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Old Photographs, Recognition, Handwriting Deciphering => Handwriting Deciphering & Recognition => Topic started by: jmec73 on Sunday 30 December 18 12:34 GMT (UK)
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Hi, I'm hoping someone might be able to decipher the cause of death for me on a death certificate. It does make sad reading as the baby only lived for 20 minutes, but would like to know the cause. We've been able to decipher (we think) "Congenitally malformed...." but not sure of the final word. Medical terms may have changed over the years (this is from 1934) but any suggestions would be gratefully received. The document is at https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:X672-F17
Thanks in advance.
Jon.
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I’m sorry to say that it says Congenitally malformed monstrosity’.
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I was just going to write "monstrosity" too. :o
Not a 'medical' term that I have heard before, in 1934 or any time. The word could easily have been omitted.
I see there was an autopsy, and beside "burial, cremation etc" is written "lab purposes". Might there be any record of the autopsy?
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Just what I was going to put and asked OH to confirm what I saw. What a horrible thing to write for the poor parents.
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I wonder was it added later? It looks like a slightly different hand to the first two words. There seem to have been a number of people involved in completing the form.
Quite a bedside manner.
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Thanks everyone, I am genuinely shocked that something so insensitive would have been written. That's appalling :o( Poor parents as you say. Let's hope they never saw the death certificate with that written on it!
Thanks for helping me transcribe though, very much appreciated.
Best wishes,
Jon.
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On the left of the certificate it has printed, Burial, Cremation or Removal. Then someone has written "Lab Purposes". The signature is that of the doctor, so I would guess the parents never saw the child and maybe it was taken away for a postmortem. When I was training to be a midwife in the early 1970s, stillbirths, or babies who were obviously going to die weren't shown to the parents, they were just taken away to the mortuary.
Nowadays with early scans in pregnancy, I guess the fetus would have been aborted.
So sad.
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I wonder was it added later? It looks like a slightly different hand to the first two words. There seem to have been a number of people involved in completing the form.
Quite a bedside manner.
The final signature, bottom right, looks in similar hand to the hand that wrote 'monstrosity' Note that this is date 1943 - was that an accident , with the numbers flipped?
Gadget
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I thought that was an address Gadget: 1943 Starr (or something) :-\
The printed year is "193" and then under the downstroke from the word above is a partly obscured "4". Date is 1/27/1934 I think. (month and day the wrong way around as per the American way)
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I thought that was an address Gadget: 1943 Starr (or something) :-\
Oops :-[- will have another look
Added - correct - I only saw the 1943 :-X
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Thanks, I hadn't clocked Lab purposes which sounds rather ominous too! As you say it's unlikely a pregnancy would get that far these days. I'm not sure if Family Search have autopsy reports too, so will check that out. All very sad as you say :o(
BW, Jon.
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I thought it related to the 1943 Star WW2 medal until I saw that it was in section for the address. :)
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There is a Starr Avenue in Toledo. Not a nice thought, could the disposal refer to remains being kept in an anatomical museum.
Eric
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Regarding the wording 'Congenitally malformed monstrosity’.
It would have been more sympathetic and sensitive for the person deciding on the cause of death to use the alternative wording of 'Great Congenital Deformity', which they could of used instead.
Mark
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Hi Carlineric, I'd wondered the same thing about some macabre museum display item :o( The original Flower hospital no longer exists as it was re-sited in 1975 to elsewhere in Ohio, but I'm tempted to contact them and see if they have anything their records which might reveal more - although part of me doesn't want to know any more gruesome details!
BW, Jon
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“Congenital monstrosity” is an old fashioned, and to our ears horribly inhumane way, of describing a newborn who has multiple severe deformities which don’t fit an obvious pattern. So a child with problems associated with a spina bífida may have had multiple such problems, but because they could all be put down to the one underlying cause, it would simply be acknowledged as due to the spina bífida. A child described as having (being?) a “congenital monstrosity” would have other problems that couldn’t be easily ascribed to any one underlying problem.
I don’t think it was intended to mean that the child was a monster as such - but of course it must have sounded that way to the poor parents.
Such problems could have a number of possible causes, eg infections whilst mum was pregnant, rare genetic or chromosomal syndromes, amniotic band syndrome (don’t google this if you’re feeling squeamish), instances of conjoined (“Siamese”) twins where the separation of the two babies had gone badly wrong, etc.
(It was used to describe such problems in animals as well as in humans and if you google the term you will find many similar references from the vet. World).
Regarding the lab comment, the baby’s body may have been kept by the hospital where it was born - not as a ghoulish freak show, but to try to analyse the cause of the deformities, to teach other medical staff etc. Nowadays of course this could not happen without the consent of the parents - I suspect that such niceties were ignored 85 years ago. But some good may thus have come of this poor family’s grief. Medical schools nowadays still have museum collections like this from decades ago but the whole ethos has changed, and certainly in my alma mater, there is a great deal of respect given to these, as befits the remains of people born not that long ago.
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Jon,
Based on an experience that a family member had (in the UK) in 1947, it sounds as though the baby may have been born with hydrocephalus.
In the instance that I was told about many years later it would seem that the baby, a girl, was delivered alive (via a caesarian section) but her head was so monstrously swollen that she was taken into an ante-room - where she was placed in a crib and allowed to die very shortly thereafter.
The mother, who had had a difficult confinement and was not fully aware of what was going on around her, was told that her daughter had been stillborn.
To the best of my knowledge she died never knowing the truth of her daughter's demise.
With this in mind, might it also have been that the mother in the 1934 case that you refer to was similarly advised?
Willyam
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When I was a midwife in the early 1970s it was still the practice to take away stillbirths, or babies who would die soon after birth and the parents did not see their baby and, on most, occasions they did not arrange a funeral either, this was done by the hospital and funeral directors. Of course, although scans were available at a few hospitals, in practice it was only mothers with real problems who were scanned, so babies with hydrocephalus, anencephalus (which might have been the cause of this particular baby's death and more likely to be called a monstrosity) etc. were not found until their birth.
At the hospital where I worked there were old jars of fetuses preserved in formaldehyde, including hydrocephalus, anencephalus and even more straightforward fetuses, such as 8 week, 12 week etc. miscarriages. I doubt they are still there today, but we were shown them as a learning aid and also the horrific instruments that were used in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
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Hi Annie, Willyam and Lizzie,
Many thanks to all of you for your shorts on what have been behind this reference. Whatever the cause of the malformation, it sounds a dreadful experience for the parents, and of course we're judging this by modern standards. My only hope is that the experience for the parents, particularly the mother weren't inadvertently made worse by reading this.
Thanks for the insights, much appreciated.
Best wishes,
Jon.