Genealogy Chat

Can anyone tell me what happened to babies when they died if the family was too poor to pay for a burial?
I have a family who lost 5 children out of 7 and can't find any burial records for them. They were mostly babies and one aged 3.
I know they where poor as the husband was a labourer and they seemed to change address after every child. They lived in London and shared a house/block with about 5 other families.
Thankyou Carole

I remember my mother-in-law telling me that as a child she use to take flowers to the cemetry where there was a large grave covered with a big tin sheet which was for the babies in the parish who had passed and whose parents could not afford to bury them when full the grave was full it wasfilled in and another one started.

Jonesey - I think that is what happened to the infant who died after 2 hours who was my gran's sister. There is no record of her in the burial register but I do have the birth certificate for this baby. The mother died a week later so they couldn't have buried her baby with her.

Carole, I think the "popped in someone else's grave" rings true to me as my grandparent's last daughter was born with water on the brain and the midwife told my gran to put the baby in a cupboard and let her die. Naturally my gran fed and cared for the baby for a week until she died and then my grandad got a Persil box and carried the baby to the cemetary on the tram thinking that everyone knew what he was carrying. Gladys Joan was buried in a communal grave.
I was told this by my gran just before she died, and my mum, who was the oldest daughter, age 7 helped to wash and dress the baby.
so sad.
Jill

A couple of years ago, as a result of my research, we made contact with the oldest living cousin of my husband, now 89. We visited him, and he recalled his parents dealing with two dead babies. Dad put them in cardboard boxes and carried them to the "board" grave at the cemetery. So called either because it was a grave designated by the Burial Board for the burial of people with no money for a grave of their own, or perhaps because it was covered with wooden boards. His dad deposited the babies, and came home in tears.

But the cemetery does have a record of them, so they must have been reported by the parents. So I would contact the likely cemetery and see if they can help.

Good luck, it is a sad business.

Margaret

Oh, Jill - how could a mother put her baby in a cupboard until she died? How could the family function knowing the little one was in there unfed and uncared for? It doesn't bear thinking about, does it?

I've heard how fathers would carry dead infants to the cemetery.

My mother was one of 7 children, 2 died in infancy, one lived for only one day. She told me that the moment the children were born the parents paid into a 'burial club' as she called it. The little daughter of a near neighbour died of Spanish 'Flu in 1919 and she always remembered her as well.

Thanks for the replies everyone. Yes it's very sad. I think of the poor mother losing so many babies even though they were giving birth almost every year as in my relations case, I bet she never forgot any of them.

Carole xx

Hi Carole

It was common to put stilborns in to strangers coffins

I can remember reading an article on Londons poor
the article was about 4 quadlet siblings that died at or whithin two
days of being born I think it was around the end of the 1880s
the family were so poor they could not afford to bury them
so a local (Kindly) undertaker said he would cover the cost
of a funeral for them on condition........that he could display
the 4 little mites huddled in a tiny coffin propped up in his
shop window for a week,,,,,the family must of agreed as the babies
were photographed on display,,,,this was in the Hoxton area of
London....I beleive the article was in a booklet called darkest London

NO,no, the midwife told gran to put the baby in a cupboard - gran kept little Gladys out and tended and cared for her until she died naturally in her arms a week later!
Poor grandad always felt guilty about the way she was taken to the cemetery.
When I slept in that front bedroom at my gran's I always worried about the cupboard over the stairs! The flickering gas light didn't help!
Jill

Ray
How macabre, but I suppose death was so commonplace among the young that ppl just had to deal with it, but it must have been awful for the family.
Another thing I've noticed with some of mine is how they named another child after a dead baby as if it somehow replaced it.
The mother in this story had 2 children with her first husband who both lived. Then he died and she remarried and had another 7 children and only 2 lived.

Carole xx

Jill - I did read that your grandmother cared for the baby - I was saying 'how could they?' in the context that 'how could the midwife expect a mother to do such a thing'.

sorry - crossed wires.

Oh, right, sorry, Birdsinanest, I see what you mean. Interestingly little Gladys Joan was named after gran's sister who emigrated to Canada - as was my mother and aunt - both named after sisters who emigrated just before the World war l. I was quite moved when I found Gladys's registration.
Jill

When my daughter Rebecca died aged 3 weeks in 1969, I asked the undertaker if there was a plot just for children in the local cemetary,as was where I came from.

There were no special plots, but he said that she could be interred with other babies. I didn't realise that it would be a communal grave, sited between older marked graves. Apparently, at the bottom of the hole,an adult pauper was placed,then it was left open until it was full of infant stillbirths. It means that we couldn't put a marker on the spot,but we did have a proper funeral and she is registered. I hope this makes things clearer. Yours Nina.

It's a very emotional topic isn't it? The idea of shutting your baby in a cupboard until it died, propping up dead babies in an undertaker's window as a show, fathers trekking to the cemetery with a baby in a Kellogs box.

We know nothing about their distress, do we?

Nina, just because there are others in the grave doesn't mean you can't mark the grave yourself, surely? My great uncle is in a Commonweatlth Grave, provided by the CWGC, but in fact it was his father's grave, and his father isn't mentioned on the headstone.

Well, all we can say is that these kiddies were well loved, and their parents did the best they could at the time. Take comfort in that.

Margaret