Illegitimacy & Cot Death

[Tom C]

Hi hope someone can help here or at least point me in the right direction. I'll apologise now for the length of this post as it is quite complex and if this should upset anyone I am sorry but you will se I need to give theses details for you see my problem.

I began doing my family tree in 2005 but didn't actually start asking question of family members till around 2007 as my mum died in 2005, and whilst we had the stories of when she was younger and her arriving in England from Northern Ireland (Belfast) and meeting my father not much more was said.

Whilst putting all my information together i.e. scanning birth & death certificate, photos etc, I found a post-mortem report from my mother’s death. There had to be a post-mortem, as my mum died while staying at our home, as she'd been unwell (not a very nice thing to have but that's another story).

The post-mortem report listed the various illnesses that mum had suffered over the years perforated ulcers, Depression, nervous breakdown and a child that died from cot death, but with no mention of a year. Now this came as a major surprise to me as I was lead to believe I was an only child.

So I began asking questions and I could tell from the looks that people were giving me they weren't too happy to talk about it, but I pushed as you do. It transpired that my mum became pregnant some years before I was born (but no body can be sure just how many years). I was born in 1964 when my mum was 35.

No one know if the father of that child was my father or someone else, as my mother lived in various parts of the UK before settling in Yorkshire and no one seems to know for certain where she was living at the time. This coupled with the fact that this child could have been illegitimate I think caused people not to talk about it, so much that it was just never mentioned so no one seems to be able to link it with a time frame.

So what do I know......?????

Well I know the child was a little girl, brown eyes, and black hair just like myself. (not that i'm a girl|laugh1|) I know this little girl was between 0 & 12 months old when she died from cot death. There was a Post-mortem and an inquest into her death. My mum lost her speech for several months and had to have someone speak for her (a neighbour) as a witness to what happened that morning, hence the nervous break down and depression.

This little girl whose name I don't know was buried in a paupers gave, but where I don't know. Presuming that she was illegitimate, I have assumed that this little girl was registered in my mother’s maiden name, as I found out that you could only use the fathers name if he was present at registration, but that’s not to say he wasn't present. According to one aunt, the father of this child was not living with my mum, but whether they were in a relationship is unclear.

I know that some people in their infinite wisdom said stupid things like well it was a blessing in disguise, seeing as my mum wasn't married and well maybe it just wasn't meant to be. God what my mother must have gone through.

My youngest is a daughter named Natalie brown eyes and long black hair when she hit 13 my mum really began to spoil her with gold jewellery, make up and dresses and it never dawned on anyone why, till now so I'm determined to find this little girl who could be my half sister or even full sister. If nothing else her grave needs to be marked all souls should be acknowledged.

What have I done so far.....?????

I went on to Find My Past and searched every UK Birth from 1950 to 1962 with the mother’s maiden, as this is displayed on all birth certificate. I then searched every death from 1950 to 1962 looking at persons aged between 0 to 2 yrs of age (although the chances of a child suffering from cot death over a yr old are slim) but I couldn't find a match.

I have a friend who is a Corners Officer here in West Yorkshire and he has searched his archives for my mother’s maiden name but he's had no success either, which poses the question was my mum living in West Yorkshire at the time..????

Just as additional info my father father died in 1991 but i'd had no contact with him since 1970.

what I'd really like to know is there a way you can find a birth just from the mothers name as this has appeared on all birth certificates since July 1911. I asked the GRO office in Southport they tell me no, but is that because to do so would be too time consuming for them.

any information or pointers gladly welcome. I am returning to the Find My Past data as I saved all the printouts to my hard drive and there are over 5, 000 names between both lists |oopsredfa so i could have missed something

[daisycakes]

Hi... I know this is not much help, but I have been searching for years for my Grandmothers birth cert to no avail and I have come to the conclusion she was never actually registered...and apparently its not unusual for this to happen.. but I wish you luck in your search and hope you find her.

daisycakes:)

[MarkJ]

It would be unusual for someone to not be registered - certainly in the 20th century! In the early days of civil registration, there seemed to be some confusion and some folks assumed that having your child baptised was the same thing as registering. But things were tightened up later and by the latter part of the 19th century I would be surprised if someone was not registered.

The only way to track down the birth of your sibling Tom C, would be to go through the births. As this is a later birth than those currently available on the free BMD websites, you are going to be looking at a pay site - probably some sort of subscription - and then methodically wading through each quarter. As you say, the mothers maiden name will be listed and thus you will at least be able to find all female children born to a mother with the relevant surname. However, you could end up with a substantial list and purchasing all those certificates may be a nightmare! You could try then running your list of possible females against the deaths index next - that should narrow things down some more. But you will be in for a long (and potentially pricey) slog I feel.

