Mmmm... I haven't checked again but I seem to recall that a lot of them were adults, which is why I found it such a puzzle. Babies and toddlers would indeed have been understandable. My best guess is a tooth abscess that we'd easily deal with these days with antibiotics but the infection spread in those days and the only obvious symptom would have been raging tooth ache. Our ancestors didn't have it easy. Lesley -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]On Behalf Of Maria Haines Sent: 24 August 2012 13:10 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [ENG-LIV] A question I need answered, please. I am guessing that someone who died of 'teeth' would be a baby/toddler. In the days when many fevers in very young children were ascribed to teething, it was an apparently logical step to understand the deaths which sometimes resulted from these fevers (the serious/fatal ones of which, of course, were actually extremely unlikely to have been caused by teething) to 'teething'. I have also seen church burial registers in which 'teeth*ing*' was given as the cause of death, along with the age of the person - always (in the ones I've seen) under the age of 2. Does this fit with the entries you're referring to? Maria