RootsChat.Com
General => The Common Room => Topic started by: Zaphod99 on Thursday 24 September 20 14:04 BST (UK)
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For personal reasons I can't give full details for this enquiry. I understand that I had a sister who died soon after birth, which was in the September quarter of 1952. I have found her birth record on free bmd. The family memories record that she died after just 6 Weeks. However I can find no record of the death being registered on FREEBMD nor GRO. The cause of death WAS, I believe, complications connected with spina bifida. it seems odd that the death of a child, probably in the hospital where she was born was not recorded. It just concerns me that possibly she didn't die but I would welcome any comments. I can recall my mother talking about the child but she is long gone so I cannot ask her.
Zaph
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Have you looked for a death for months and years after her birth, just in case she did not die - or is the name and surname too common to do that?
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Speedy! I was surprised to find find nothing even close apart from 2 births withe the same name 10 years early bit dying during the mid 1980s in unlikely locations. I ruled both out. I accept that it is possible the child lived and that my mother sort of abandoned it but I think she would have been likely to keep the whole thing quiet rather than saying it died.
As a child of perhaps 10 I accidentally overhead mother talking about it with a family member and it was many years before I approached her about it and she confirmed it had died. It troubled me for years in my early teens.
Zaph
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If the hospital had arranged the burial/death certificate they might not have known of the registered birth name and so she was recorded just as a female surname xxx.
Any deaths like that, just of the surname, in the area?
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Appreciate this is a sensitive issue but is there anyone else closely related who may be able to tell you more like the other family member you overheard discussing it :)
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Is it possible that the surname was not spelled correctly? Have you tried using the phonetic spelling option?
Could the death have been registered at the local registry office and for whatever reason, didn't get on to the GRO records?
I had that with one of the families that I was researching. The birth was on the GRO but not the death, but the death had been registered at the local registry office.
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Have you tried looking for a burial or cremation? If it's in one of the places it covers, a free search on deceasedonline.com will give you the burial or cremation date and the (current) local authority from which they got the registers. Find A Grave and billiongraves are other possibilities, but these mainly list graves that volunteers have found and a baby was likely to go to an unmarked common grave or be buried with an unrelated adult. Some local newspapers listed all burials/cremations, not just those with paid announcements, but may only be available on microfilm at a local studies library not currently open.
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Chris & Girlguide, thanks, but no luck in that direction.
Zaph
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You say you found her birth on FreeBMD -but have you got a copy of her birth certificate (to check if there is a note of adoption ) ?
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Remember that not all records have yet been transcribed onto FreeBMD.
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Antony, no, I haven't. It scares me.
Zaph