As you have the FMP subscription and have already done as I suggest, then I can only recommend another run through. I would extend the deaths to perhaps aged 3 or less - it is possible the child was that little bit older. It might also pay to try a couple of years earlier for any birth too - your mum may have been only 14 or so when she became pregnant.

Have you tried checking old newspapers? Without a specific (or even roughish) date, it might be a waste of time - but if you can get a fix on the year, then newspapers often carry reports on events such as this.

Mark

[flounder]

Just an idea, and am probably adding to the frustration and more hard work, but say she was 35 in 1964, but you have only searched 1950-1964, which would make her 21+, what made you search these years only? Were you told that these were the only possible years to search? If not i would search the 5years previous to this, unless you have already done this or been told that she was definately over 21.
Hope i havent said anything out of turn.
Good luck
Wendy.

[Tom C]

It would be unusual for someone to not be registered - certainly in the 20th century! In the early days of civil registration, there seemed to be some confusion and some folks assumed that having your child baptised was the same thing as registering. But things were tightened up later and by the latter part of the 19th century I would be surprised if someone was not registered.

The only way to track down the birth of your sibling Tom C, would be to go through the births. As this is a later birth than those currently available on the free BMD websites, you are going to be looking at a pay site - probably some sort of subscription - and then methodically wading through each quarter. As you say, the mothers maiden name will be listed and thus you will at least be able to find all female children born to a mother with the relevant surname. However, you could end up with a substantial list and purchasing all those certificates may be a nightmare! You could try then running your list of possible females against the deaths index next - that should narrow things down some more. But you will be in for a long (and potentially pricey) slog I feel.

As you have the FMP subscription and have already done as I suggest, then I can only recommend another run through. I would extend the deaths to perhaps aged 3 or less - it is possible the child was that little bit older. It might also pay to try a couple of years earlier for any birth too - your mum may have been only 14 or so when she became pregnant.

Have you tried checking old newspapers? Without a specific (or even roughish) date, it might be a waste of time - but if you can get a fix on the year, then newspapers often carry reports on events such as this.

Mark


Just an idea, and am probably adding to the frustration and more hard work, but say she was 35 in 1964, but you have only searched 1950-1964, which would make her 21+, what made you search these years only? Were you told that these were the only possible years to search? If not i would search the 5years previous to this, unless you have already done this or been told that she was definately over 21.
Hope i havent said anything out of turn.
Good luck
Wendy.

Many Thanks Mark and Wendy

for your replies according to family info my mum came to England between 1948 and 1949 and it was after this time It won't hurt to add 1948 and 1949 to the search i will certainly revisit FMP info just in case I've missed something. I have a yearly subscription to FMP and a monthly subscription to Ancestry and i keep trying them both so it won't cost me anymore than it already has. it's just this bit is so time consuming it's holding up the rest of my tree but this has to be done if you know what i mean

[melsibob]

I wondered how you know the little girl had a paupers grave? Unfortunately I have personal experience of cot death. My daughter was buried within a section of a churchyard reserved for children. We had to endure a post mortem - but none of this was reported in the newspaper (other than the death notices). Is it possible to gain access to your mother's medical records? This may indicate which part of the country she was living at the time. I wish you luck in your search. As a side issue my daughter will not appear on a census as she was born in May 1991 and died January 1992 making it difficult should anyone come after me and want to research the family tree.

[aland]

Further to my PM do you know for sure she was buried in a pauper's grave?, it is quite common for stillborn's to be laid to rest with another family member or as previously stated in a children's section.
Aland

[Tom C]

Further to my PM do you know for sure she was buried in a pauper's grave?, it is quite common for stillborn's to be laid to rest with another family member or as previously stated in a children's section.
Aland

Hi Alan,

Not 100% sure if it was a paupers grave, but according to family my mum was living alone, but working, however they are not sure what job she had at the time, but it wasn't a very well paid job, based on her circumstances they are assuming it was a paupers grave. It may well not have been.

Having gone through all this listing everything and thinking about everyone's questions. I also remembered when I was about ten my mum used to take me to a cemetery a few miles from where we lived, to look at grave stones. She said she found it interesting, as a ten year old i found it spooky |laugh1| but we went about three or four times then stopped going, I'm now wondering was she looking for one grave in particular.

My mum had no other family in England other than my aunt who live about 35 miles from my mum. so i know that there was no other family buried here in England. i am certainly going to contact the local council as you suggested on Tuesday to see what they can tell me. I might just get lucky if this cemetery we went to has some significance.

