Genealogy Chat

Last year, i discovered that my late gran, had an older brother who died age 3, 3 years before she was born. My father had never heard this and believed his mother to be an only child. My uncle told me the story, i went to Colindale and found a report in the paper to prove it was true. The little boy, aged 3 was left alone sleeping, for 10 mins while his mother visited a sick neighbour. On her return she found him on fire, all his clothes were alight. He was taken to the hospital where he died later that afternoon. The death cert says accidental death due to severe burning from playing with matches. I suppose exactly how he got hold of them we will never know. This happened 5th dec 1905, just before christmas.. The report said 'he will be missed as the little fellow was quite a favourite with the neighbours' I cant imagine what my gt grandparents went through. I have a photo of gt gran with my own gran aged about 10. The more i look at it the more i can almost feel the sadness that she had to live with. Poor gt grandma died 1924 aged 50 after an op for breast cancer. It feels to me like a tragic life. There were lots of tears all round when i brought back the report and showed the family. I would love to find the spot where he is buried and visit.

This is so sad, these days she probably would have survived, as Paul said, we are very lucky to be living in this age!!!

You may find an account of this distressing event in a local paper and I'm sure an inquest would have been convened. One thing about this genealogy game... it certainly makes you appreciate our own time when there's a fair chance of our children reaching adulthood and we don't have the spectre of disease, poverty and terrible hardship to haunt us.

OH, Evelyn, that is so sad. I cannot think of a worse thing happening to a child (or anyone, come to that). I have spent quite a bit of time with tears in my eyes while doing this research, so much suffering that might not happen with today's medical resources. As you say, RIP for that poor baby, and may God bless her.

Was just looking at the other deaths that are included on Canadian records page. There is a line where the question is ''date from which physician attended'' - and this is usually listed in months or days. This poor wee lass had an attending physician from 8am - 11am. The duration of her primary cause of death was 5-1/2 hrs. She was only 6 years old and cause of death was ''severe burning to body and limbs'' -- it looks like her clothes caught fire. RIP Evelyn Grace Haig.