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Please could anyone tell me where to start looking! I am trying to find out information on a person in my tree who allegedly committed suicide in the river Thames around 1971, to confirm if the story told at the time is true, I have the person's name but no date of death, nor can I find anything relating to his death or burial through the usual channels. Any help/direction would really be appreciated. Thank you in anticipation.

hi
have you got the death certificate as this would give you exact date of death and tell you if there was an inquest and give the name of the coroner.
It will not give you burial details

Do you know where abouts along the Thames..as a lot of the Boroughs in London do local free papers..so there might be something in there

Hi

Thank you for replying, I don't have any details whatsoever, I was told in 1973 that this event had taken place approx 2 years earlier, there are no other relatives surviving that i can gain further info from. I'm just at a loss how to go about this one. Many thanks.

When you say the usual channels -- you've searched the GRO death index for the name in the period around when you think the death occurred, to no avail?

If the death did occur, I don't think it could have been not registered.

If you haven't done that search and don't have access to the index, would you like a check done? I wouldn't mind looking at the 4 quarters for 1971, maybe a bit back into 1970, forward into 1972. As long as I can trick Ancestry into doing my bidding today ...

Need the name, of course, and an approx age if possible.

Thank you so much for the kind offer! I have gone back and searched the death indexes but extended the year by a couple either way. And blow me there's the record i've been looking for all this time. I guess you get so bogged down with this at times, it takes someone to state the obvious! Thank you so much!

Congrats! You'd think someone in 1973 would have remembered whether something had happened two years before or four years before ... I guess the obvious that should be stated is "believe half of what you see and nothing of what you hear", at least when it comes to the details. ;)