Genealogy Chat

My husband's baby brother (12 hours old) was buried in a coffin with someone else in the 1940's but the burial WAS recorded in the church records as was the name of the 2 year old girl he was buried with. We found the records at the County Records Office.

Kath. x

wisechild - I was already familiar with the concept of burying an infant with an unconnected adult, but I can't immediately see why it follows that the burial wouldn't be recorded. I am not aware that historically there was any requirement to keep a record of where anyone was buried, simply who was buried. Hence the fact that several churches have carried out surveys to record not simply who is buried, but where.

Look for a person being buried with the same time scale as the childs death,this can range from the same day or within the same week,
if they had a burial of a lone person ie a widow /widower then its likely the child went in with them,,,,or even another child.

When children died very young, it was common practise to put them into a coffin with an adult who was being buried (often a stranger), therefore avoiding the cost of paying for a funeral.
In cases like this, it´s unlikely the burial would have been recorded.

Hi Potty,

I have searched fiches or scans & in some cases the BT's. These are mostly situations where the family appears to have been in the same village throughout, rather than in towns where there may have been another parish close by. In one case the family moved & I have checked both the old & new parishes without any success.

The Baptisms register for our local church has a gap of 20 years. When Civil Registration came in, the Minister stopped recording them!

Have you managed to actually search the original burial records for the church(es) concerned or have you relied on transcriptions or possibly the child was buried in a different church to the one baptised in.

I am not sure if this is a common problem. I have come across several instances where couples have baptisms recorded giving a child the same name as an earlier baptism - yes I am aware that it was commonplace to give a child the name of a deceased earlier child. However, the issue is that in several cases I can't find a burial record for the earlier child of the same name. I am aware that infants were sometimes buried in the same grave as adults, but that wouldn't in theory prevent the burial being recorded. I am also well aware that the registers were only as complete as the person keeping them ( and still are, as my father found the 2 most recent burials missing from the register for the small village where he lives). Is this a problems others are coming across? Is there a particular reason anyone is aware of, other than poor record keeping?