have been able to register the deaths? You had up to 6 weeks to register a birth.

Alternatively they could have been recorded as 'female' plus surname

Irene B

Not sure on the registration side of things, i'll have to assume not

The surname is Tofts which only has 0 to 4 entries on average per quarter, so there weren't many for me to search. By co-incidence there were 2 x birth/death entries at about the time for 2 x tofts who were shown as 0 age. But forenames and district were wrong... I guess it might be worth ordering a birth or death cert for one of them just in case?

The nice thing about unusual names is of course you don't get too many to search, the downside is they're more often mis-spelt.

ChrisBowyer said:
The nice thing about unusual names is of course you don't get too many to search, the downside is they're more often mis-spelt.

Especially when ancestry.co.uk transcribed the censuses. Tofts has more than a dozen different spellings. And to make it more confusing some of the misspellings are genuine other surnames

Returning to your earlier quote about the first and second wives being sisters - in 1885 the second marriage would have been a prohibited marriage. This was not changed until the 'Deceased Wife's Sister Marriage Act of 1907'.
Not that that stopped one of my ancestors in 1880, when he married his younger sister-in-law, but they did marry at a Register Office quite a long way from where they lived, presumably where they weren't known.
Maybe you need to look further away.

Hilary

HilaryBroadbent said:
Returning to your earlier quote about the first and second wives being sisters - in 1885 the second marriage would have been a prohibited marriage. This was not changed until the 'Deceased Wife's Sister Marriage Act of 1907'.
Not that that stopped one of my ancestors in 1880, when he married his younger sister-in-law, but they did marry at a Register Office quite a long way from where they lived, presumably where they weren't known.
Maybe you need to look further away.

Hilary

Many thanks Hilary, wasn't aware of that law.

Plus the twins could have been registered either under their father's or mother's surnames depending on the view about their 'marriage' in their community.

JonAxtell said:
Plus the twins could have been registered either under their father's or mother's surnames depending on the view about their 'marriage' in their community.

Thanks Jon, hadn't thought of that!

Will have nose around under the mothers surname

'what tangled webs we weave...'

Well nosing around i'd found 2 x Tofts who died at 0 years age in the same bmd index quarter. Solomon & David. No sign of maria or anyone with a name similar to the one i can't read.

So i decided to order Solomon & Davids birth certificates... And being impatient i ordered Solomon's on fast delivery

Well it's arrived, and the parents are the one (and only) Phillip Tofts & Emily Tofts (nee Key)! And he was born at midnight 29/3/1885.

So now i don't know what's going on. My first thought was that the name i couldn't read might have been Solomon AND David (but it looks nothing like that to me) and they were twins and Maria was maybe a triplet. But that doesn't make too much sense. But if the twins turn out to be Solomon & David then who is maria (who has no bmd that i can find)

Maybe they decided to change their names when emily died? Maybe she gave birth to a whole herd of kids!

Really not sure what to make of Maria now. But looking at emily's death cert it looks like Marria. Maybe i'm reading it all wrong and David & Solomon are the twins and name i can't read and 'maria' actually mean something and aren't names?

So i'm going to have a go at uploading the image to see if anyone else has any thoughts please?

Thanks, Tony

The 'two twins' on the death certificate appear to be causes of death, not names.

Puerperal Fever 7 weeks
Mania 24 hours

Oops, sorry, for 7 weeks read 9 days. Memory span of a goldfish [oops]

Thanks Patrick. Was beginning to think it must be something like that but couldn't make out what they said!

Now i'll go and look up what Puerperal fever is.

Many thanks

Do you think perhaps that that 'Marria' might be in fact 'Mania' ?

IanSheppard said:
Do you think perhaps that that 'Marria' might be in fact 'Mania' ?

Yes it is. As soon as Patrick pointed it out i felt a right pratt!

Thanks for reminding me [wink]

Was wondering if anyone can interpret this part of Davids Birth Cert please?

Is it a weight and time, or just a time?



Any thoughts please?

Thanks
Tony

I think it is just a time.
h and m are hours and minutes so it looks like 4.00 pm

Is it a Scottish certificate? - if so this is quite usual.

Robert

robertbryce said:
I think it is just a time.
h and m are hours and minutes so it looks like 4.00 pm

Is it a Scottish certificate? - if so this is quite usual.

Robert

Hi Robert, no it's not scottish it's from london.

Thanks for interpreting it for me, i can see it's h and m now you point it out

I'm really having trouble reading the text on some certs and census sheets, but when it's pointed out it becomes so obvious!

Many thanks
Tony

I think that the time is usually entered on birth certificates for multiple births, so that it is established which is the elder child.

philjo said:
I think that the time is usually entered on birth certificates for multiple births, so that it is established which is the elder child.

Thanks, that explains it

Solomon was born at midnight the previous day.

Though 16 hours seems an awfully long time between twins being born to me

I had a message via the contact button on your problem as follows

On 01/03/07, mw.hart wrote:
I could not see any means of replying to him, so perhaps you could kindly pass on to him my reading of his problem.

The death certificate reads:Premature labour 7 months, 22 days puerperal fever,MANIA (not Maria) 24 hours

Thanks