Death Certificate question

[Mitch in Notts]

1956 Death Certificate has:

Informant
T A M BOOTH
Causing the Body to be Buried
Hillcrest Leicester

Does 'Causing the body to be buried" guarantee a burial or is this mere terminology?
(Note: Hillcrest was a hospital and the informant presumably some official).

Secondly, death 21st December, registration 31st December. Am I correct in thinking any funeral had to wait for death to be registered at this time?

Thanks

Mitch

[Megan Roberts]

This is my opinion only and I stand to be corrected.

I think that you need a certificate to have a funeral. I remember when my mother died and my father decided on a cremation the undertaker saying that he would need to get a second signature from the hospital; presumably because with a cremation there is no possibility of a subsequent exhumation, autopsy and inquest.

Therefore I am guessing that your certificate was to allow the funeral to take place even though the cause of death may not have been formally determined / ratified (particularly as this was in a hospital over the Christmas and New Year period). It may be that the determination would have needed to be signed off by the coroner, and that next siting of the coroner's court would not be until later in January.

[Peter Goodey]

Does 'Causing the body to be buried" guarantee a burial or is this mere terminology?

This is one of the qualifications of an informant. The terminology dates from before the possibility of cremation. The more recent term seems to be "causing the body to be buried or cremated" (note: this is not the undertaker - it's the person who pays the undertaker!).

Personally, I doubt is you can read anything into the absence of the word "cremated". If it really was a funeral at public expense, I'm pretty sure it would be a cremation (cheaper!) unless the deceased was known to be a member of a religion that didn't allow cremation.

10 days seems a long gap before registration, even knocking a couple of days off for Christmas.

As I understand it, the normal procedure is that the registrar issues the green form as part of the registration procedure. The green form allows the undertaker to proceed.

[Lesley Robertson]

I wonder whether the time gap was to allow time for a post mortem?
What was the cause of death?

Can we assume that TM Booth was not a relative?

[Mitch in Notts]

Thanks all. The full certificate is:
21 December 1956 Hillcrest 2 Swain Street Leicester
Samuel Enoch WILLIAMS age 66. Of 1 Britannia Street Leicester Labourer.
Cerebral Thrombosis. Certified.
T A M BOOTH Causing the body to be buried Hillcrest Leicester.
Registered 31st December 1956.

This is possibly my Mums Uncle Sam born August 1893. He was a drifter/traveller/circus man, wanted by the authorities for failing to maintain 'his' child (born 4 months after marriage - he was in forces abroad when child conceived).
I have been unable to find him in 1939 Register - but my Mum saw him in 1946 in Nottinghamshire. I cannot find a Samuel Enoch WILLIAMS born 1890 to match the above death registration. The address of 1 Britannia Street was a hostel for men while Hillcrest was a (geriatric?) hospital. I have no idea over the informant T A M BOOTH. There is a Thomas Arthur M(Michael) BOOTH born 1925 dying in Leicester in 1993.

Any thoughts welcome.

Thanks again

Mitch

[Megan Roberts]

I would hazard a guess that Samuel Williams died without any next of kin and that the informant was either the hospital welfare officer or someone from the local authority, who would be the people charged with burying someone who has died with no known / declared next of kin. He also seems to have died intestate - at least there is no probate entry for him.

So if my guess is correct that he had no known/declared next of kin then the local authority would have been responsible for his funeral, which would have been a pauper's burial. I saw an episode of "Heir Hunters" where someone with considerable assets died intestate, without any next of kin, and the local authority were still responsible for his funeral and still gave him a pauper's burial, which his friends were furious about, although I believe they stepped in and paid for a headstone.

[JackieC]

Hillcrest was a (geriatric?) hospital.

Yes it was a geriatric hospital Mitch. It was the former Leicester Workhouse and it was a move of great insensitivity to turn it into a geriatric hospital. The elderly of Leicester saw admission there as 'going into the workhouse', my great-grandma died there in her 90s in 1977. I've heard on Leic history forums that it was an awful place as a geriatric hospital.

[Mitch in Notts]

10 days seems a long gap before registration, even knocking a couple of days off for Christmas.

As I understand it, the normal procedure is that the registrar issues the green form as part of the registration procedure. The green form allows the undertaker to proceed.

Sorry Peter, I perhaps misconstrued your comment in post 3 to read you got the green form when registering the death - we are saying you can go and get a green form without obtaining the actual Death Certificate at the same time - seems to be lengthening the whole process even more!