Herbert Maule - Death 1916 Cambridge (Addenbookes?)

[trikidiki]

I am trying to find information relating to the death in Cambridge of Herbert Maule aged one in Q2 1916 (Registration district: Cambridge, Volume: 3b, Page: 546).

I am researching the Webber family in Cornwall, Birkenhead and Southampton in the early 1900s. My Great Aunt, Eliza (Lilia) Webber, married a Herbert Maule on 26 Dec 1913 in Southampton. Herbert was born in Southampton and had been in the Royal Garrison Artillery since 1909. In Q4 1914 they had a son, also named Herbert but referred to as ‘Sonny’.

In 1915 Herbert senior contracted influenza which was later diagnosed as Tuberculosis. He was discharged as ‘Unfit for Service’ just prior to his unit being sent to France. While hospitalised in Southampton it is said that his wife and child visited him in hospital where Sonny is said to have picked up an infection from which he died. Herbert senior then died in Q3 1918. It was stated in a family story that both Herberts were buried in the same grave in Hollybrook Cemetery in Southampton along with Lilia’s father. Recent research has shown this to be incorrect and that only Herbert senior and his father-in-law are buried in that grave. Further searches of all available death and burial records show no trace of Sonny’s death or burial in Southampton.

A wider search has revealed that an infant aged one year was registered as dying in Cambridge in Q2 1916 but no record of a corresponding birth in Cambridge can be found.

I suspect that the Herbert Maule whose death was registered in Cambridge may be Sonny. This, however, raises the question as to why he would have been in Cambridge as there are no family connections in the area and it is unlikely to have been a family holiday as Herbert senior was “Totally incapacitated”. I am lead to believe that at the time Addenbrookes Hospital had a specialist infectious diseases department and I wonder if Sonny was taken there for treatment but eventually died.

Any help from local records would be appreciated, I have contacted Addenbrookes Archivist to see if they are able to find any record of him at the hospital.

Thanks

Richard

[CaroleW]

Hi

Unless the hospital have records and can help - you will need to buy a copy of the 1916 death cert.  Being an infant death it is likely to show the name of at least one, if not both parents

[philipsearching]

Unless the family had money I think it unlikely that Herbert/Sonny would have been taken to hospital in Cambridge unless there were relatives in the area.  Transport was much slower in those days.  There would have been local fever hospitals, or general hospitals with fever wards, where he could have been treated.

Have you checked for burials around Cambridge?

[jbml]

Gotta disagree with you there, Philip - I suspect you'll find that you could do the rail journey from Southampton to Cambridge QUICKER in 1916 than you can do it now.

It certainly wouldn't have been significantly slower; and if there was a specialist unit there then he might easily have been referred, especially if the doctor in Southampton who referred him had himself trained at Addenbrookes (which has always been one of the great teaching hospitals).

This would, of course, have been the old Addenbrookes hospital on Trumpington Street - more or less opposite the Fitzwilliam museum.

[trikidiki]

Given that the infection came about from visiting his father in a military hospital and the tragic family circumstances of his father dying from Tuberculosis, I wonder if the military intervened. Transport wouldn't have been a major issue as there were hospital trains running from Southampton all around the country on a regular basis. His uncle was a corporal nurse in the RAMC working on the hospital trains out of Southampton which could have a bearing in those circumstances.

Addenbrookes came up with a blank on the patient records, the archivist checked local burial records and found nothing. She added that there was an Infectious Diseases Hospital (sometimes called The Sanatorium) on Mill Road but she has no access to their records.

On a slightly different track. If an infant was not baptised, I understand they could be buried on consecrated ground but would be buried in someone else's grave. Would this be recorded in the burial records of the cemetery. Just thinking he may have been buried in Hollybrook Cemetery in Southampton in this way but not necessarily in the same grave as his father and grandfather as suggested in the family story.