* Certificate Reading help please

[Jane]

Below is the Death Certificate for Ann Mullins, who died of Smallpox and was buried on the 10th September 1854. It was notified on the 11th Sept 1854.

So the question is what is the date of death on the Certificate? The 10th? Would a rapid burial be expected for a Smallpox victim?

2017-08-17_115944.jpg (182.33 KiB) Viewed 10585 times

[tatewise]

Looks like "Tenth" to me with the usual curly capital T.
Does NOT look like any of the other candidate "...nth" from "Fourth" thru "Ninth".

If burial on same day is unlikely, is it possible in their grief that the burial date was entered as the death date by mistake?

[davidm_uk]

I agree with Mike, looks like Tenth to me.

Are there any other records "on the same page" that you could compare the handwriting with?

[tatewise]

David, it is a Death Certificate not a Parish Record, so there will be no other entries visible.

FYI: In FreeBMD and FindMyPast there are two similar GRO Death Index entries for Ann Mullins:
Jul-Sep Q3 1854 Beaminster Dorset 5a 229 Age 26
Oct-Dec Q4 1854 Beaminster Dorset 5a 265
Is there any significance in those two Death Index entries, and which one does your Death Certificate relate to?

Search on https://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/cert ... search.asp :-
Q3 1854 reveals the Age 26 shown above.
But search for Mullins as Female in 1854 +/- 2 volume 5a page 265 with other fields blank finds nothing?!

[Jane]

The Q3 is mine, Ann is my 3x GGrandmother. It's the correct cert as her husband is given and the Informant is either her Father or brother, I suspect her Father, who was living next door in the 1851 census.

I can only assume the second reference in FreeBMD etc is an indexing error. There are not many Mullins families in the area. I know as I have been looking for my 4x Great Grandfathers marriage for years.

[tatewise]

When you say an indexing error, it is not an error in FreeBMD nor FMP because the Index page image is very clear in both.
Yet it is odd that Volume and Page is not found by the GRO search.
At first I thought it may have been a corrected registration entry to correct the DoD but that it does not exist in GRO is odd.

[ColeValleyGirl]

Mike, the new GRO indices are not infallible. Try and find anyone born in Dudley in 1860D... I also have other examples of entries in FreeBMD (and the original index pages) that can't be found on the GRO site -- but the people registered definitely exist as I can trace them forwards through censuses (and in many cases find the corresponging entries on LocalBMD sites).

[Jane]

I could try ordering the second one, just to see what it says. Perhaps Charles finally went along to register the death and hit the next quarter, he died in 1856 of "Visitation of god on the brain", aka Alcohol poisoning.

[SunnyLady]

Was there an epidemic? I wondered if this was part of a multiple or even mass burial and so done as soon as possible? (And I agree "Tenth"!)

[AnneEast]

I agree the 10th too. I do think a quick burial would be quite likely burials tended to be much sooner after the death anyway in those days but it was well known how infectious small pox was.
Anne

[davidm_uk]

In the days of those epidemics, specially in larger towns/cities, the dead were often buried in communal graves, and perhaps the burial date recorded was actually when the body was collected from where they died (along with many other bodies being collected at the same time). Many of the relatives of those people did not attend the burial itself.

[Jane]

Thanks for all the suggestions.

Evershot is a small village, in 1855 there were 5 burials all year, on the same page as Ann, there are 8 burials between 27th August and 12th October and 3 are people in their 20's along with 3 children.

Something else for me to remember to check when looking at Burial registers.

[Gowermick]

Mike, the new GRO indices are not infallible. Try and find anyone born in Dudley in 1860D... I also have other examples of entries in FreeBMD (and the original index pages) that can't be found on the GRO site -- but the people registered definitely exist as I can trace them forwards through censuses (and in many cases find the corresponging entries on LocalBMD sites).

Helen, you are so right! The trouble hinges on their search criteria, which does not allow for wildcards such as ? or *. If the transcription is incorrect, you haven't a cat in hells chance of finding it. Even putting the GRO reference from Freebmd won't help, because you must enter a surname, and if this is what was transcribed incorrectly in the first place ...

I was searching the other day for someone I know was registered in a particular district like his siblings, but he wasn't there. It was only when I removed the RD did I find him. All the details were correct, but someone had transcribed his Town as the RD, so much for double checking transcriptions.