Hannah Pearl Adams/King in Stepney

[Valda]

Hi

You could try a search of local newspapers to see if they reported the inquest. Deptford would be covered by Lewisham, but where she was found may not be where she was living The help guide at the top of the London and Middlesex board

A GUIDE TO LOCAL STUDIES LIBRARIES AND OTHER USEFUL ARCHIVES SITUATED IN LONDON

http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/topic,412596.0.html

will give you links to both Lewisham and the relevant local archives for where the family were living in 1911. Those archives may hold microfilm copies of the cemeteries in their areas or see the guide to burials at the top of the L & M Rootschat boards for burials as that gives links to both boroughs' cemetery offices. Requesting a search for a burial from a London borough cemetery office can be expensive and if the family was not comfortably off it is likely they could not afford to purchase a cemetery plot. If that is the case Hannah will be buried in a common grave but that doesn't necessarily mean she had a pauper funeral if the family were able to afford to pay the undertakers and her burial.

Suicides who killed themselves while temporarily insane committed no crime and were never denied burial in consecrated ground though individual priests may have muttered a bit. Without the verdict of insanity, which coroners' juries would bring in if they could, the suicide was deemed to have committed a felony and they were denied burial in consecrated ground until 1823.


Regards

Valda

[Mountainpeople]

Thanks for that, Val. Very reassuring that at least - even if she did, in fact, end up in a pauper's grave - she would still have been buried in consecrated ground. I know that would have meant a lot to my mother
Margaret

[Kim1980]

That's such a sad story. I've been researching teh area of Stepney as one branch of my family lived there in Georgian and Victorian times. Unfortunately there was a small bridge South of the Ratcliff Highway (Now called The Highway) that was called 'Suicide Bridge'. I found this in a book called Opals from sand (about missionaries working with women in the area)

"This common place little iron bridge used to be known as " Suicide Bridge " because of the number of poor lost girls who, in utter despair and agony, threw themselves into the Dock.

"Anywhere, anywhere, out of the world."

Death was almost inevitable, for the water was so poisoned by the copper keels of the vessels
which were always passing and re-passing the bridge, that rescue was rarely successful. "

It's been quite an emotional journey for me, finding out how destitute my relations would have been so I can emphathise with your reactions.

Kim

[Mountainpeople]

I so agree with you, Kim. I've been doing some research myself about the area, and the poverty in that part of London was truly horrifying. My mother's father was English, and her mother was Scottish, from Edinburgh, and the Scottish side of the family seemed to have lived mostly around the Canongate - another horribly poverty-stricken area. I was so shocked when I discovered that a 3XGreat Uncle spent a year in the Tolbooth in Edinburgh, and the crime he was accused of? Poverty. We don't know the half of it, do we?

[Kim1980]

Blimey! The whole debtors prison idea was stupid - how could someone work and pay their debts if they were locked up?!!

If you are interested in learning more about STepney and the surrounding areas, have a look at the Jack the Ripper websites (as they give lots of info) and I've got a book called Call the Midwife, which, although about the 1950s in the area, it contains a lot of history, especially social history in Stepney. Also have a look at the Charles Booth Poverty maps if you haven't already (you find them through a google search) and you can see the streets and how poor they were.

Kim