Does family history get to you sometimes?

[Helina]

Rhoda and Pharoah Criddle had 9 children.  Two little girls aged 2 and 3 died,  one girl and 2 boys where in the Stapleton workhouse age 15, 8 and 5 in 1901.  Do not know what happened to the 2 boys but the girl age 5 grow up and married.  Why? so many reasons, for example parents not been able to cope, financial reasons father was a Labourer, mentally/medically unwell  The other 4 children remained at home.  Wish I knew why and it certainly has got to me.

Expect we all have similar cases in our family tree

helina

[IgorStrav]

Yes it does.

I have many examples in my tree, but one is my great grandmother Victoria Adelaide Pay, who, in the five years since her marriage at the age of 22, had had 4 children.

In January 1893, when she was 27, and her youngest child was 6 months old, she lost her first born daughter (aged 4) and her second son (aged 2) to bronchitis, within the one month. 

She was pregnant again within a couple of months, and another son was born in March of 1894.

I have a photograph of her at this time.  She looks very tired, and thin.

My grandfather - aged 3 at the time of the deaths - survived the illness that carried off his siblings except his baby sister. 

How must the family have felt.

[iluleah]

Yes at times and with some people.......  when I was looking for my great grandparents, I found he was previously married and he and first wife had 5 children...now that was a shock, not only was he previously married but where were the children, why didn't I know those great aunts/uncles ( as I knew all my other great aunts/uncles) wishing my nan was alive so I could tell her she had 5 (half) siblings she knew nothing about
Then found his first wife died, found a child death, realised one of the children I did know but thought she was a full sibling of my Nans and I know my Nan always assumed that too....but where were the 3 others

It wasn't until I asked on here that deaths of the rest was found from 16 weeks old to 1 hour old, it made me feel really sad and it wasn't until a comment was added about the turn around in his life on the next census, in the 10 yrs he had remarried and they had 5 young children, they went onto have 6 and losing one son  in WW1

Life 100 plus years ago was different, many children died before they were 5yr old, many women lost their lives in child birth, medication for simple aliments was not available, even being 'depressed' could mean you were locked up in a mental institution for life so on top of that people didn't talk about or share what had happened to them, it seems they just got on with their lives....

It reminds me of how lucky we are now (despite covid)

[Girl Guide]

I can remember when I was researching one of the families on my husband's side.  The couple lost many children at very young ages.  I think they had about 12 children and most of them died.

I remember feeling quite dismayed and saddened as I kept finding the deaths/burials of these very young children.

[River Tyne Lass]

Although, it may never be known now why some went into the workhouse and some didn't - I think it can help to put ourselves into our ancestors shoes and then to think what would I do in their situation.

It goes almost without saying that your ancestor would have been in a very tough predicament knowing that they would realistically only be able to support so many but not all.  I know in their shoes I would choose the send the strongest children to the workhouse as I would imagine that they would be the ones most likely to survive in there.

I would be thinking about which of the children might be strongest physically and also which ones might be the strongest emotionally to be able withstand the separation.  If you had a particularly clingy child it might break them emotionally whereas a more gregarious child might be more able to cope with it all.

I would imagine this way you would be able be able to justify your decisions to all your children later on in life and hopefully they would understand that it wouldn't be down to rejection of some and favourites with others.  I think it would be a very tough call but I think it probable that your ancestor may have worked on the same rationale that I would have used - sending the most robust physically and mentally irrespective of age as a first criteria.

Also, an older child might also have a better chance of a work apprenticeship somewhere in areas where it might have been harder to find work - so that may also possibly have been another reason the 15 year old may have gone.

[BumbleB]

I think, perhaps, we have to remember a few things about the past:

1  No NHS, so if you were ill and hadn't got money, then it was the Hospital attached to the Workhouse for medical help.
2  No Social Security Benefits, so if you were ill and couldn't work, then NO income.  Tough decisions to be made.
3  If your husband/wife died and you had no immediate family to help, then what to do about the children?  I think it might have been quite normal that boys were "sent away", whilst girls were kept at home.
4  Remarriage - would your new husband/wife be willing to look after children who were not their offspring?

Of course, I could be "talking through the back of my head" 

[River Tyne Lass]

Just to add that I do think that most of us will identify with subject of this thread.  Thinking I wish I only knew why such and such happened.  I think it can be very helpful to keep talking to others about such things as you never know when a plausible explanation for something might pop up.
I think I got a plausible explanation for something the other day from someone about something which has been puzzling me for years.  I was only talking and hadn't really been expecting an answer when I was chatting to a woman I know.
Several years ago I saw my Dad's school admission record.  He came from a staunch Roman Catholic background.  However, I was very puzzled to see in the record that he was to be 'exempt' from religious instruction.  None of the other children seemed to have this notation and neither had his siblings.  I asked a member of staff at the archives about this but they couldn't think of a reason.  I couldn't ask my Dad as he was long deceased.
Then the other day, I got chatting about it to someone and I also happened to mention that my Dad had almost died  from rheumatic fever during childhood.  This lady then said to me, well could that not be the answer  - that he was too weak to go for religious instruction.  Suddenly, this felt like a lightbulb moment.  Of course, perhaps that would explain that he may not have been obliged to go back and forth to the Church as regularly as other children perhaps.
I do remember once that my Dad said sometimes a priest would turn up at school and question children about Church activity and if they could not sufficiently account for themselves then they were caned.

I agree with what you have written BumbleB.  From another school record (log book) it would appear that a distant ancestor of mine (great nephew of my 2xGrt Grandfather) went to live with his Grandparents after his Mother remarried after being widowed.

[Top-of-the-hill]

   I don't have any terribly sad tales about the ancestors I know most about - sturdy Saxon peasants that they were. At least in the late 18th and 19th centuries they seem to have raised almost all their children; my gr gr grandfather even received a certificate from the Agricultural Association and £4 (I believe) for bringing up lots of children without much parish relief.
    However, in my local history studies I found a very sad story. A wealthy tenant farmer in the early 19thCent; he and his wife had 12 children between 1806 and 1824, and all except one died, not as I had always supposed, as infants, but any age between 5 months and 24 years. The 3 oldest boys all lived to their early twenties. Unfortunately this was too early for death certificates, so I can only guess at various diseases from measles to TB. (A farm worker family in the same area of the village at the same time raised all but one of their children.)
    How awful for the one son who lived, who was one of the younger ones. He married a well-connected young woman, but they separated in middle age, so I suspect he was probably a difficult man.

[phenolphthalein]

2 thoughts.
I know of a moderately well-to-do family in Australia who had thirteen children.
The eldest and one other survived past two.
Having lost a sister at age 1h --
I suspect the cause of these deaths was rhesus factor incompatibility. 
If a mother with rh- blood has a baby who is rh+ she raises antibodies to rh+ blood --
these attack any future babies with rh+ blood. 
So the first baby survived and the later baby was either lucky or had rh- blood. 

My baby sister was third baby with rh+ blood to a mother with rh- blood.

This has a medical solution these days.

Another family in 1903 the father died of a disease antibiotics would have cured.
The mum kept eldest son and her daughters --
sent 2nd child a boy to live with his grandparents -- 50 or more miles away.
Why him? -- a mystery.

regards
pH