Historical weather records

[kerryb]

OOhh that's a bit steep, perhaps one to put on the christmas present list for the whole family to chip in! 

Kerry

[Lydart]

That's what I thought !   I'm hoping my friend who has a copy which she never uses, will get fed up with me always borrowing hers and give it to me !

 

[kerryb]

You could always pray!! 

Kerry 

[Lydart]

Now that comment could start me off on a whole sermon ... and RootsChat isn't the place for politics or sermons !!

[MrsLizzy]

I'd be interested in knowing if there is a website for historical weather records, too!

Mrs Lizzy, there may be other reasons why your 3 x great aunt fainted, then committed suicide.  Poor lady.  Could she have been pregnant?  Or just found out that she had a serious disease, and couldn't face its progress? 

MarieC

She was 17, and her suicide was the culmination of a series of rows with her grandmother.  The background is that she was the illegitimate child of a servant and most likely the eldest son of her grandmother, and when her mother died she was taken in (at a very young age) by her natural father's mother.  I suspect no-one told her the truth about her parentage and she assumed that she would have a similar life to that of her grandmother (who owned a house and let rooms apparently) and her grandmother's daughter, who was married to an accountant.  The inquest referred to her grandmother's evidence stating that she had often had to reprimand my aunt for "aping the manners of those who were above her in station".  This caused a lot of indignation among the neighbours and parishioners who knew Ada and stated that she had been "modest and unassuming with ladylike manners".  I suspect her grandmother resented Ada "thinking she is as good as us" and during one of those rows, told her the truth - i.e. "you are the bastard daughter of a servant".  Ada would have been absolutely devastated to have learned this in such a way.  At one stroke it would have destroyed her entire sense of who she was and how her life was going to be. 

[Lydart]

That's very sad ...

[MrsLizzy]

The reason I was wondering about the weather on the day Ada fainted is because my grandmother (Ada's great-niece) was very sensitive to hot weather and so am I.  Of course we're lucky these days because we don't have to wear layers and layers of clothes in warm weather, but if Ada was like my grandmother and me, it could just have been a case of passing out from the heat.

[Lydart]

I think it highly unlikely that you could get a weather record for an actual day ... you may be able to find more general ones, about whether it was a hot, or a wet summer, for e.g.

[MarieC]

Poor young woman! 

Just as well your ancestors didn't migrate to Australia then, Mrs Lizzy - you wouldn't like our summers! 

MarieC