frederick & john thomas birch

[Maiden Stone]

Re Carole's previous post.
"Prescot, a parish, post and market-town in the Hundred of West Derby …..  This parish, which is very extensive ……  It comprises St. Helens, Eccleston, Farnworth, Parr, Rainford, Rainhill, Great Sankey, Whiston, Sutton, Windle, Peasley Croft and 7 other townships. …… The Poor Law Union of Prescot embraces 20 chapelries and townships." ("The National Gazetteer of Great Britain and Ireland" 1868 reproduced on GENUKI website Prescot pages)
GENUKI  Prescot
https://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/LAN/Prescot
This has lists of churches and cemeteries in Prescot. You can find locations of churches and cemeteries in other places in Prescot district by searching for GENUKI Placename Lancashire. If you need to look up Eccleston, make sure it's the one near Prescot.There's another Eccleston near Chorley, Great Eccleston, further North in Lancashire and Eccles near Manchester.

[RendLill]

Prescot is the registration district - not necessarily the area in which the death took place

https://www.ukbmd.org.uk/reg/districts/prescot.html

The GRO index shows age 45 and the freebmd entry has been transcribed from that index.  However - GRO online has age 35

https://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificates/Login.asp

Unfortunately - the death is not shown on LancashireBMD

I have accounted for the 2 likeliest St Helens entries - both are on the 1911 with their respective spouses.

There was a mental hospital in Rainhill - if Ellen was admitted (possibly after the birth of her last child) and died there - her death would be registered in the Prescot RD

Rainhill: That's a really interesting idea - value of local knowledge! - definitely possible answer to why Prescot death. I've ordered a death certificate for Ellen Birch hoping that might confirm addresses etc.
It feels very plausible as an explanation for why 'it' wasn't spoken about by grandmother. Not just a simple throwing off of Bolton roots but something more disruptive to the family and seen as a stigma at the time.
Sounds like people have found Rainhill records quite detailed - Merseyside Record Office, Liverpool, I gather.

[CaroleW]

My grandmother had a married sister who spent years in Rainhill and died there back in the 1940's.  My gran always maintained she had "milk fever" after giving birth to her son but it was possibly post natal depression.  Back in the 1930's the symptoms weren't as recognizable as present times.

I lived in Rainhill for many years and the hospital was actually in St Helens.  I visited it on 2 occasions on business and many of the low risk patients were free to walk around the hospital and also get the bus into town!!

[RendLill]

Prescot is the registration district - not necessarily the area in which the death took place

https://www.ukbmd.org.uk/reg/districts/prescot.html

The GRO index shows age 45 and the freebmd entry has been transcribed from that index.  However - GRO online has age 35

https://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificates/Login.asp

Unfortunately - the death is not shown on LancashireBMD

I have accounted for the 2 likeliest St Helens entries - both are on the 1911 with their respective spouses.

There was a mental hospital in Rainhill - if Ellen was admitted (possibly after the birth of her last child) and died there - her death would be registered in the Prescot RD

Rainhill: That's a really interesting idea - value of local knowledge! - definitely possible answer to why Prescot death. I've ordered a death certificate for Ellen Birch hoping that might confirm addresses etc.
It feels very plausible as an explanation for why 'it' wasn't spoken about by grandmother. Not just a simple throwing off of Bolton roots but something more disruptive to the family and seen as a stigma at the time.
Sounds like people have found Rainhill records quite detailed - Merseyside Record Office, Liverpool, I gather.

Well, I think I have found my great great grandmother, Ellen Birch, nee Hart - but the Death Certificate is strange. But explains the different ages in transcripts.

It's at first glance for an Ellen 'Myers', died 10 November 1910, age '35', 'wife' of John Myers, widower, coal miner, of 79 Leach Lane, St Helens. Who was 'present at the death' at St Helen's Hospital.

BUT there's an official note (signed by Superintendent AF Mann, Registrar, 17 February 1911) which 'corrects' the information to 'Birch, otherwise Myers', 45 not 35, for John Myers read 'John Thomas Birch, core maker' and omit 'widower'. Info from Declarations made by John Thomas Birch (my great great grandfather) and Eli Roe (whoever he may have been).

So - genealogy experts - this looks as though my great great grandmother, mother of five children (youngest born 1904, family living in expected family unit in 1901), was living 'as wife' to coal miner, John. To whom she wasn't married, but the registrar at the time thought that she was.
Or is just some muddle over death certificates and paperwork.

NB: I've found one 1911 Census John Myers (then aged 41), coal miner, living with wife Alice and three children. There's another 1911 John Myers married to another Alice but he's a bricklayer. Not that I'm making any accusations.

[CaroleW]

Talk about opening a can of worms!!

There is a death in Prescot in 1928 for Eli Roe aged 50.  Looks like he was born in Oldham and was a police officer.  He was living in St Helens in 1911

I don’t think I have ever heard of that type of situation before.  No doubt that was the reason it wasn’t spoken about in the family

[RendLill]

Talk about opening a can of worms!!

There is a death in Prescot in 1928 for Eli Roe aged 50.  Looks like he was born in Oldham and was a police officer.  He was living in St Helens in 1911

I don’t think I have ever heard of that type of situation before.  No doubt that was the reason it wasn’t spoken about in the family

Hmm. That would seem to explain Eli Roe. Thank you.
I guess Ellen's new man perhaps thought that she was 35 (rather than 45) - and that's why that got onto the original Entry of Death.

Sad tale, especially for the children, including my 13 year old grandmother.

As left in the record then: Ellen Hart, b 1865 Sharples, teenage hooker at bleach works, (her father, small scale farmer of 17 acres in Longworth, having died when she was 16) marries John Birch at 21. Five children spread even over the next 13 years or so: then off she goes, in her 40s,  sometime between 1904 and 1910 to her coal miner in St Helen's.
But only for, at most, a few years, and dies comparatively young (natural causes) at 45.
Something like that, I guess.
RIP great grandmother.

[CaroleW]

I wonder if her burial (wherever it was) is under Myers and not Birch?  It was 3 months after her death before the death registration was amended

I've checked  http://crem.oltps.sthelens.gov.uk/  and nothing for 1910 or 1911 under either surname

[RendLill]

I wonder if her burial (wherever it was) is under Myers and not Birch?  It was 3 months after her death before the death registration was amended

I've checked  http://crem.oltps.sthelens.gov.uk/  and nothing for 1910 or 1911 under either surname

Yes, I wondered that and looked on deceased online (which seems good for Lancashire burials) - nothing there.

I was curious as to whether she might have been buried in a family plot with John Myers (whenever he died post 1910) as she isn't with the Birch family that I can find. I wouldn't think at this date that people were doing the cremation/sprinkle ashes in a woodland sort of thing. I also wondered whether this might have been scandalous enough to get into a local paper - but probably not.

I think it's likely that John Myers may have been younger than she was (say, birth date in 1870s) because of her assumed age of 35 at death. But all speculation...

I've tracked down that there were 7 children of Ellen's son Frederick Birch 1894-x (married Hilda Bernice Carling). Some of these children were born in the 1920s and may have recently died (or be extremely elderly) as I can't see their death notices. My family isn't in touch with any of them or their descendants but I have wondered (long shot) whether any of these unknown cousins may have retained more family lore than my branch of the family via my slightly younger grandmother who would have been younger at the time her mother left and was in China for some years after she married at 19.  If any of them happened to turn up researching the Lancashire family history scene, that would be interesting..

[ThrelfallYorky]

Probably no link, but fell over an Ellen Myers (56) buried Jan 1910 in Ince cemetery Wigan, an RC burial.....?