It's funny what you can remember when you put your mind to it :).

I was going to try the National Insurance Records in Newcastle, as this would help me pinpoint the areas she lived and worked in but the government never started keeping records for the UK till 1961, so it's highly unlikely that I'll get something from that.

Many Thanks for all the replies I feel like were picking up some steam on this one

[Tom C]

Ok guys I need a little more information here.

Still waiting for some feedback from Leeds City Council on local burials, but I went on to the FMP site and searched all burials between 1940 and 1965 where the birth was 1 to 2 years previous to the death i.e. this child would have been between 0 and 24 months old and I've checked all Yorkshire deaths and none match and there are no such infant deaths for the other areas that we know my mum lived in. I therefore wondered:

1) if a person was buried in a Paupers Grave would it still be listed on the burials list?

2) we have assumed that as my mum wasn't married, the child was put in her maiden name. Now obviously this could well be incorrect and mum may have given her (the baby) the guys surname, however no one knows what this is. I do know there are definatley no matches in the burials by the surname Thompson. this would explain why i'm drawing a blank. Therefore what is the likely hood that you could search all births between 1950 & 1960 by the mothers maiden name, as this looks like the only common denominator?

3) Will this only be possible at the national archives in Kew

Now i appreciate that this would only be possible if the details are computerised otherwise you would have to look at every transcript for those years which would mean i probably have to move to kew in order to complete the task |laugh1| before i'm too old to walk ;)

[Wirral]

You can search on Ancestry under "England & Wales Birth Index 1916 - 2005". The births are fully indexed between those dates, though there are errors as with any index.

You may be in for a long job, though. Between 1950 & 1960 there were 1,099 births with both the child's surname & the mother's surname THOMPSON. There were over 26,000 with mother's name THOMPSON.

[arthurk]

Still waiting for some feedback from Leeds City Council on local burials
There's a group called Yorkshire Indexers which has indexed a lot of cemeteries in the Leeds area - you should be able to find them with a search engine. Their index (access via small subscription) isn't complete yet, but it might be a start. One cemetery which is indexed for that period is Harehills, and searching for names there beginning "Thom..." born and buried between 1948 and 1965 produces a fairly manageable 20 results.

Of course, it may not have been Harehills. Any chance of trawling your memory for clues as to which cemetery it was, or what the surroundings were like?


I've checked all Yorkshire deaths and none match and there are no such infant deaths for the other areas that we know my mum lived in.
It might be worth asking Leeds Register Office (very helpful) if there's any kind of search that they could undertake, as their indexes are different from the GRO ones. They contribute to the YorkshireBMD (http://www.yorkshirebmd.org.uk/) site, but in this case I don't think it covers the years you're after.


1) if a person was buried in a Paupers Grave would it still be listed on the burials list?
Should be.


Therefore what is the likely hood that you could search all births between 1950 & 1960 by the mothers maiden name, as this looks like the only common denominator?
The good news is that you can now do this at A******y. The bad news is that searching the relevant period with mother's maiden name Thom(p)son in Leeds brings up well over 500 results. (Wirral beat me to it on this, but you get the picture.)

I hope this gives a little more for you to go on.

Arthur

[Tom C]

There's a group called Yorkshire Indexers which has indexed a lot of cemeteries in the Leeds area - you should be able to find them with a search engine. Their index (access via small subscription) isn't complete yet, but it might be a start. One cemetery which is indexed for that period is Harehills, and searching for names there beginning "Thom..." born and buried between 1948 and 1965 produces a fairly manageable 20 results.

Of course, it may not have been Harehills. Any chance of trawling your memory for clues as to which cemetery it was, or what the surroundings were like?


Arthur

Many Thanks for your reply Arthur and guess what it was Harehills cemetery that we trawled, with three different entrances. One off Coldcotes Avenue the main one off Harehills lane and the third lead on to a street that joined York road. I know because each time we went we used the different entrances, as if my mum was looking for something in particular. However i don't know if my mum actually every found anything there, as she never told me or anyone

I will google Yorkshire Indexers now many thanks at least i can either rule it in or out and i will post my findings as for the names I do know the scale of the task. I have downloaded the names of every child born between 1950 and 1960 whose surname was Thompson and I'm checking off all the ones where the mothers maiden name is Thompson from FMP

I've put them into the years and the quarters that they belong, there are at least 4 sheets to each quarter. There are 150 names on each sheet X4 thats 600 names per quarter but thankfully i know I'm looking for a girl so i can rule out all the davids and Marks etc |laugh1| I started at 1950 and I'm only at 1952, but I've drawn up a spread sheet that i can enter the year, the quarter, the child's name, the district and the GRO number.

