Murder, Mystery and My Family

[3sillydogs]

Very interesting Vance Mead.

Seems to have been a very well kept secret. 

I think there are a lot of family secrets coming out that folk though would remain buried as we dig into our ancestors

[pharmaT]

Sounds like an interesting case RTL.  Would definitely make an interesting programme, so many different suspects.....


Certainly makes you think Viktoria.  The sudden drop in hormones after birth must definitely have an effect on the body and women not all being the same are affected in different ways until they all stabilise again.

I don't think we've perfected the management of post natal depression or psychosis yet although a lot better than it was then.  One of my grt grt grandmothers was found dead in a well when her youngest was 3mon old.  I guess she could have been murdered but my best guess is post natal depression is most likely.

[3sillydogs]

Large families, children born close together, no real help, lack of proper sleep and probably nutrition and defintitely no understanding from the medical profession back then.  I don't think there are many tales like these involving "high born" ladies.

[Treetotal]

I haven't found any murders yet, but, there are one or two who have gone AWOL who I suppose could have been bumped off. I have petty larceny by two ancestors, one a widow with four sons stole a pair of bootlaces and was fined 2/6d and the other stole a "fry of fish" and was caught leaving his job on the docks, fined 2/-
Carol

[pharmaT]

I haven't found any murders yet, but, there are one or two who have gone AWOL who I suppose could have been bumped off. I have petty larceny by two ancestors, one a widow with four sons stole a pair of bootlaces and was fined 2/6d and the other stole a "fry of fish" and was caught leaving his job on the docks, fined 2/-
Carol

The got off lightly.  My 3x grt gran was sentenced to 10 years for stealing some food.  Her husband was charge with the same crime but only got 5 years because the judge said it was her fault.  He wouldn't have felt under pressure to get food if she hadn't kept having babies.   I know it's a sign of the times and the way things were done but the disproportionality of it really annoys me.

[Treetotal]

This was early 1900s so that would have made a big difference.
Do you think she made the babies on her own then 

Carol

[pharmaT]

This was early 1900s so that would have made a big difference.
Do you think she made the babies on her own then 

Carol

This was 1860, and that is precisely why it annoys me.  That and according to the reports it was a first offence so 10 years seems extreme.  She had no access to decent contraception the way women today would and she had no legal right to deny her husband.

[Andrew Tarr]

I have mentioned before my occasional not-very-strenuous efforts to find what happened to my great-uncle Charles Percy Liversidge, who vanished about 1904 from a decent middle-management position with an insurance company in Liverpool.  That company's business eventually ended up in the Aviva fold, and their archivist found his records to that date, but could trace him no further.

At the time he was in his early 30s and still living 'at home', unmarried.  Family folklore from a cousin (now dead) asserted that he put his head in a gas oven, but I can find no record to confirm this.  Of course there are other possibilities: there were connections with Ireland, and he may have emigrated almost anywhere (though only one younger cousin in that family did).

[Viktoria]

This was early 1900s so that would have made a big difference.
Do you think she made the babies on her own then 

Carol

There was a lot of it about!
I can remember men complaining because their wives were “ off again”.
Considering how many people held that opinion you would have thought the churches would have been full!
Viktoria.