Off topic: chat

Crikey, what a find!

wow, that is a first!!!!

Strange comment by a coroner. No autopsy? No, I've never seen that before either.

The link was the first time I'd actually seen 'visitation' written down officially. My understanding is that ‘visitation by God’ was a ‘no obvious cause of death’ finding, indicating no signs of assault (which would have required police intervention). Back in 1875 coroners typically were legally rather than medically trained. A coroner’s inquiry was a public, legal inquiry using witness testimony rather than the forensic medical examination we see today.

I've a few medical scattered back in my tree so I've always had an interest. Medical understanding and treatments in 1875 were still primitive. Germ theory didn’t even begin to become accepted until the late 1850’s with the work of Pasteur (‘Miasmas’ i.e. ‘bad air’ were the usual attribution for disease). A French researcher in the 1850’s asserted – correctly - that the mosquito was the carrier for malaria and yellow fever, but he was ridiculed and ignored. Another medical man ridiculed at the same time was a Hungarian / Austrian who identified the higher death rate from puerperal fever of women attended by doctors rather than by midwives (doctors had come from autopsies, bringing germs, once they washed their hands the rate dropped). Lister and his antiseptics were not taken seriously initially. The Christian religions initially were against vaccinations (early 1700s in England). Use of anaesthesia was not widespread until popularised in the US Civil War. The list goes on, and on. Just as we today look back on the Establishment’s stupidity in the past, people 100 years hence will scoff at the suggestions of taking bleach to cure Covid and denial of the utility of vaccines.

Came across a newspaper report from 1840 where a newly born child was found dead a day later and an autopsy was performed by a local "apothecary and surgeon" who concluded strangulation. So if that happened in 1840 in a rural town, one would expect an autopsy in Cork city in 1875

The 'best' one has to be 'old age'. Seriously, is that the best they could come up with? It's right up there I suppose with 'natural causes'.

My mother died age 102 in 2024 (in St. Vincents) . The cause of death was 'sepsis - 1 week'. The words old age / debility / senile decay are not mentioned. She had all her faculties until the last week, and was able to shower & dress herself until the week of hospitalisation before her death. She was a walking store of family history except for one ancestor - she did not know much about one great great grandfather's family and it still disappoints me that I never resolved that question before (or since!) her death. Even the unlikely tales she recounted I found to be 95% true after research - the most outlandish was about one of her great uncles who "married a distant cousin but died young; the widow went on to marry twice again, her children 'went to school in a carriage' and she died a millionaire by the standards of the day." I cannot prove the carriage bit, but all the rest is correct.

The genes are there ok, not sure all of them are good!😉 Her sister died earlier this year at 100 and her aunt died 1989 at 100. That's the line I'm brickwalled on,(mentioned above) a couple of generations earlier. I am positive my great aunt would have known the details fully, my big regret is not getting info from her about her earlier ancestors. I have lots of stories from her about her own life, working as a governess in Paris before WW1, etc., but I was not really 'into' geno in the 1970s and early 1980's. It really underscores the need to talk to and record details from elderly relatives.

Question, would it be out of the realms of possibility that an 11 year old would be named as a witness to a marriage in 1892 in ireland?

I have seen a sponsor to baptism as young as 14 yrs.

I have an eight-year-old as a baptismal sponsor in New York in my family records, as I mentioned in another thread. My great-grandmother, born Kings County in 1847, was adamant that she would have nothing to do with my great-grandfather's family, born Co Cork in 1843. My father said she accepted his proposal by announcing that. She thought her family was above his in class. I have gotten the baptisms of all ten children and, with one exception who evidently passed muster, she stuck to her word. I assume that's how she recruited the child sponsor, a nephew. She also had her own father, an elderly man, as a sponsor. She was really scraping the barrel for sponsors at that point.

Lostcousins is doing a referral deal for a year of full Findmypast for GBP£99 which I believe is a fairly competitive price for them

https://www.lostcousins.com/newsletters2/latedec25news.htm

wow

Fascinating. I suppose most of us wonder if something like this will turn up. I didn't expect it with my parents but I checked and double checked just in case. My mum and dad would have been mortified at the amount of effort I put into checking them out.