I have then crossed checked these against the deaths that took place in these years where the child was aged between 0 & 24 months. a few possible matches. I've just got to wait till I've got them all then check the cemeterys for the names as i don't fancy having to pay for around 40 to 50 Birth certificates |laugh1|

Up to press i've covered 5,200 deaths and a further 12,000 births and yes I'm only up to 1952 :confused:

I will also go back and try my ancestry site haven't used it for a while and was thinking of cancelling my subs but i may just leave it a while longer thank you to all

[Tom C]

Just logged on to Ancestry and using the new search and it's actually better than the system I'd devised with the data from FMP as this is actually giving me all births. where the mothers maiden name is Thompsons in Leeds. 978 to be exact.

However this will fall down should the child have been born outside of Leeds :o

Found Yorkshire Indexers arthur many thanks a cracking site it is too I think this will prove very informative for me in my quest for all my tree many thanks

[Tom C]

Ok Time for an update again Sorry for having to create another post but there doesn't appear to be an edit option, which would allow me to add additional info without adding further posts.

Well I have printed off all births between 1940 and 1960 where the the mothers maiden name is Thompson and childs surname is Thompson and the the child was born in Leeds. total 53, the remaining 925 are all children who mothers maiden name was Thompson and they were born in Leeds between 1940 and 1960, but they have a different surname. So fingers crossed she may still be in the remaining 925

I then selected deaths between 1950 and 1960 with the surname Thompson a total of 184 deaths. I hope i'm right in presuming that the first name on the death certificate would be the deceased and the last name would be the spouse or mother in the case of a child. This being the case i didn't find anything that would match the details i have. Therefore it is beginning to look more likely than not that the child was not given the name Thompson, as first thought.

I did a search on Ancestry using Thompson, as the mothers maiden name under Births in England and Wales between 1940 and 1960 and got a wapping 49,777 names, which are going to have be eliminated by process of deduction removing boys and geographical areas that are not applicable and relevant years. So now i'm going to be hoping the cemetery services in Leeds can offer something |help|:confused:

[arthurk]

Hi Tom

A couple of further thoughts on birth registrations. In your first post you wrote:

Presuming that she was illegitimate, I have assumed that this little girl was registered in my mother’s maiden name, as I found out that you could only use the fathers name if he was present at registration, but that’s not to say he wasn't present.

Now, though, if I've understood correctly, you seem to be looking at entries where the child's surname isn't Thompson. It's not a situation I've come across much in my own research, but I believe an illegitimate child will always appear in the GRO indexes under the mother's surname, and under the father's as well if he is named on the certificate. So maybe for the births you need to concentrate on the Thompsons - though the child could have been known and her death registered under either name.

If you're not succeeding with Thompson, bear in mind the various other ways of spelling it, plus Thomason etc. Or is there any possibility that in spite of what has been said, your mother was actually married to the girl's father? The certificate of her marriage to your father ought to clarify that, assuming she told the truth.

I'm still wondering if the Harehills Cemetery data might be an easier route to follow initially. If you were able to extract the burials of all girls under about 18 months old in the relevant period, I think that would be a much smaller list to work with - and you could then use Ancestry's mothers' maiden names facility to see if any of them is a Thompson.

Arthur

[Tom C]

Hi Tom

I'm still wondering if the Harehills Cemetery data might be an easier route to follow initially. If you were able to extract the burials of all girls under about 18 months old in the relevant period, I think that would be a much smaller list to work with - and you could then use Ancestry's mothers' maiden names facility to see if any of them is a Thompson.

Arthur

Hi Arthur

I had a conversation with a lovely women today from Lawnswood who said she would try a search for me based on the mothers names, but in the event that she finds nothing I can go to Lawnswood and search their records myself, so that may well be my next step and starting with Harehills. My other problem is also that i actually don't know where in Leeds my mum was living at the time.

I am currently awaiting my Mother and Fathers Marriage certificate from 1962, so that may give me some idea as to where in Leeds she was residing at that time, but again this is going to be thin evidence, which may not be accurate

Assuming some accuracy in the ancestry site I have checked all Thompson deaths in Leeds 1950 to 1960 and there are no infant deaths that meet with my search, hence I'm now not so sure Thompson was the surname. However as you point out that's not to say someone didn't miss spell it

On Find my past you can actually download page entries and i have seen a few entries where it has had Thompson and another name, so thanks for that info this may be handy tip to have.

I think I'm going to need a very big box for all this paper work i'm accumulating |laugh1| and a system for searching it