Handwriting decipher thread *must post link to full page*

KildareFan wrote: »

Probably Ruaidhri - Irish form of Rory,
think of Roddy McCorley

Yes. I have several Rodger/Roger/Rody names in one side of my tree - Ryans, sometimes referred to as the Ryan Rody's.

I'd go with Grange, Co. Meath. There are several of that name there

spurious wrote: »

That's the impression I got too, together with the 'body found by'. I suppose today they would call it depression.

Agreed, today I'd guess it'd be classed as PTSD or perhaps 'clinical depression'. Looking at Wiki the latter is believed to be mostly caused by biological factors, and some may have inherited the disorder. Sometimes stressful situations can trigger episodes of melancholic depression, though this is a contributing cause rather than a necessary or sufficient cause, so the War of Ind. could indeed have been a trigger.

One will frequently encounter ‘melancholia’ as a cause of death when researching a Register from a district that contains a Workhouse or Mental Hospital (e.g. Clonmel No.1). Usually those death entries are sequential, registered ‘en bloc’, sometimes monthly. If an inmate dies ‘young’ for no apparent reason, the cause of death often is given by the institution as “Exhaustion of melancholia, X years certified.”