Elizabeth Wright killed by ?? 1856

[StanleysChesterton]

They did used to refer to electricity and lightning as electrical fluid.

One instance might be where somebody touched an exposed wire and was killed by electrocution.  Any form of electrocution they saw as a fluid.

[moo]

I wonder if there is any newspaper article for her death, wouldn't have thought it would have been an everyday occurrence.
The death is given as Faulhouse , Whitburn. Elizabeth's youngest child would have been 4 years old, the youngest of six.

How strange to think of electricity and lightening as a fluid, I have never really thought about it.

Regards
Moo

[MonicaL]

Hi Moo

This death would very likely been investigated by the Procurator Fiscal and his office. There would normally be an entry for it in the Register of Corrected Entries (RCEs) which would potentially give you a little more detail than what shows on her death reg. Is there anything written on Elizabeth's death registration on the l/h side of the margin?

Monica

[Galium]

Perhaps now we tend to think of the word 'fluid' in a more narrow sense than we used to, as referring only to liquids, when it once had a more general meaning of 'something which flows'  -  which of course electricity does.

[moo]

Sadly Monica,
 I have checked the death entry and there is nothing beside her name. The death was notified by her brother William Campbell, which has made me think where was hubby - William Wright ?.

Regards
Moo

[moo]

 
I did find a newspaper report for the death, it states

At Whitburn, the wife of of a working man was killed while in her own house. She was sitting at the fireside with her husband, who had a child on his knee, when a flash of lightening descended the chimney, struck her dead almost instantaneously, deprived her husband of the use of one of his side and threw the child from his arms to the floor with considerable violence. Strange to say, the child escaped uninjured.

That also explains why her brother registered the death, if  the husband was also injured.

Regards
Moo