Firebird wrote: > Martin Goose wrote: > >> Perhaps cause of death might be omitted from mailing list postings. > > Why omit the cause of death? Recognising the possible sensitivities of descendants/relations.

Martin Goose wrote: > Recognising the possible sensitivities of descendants/relations. Surely, if you've shared your research with your family they will already know the causes of death for those ancestors. If you haven't then it's irrelevant. I imagine everyone on the mailing list has come across just about every possible cause of death there is. Another consideration is that if you give the cause of death, it can actually help someone with the same condition. For instance, my husband didn't know his father's cause of death until I told him. When I did, it made sense of a condition he has. Amongst the causes of death given for some of my ancestors and sundry other relatives include hanging (did kill himself), carbon monoxide poisoning, drowning, syphilis, TB, consumption, heart disease, Act of God, coronory thrombosis, brain tumour, cancer, nephritis, murder (by strangulation), diabetes, anasarca, epilepsy, haemophilia, RTA and drug overdose. Being sensitive is one thing. Being hypersensitive or over-sensitive is another. It's better to let your relations and descendents decide for themselves what they want to know, rather than decide for them. If given a chance, they might just be interested. Sorry, but I can see no reason why family historians or genealogists should be coy about causes of death. Nor do I see any reason for a blanket ban on giving causes of death on list either.

This thread is really interesting. Having had to have a mastoid operation at 10 months old, I wondered if this was hereditary. I sent for a death certificate of a great Aunt and was amazed to find that she died of a double mastoid in 1943. I'm now having trouble with my *good* ear, but thankfully modern medication is dealing with it. Jan. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Firebird" <sparrer@gmail.com> To: <ESSEX-UK-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Friday, August 01, 2008 9:15 PM Subject: Re: [Ess] Details from Certificates > Martin Goose wrote: > >> Recognising the possible sensitivities of descendants/relations. > > Surely, if you've shared your research with your family they will already > know the causes of death for those ancestors. If you haven't then it's > irrelevant. I imagine everyone on the mailing list has come across just > about every possible cause of death there is. > > Another consideration is that if you give the cause of death, it can > actually help someone with the same condition. For instance, my husband > didn't know his father's cause of death until I told him. When I did, it > made sense of a condition he has. > > Amongst the causes of death given for some of my ancestors and sundry > other relatives include hanging (did kill himself), carbon monoxide > poisoning, drowning, syphilis, TB, consumption, heart disease, Act of God, > coronory thrombosis, brain tumour, cancer, nephritis, murder (by > strangulation), diabetes, anasarca, epilepsy, haemophilia, RTA and drug > overdose. > > Being sensitive is one thing. Being hypersensitive or over-sensitive is > another. It's better to let your relations and descendents decide for > themselves what they want to know, rather than decide for them. If given a > chance, they might just be interested. > > Sorry, but I can see no reason why family historians or genealogists > should be coy about causes of death. Nor do I see any reason for a > blanket ban on giving causes of death on list either. > >

J. Buck wrote: > This thread is really interesting. > > Having had to have a mastoid operation at 10 months old, I wondered if > this was hereditary. I sent for a death certificate of a great Aunt and > was amazed to find that she died of a double mastoid in 1943. I'm now > having trouble with my *good* ear, but thankfully modern medication is > dealing with it. This is precisely my point. Although there's nothing to suggest it's a genetic (inheritable) condition, it would seem to be something that may run in your family. If you weren't a family historian, you'd be none the wiser. I'm very pleased that modern medication is helping you :)) I recently discovered that both my paternal grandmother's parents died as a result of diabetes. There was a potential risk factor involved because it was both of them, so I had a talk with my doctor. He told me that it was probably Type 1 and that the risk to my sister and to me was very likely low. A simple test has put us in the clear. My father died young as a result of a heart attack so I don't know whether he might have developed diabetes later on. I have a cousin who's an haemophiliac. His sister is a carrier as was their mother. This is what people know and understand about haemophilia but did you know that it can also occur spontaneously as well? I didn't and was very puzzled when I discovered that was the cause of death for another cousin. It didn't appear in his parents or in any of the previous generations and it didn't appear in his children or in his siblings or their children. The two cousins in question are on different lines and there's no known connection between them.

-----Original Message----- >Sorry, but I can see no reason why family historians or genealogists should be coy about causes of death. Nor do I see any reason for a blanket ban on giving causes of death on list either. Martin wasn't stating that a blanket ban must be imposed upon the list; he merely suggested that there might be room for a little tact if we are to post details of Essex death certs onto the list. In other words, he was inviting discussion on the subject, not ramming it down anyone's throat. Neither should a policy of describing every gory detail across the board be imposed on the list unless that is what we all agree to in discussion, and then only with our moderator's approval. One hypothetical situation where withholding the cause of death might be prudent is if a deceased ancestor's family have always been led to believe that he died of TB or something equally terrible but relatively innocuous, when in fact he died of a STD in rather unsavoury circumstances (shagging all and sundry in a whorehouse, for example). Or perhaps a great-grandmother was long believed to have passed away peacefully, whereas she was in fact attacked in the street, in one way or another, such as rape, and died of her injuries, perhaps in childbirth or after a failed attempt at abortion. Imagine the heartache that could be caused to her descendants if they were to encounter her actual cause of death without some preparation or prior warning. If nothing else, the discovery might lead to years of genealogical research up the wrong tree being binned. If either of these people were my ancestor, I would want to know the truth, but I wouldn't want to find out via a message board! Ideally, I would be able to follow the story of what really happened piece by piece, step by step, rather than being hit in the face with a wet fish. And I would want to be able to control how, when, and in what way, my living relatives had the news broken to them. Perhaps one way forward might be to include causes of death only where the death occurred more than a century ago, in rough keeping with other forms of data filtering/control. But I'm not convinced that this would work. In the end, as this list is (IMHO - am I wrong?) primarily a channel of help and advice to point us in the right direction, then surely all we really need in the first instance is the date and place of the death, so that we can then go and check out the registers or buy the certificate and research the nitty-gritty stuff for ourselves. As well as the cause of death, this may well also include names of informants, any addresses stated, any relatives present, the doctor's name, and so on. Can we really expect to have ALL this very interesting but peripheral data posted as well, or should we make the postings as convenient and useful as possible by streamlining them down to the bare essentials? In other words, practicality may be another reason for excluding the cause of death, and that has nothing to do with coyness. Anyway, that's all I wanted to say. On the whole, this is a great list, one of the best. Lawrence No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG. Version: 7.5.524 / Virus Database: 270.5.10/1586 - Release Date: 01/08/2008 18:59

Firebird wrote: > Martin Goose wrote: > >> Recognising the possible sensitivities of descendants/relations. > > Surely, if you've shared your research with your family they will > already know the causes of death for those ancestors. If you haven't > then it's irrelevant. I imagine everyone on the mailing list has come > across just about every possible cause of death there is. When I said descendants/relations I was not limiting it to my own. I was also covering one name studies where you do not know those involved. In general I support the line that it is public information and can have all the beneficial uses mentioned in other posts. However I think that some discretion may need to be exercised with cause of death. My own published researches are limited to names, dates and places of birth, marriage and death. See <http://www.thegoosefamily.plus.com/fh/>