----- Original Message ----- From: "KEITH GOODWAY" <keith.goodway@btinternet.com> Subject: [Ess] Re. Details on Certificates Well I have no idea what is on my great grandmother's death certificate. Perhaps I should buy it just to see. I made contact with someone in America who turned out to be a distant cousin (not sure how distant as I'm not clued up on ancestral titles) but her gt. grandfather was the brother of my great grandmother. Anyway, she wrote to me with details that she was aware of in her family and added this snippet: "Oh, and your great grandmother was done for murder". Well, that was a shock to say the least. My dad (now deceased), whose grandmother it was, always used to say there was 'madness' in the family but rarely spoke about the family. And this shocking detail was never spoken about by him or anyone else in the family. In fact I don't know if he ever knew about it - if he did he kept it a secret. Of course I wanted to know more about this story and went to the local library and found on my first hit a full front page report on the 'murder' way back in 1918. It was strange seeing all the names that I recognised as being on my tree, and also known as they were part of my dad's family. Apparently my great grandmother strangled her baby granddaughter. A tragic, sad case which makes horrific reading, must have been terrible for the whole family and the neighbourhood. But it does come over in the report that my gt. grandmother had just come out of the local mental hospital that day - after a period of 10 weeks - and that she seemed confused etc. She was of previous good character, a loving mother etc. I do believe at the age of 57 she was affected by her sons going to war, the poverty the family was enduring, she'd lost 2 babies herself late in life, and she was possibly going through the menopause which probably wasn't recognised or treated in those days. The case went to Essex Assizes and I found that she was declared unfit to stand, declared insane and sent to Warley Asylum. That was a grim place and she lived there until she was in her 80s. What a dreadful existence it must have been. Her daughter apparently ended up there too possibly unable to cope with what her mother had done. The daughter's sister never had children - I wonder if it was because of what had occurred? All in all a very sad case. Would I have been able to tell my dad about this? I have no idea. I view things differently to him and knowing all about this case is not a problem to me. It happened and she obviously was't well. Lots of events happened in families in the 'old' days which wouldn't happen now. Many things were kept under the carpet because of stigma etc. and many situations were controlled by the social services and other institutions e.g. children ending up in orphanges or sent far away overseas which wouldn't happen these days. So, in conclusion, I suppose cause of death could be withheld and provided only if asked for. What suits one, doesn't always suit another. Regards Diana