John Cooper, brother of my great-grandmother Rosina Cooper, committed suicide in 1872. He jumped down the well in the back garden of his mother's house in Hawkesbury Upton. The coroner's records are all available in Gloucester Record Office. There was an inquest, which determined that he had committed suicide. The jury was composed of well-known local names, all of whom would have been known to John and his family. John is buried in the churchyard at Hawkesbury, although I do not know the position of his grave, and there is no memorial. The burial register makes no mention of the circumstances of his death. Bob Lawrence -----Original Message----- From: earoberts@bigpond.com [mailto:earoberts@bigpond.com] Sent: 13 February 2007 11:47 To: gloucester@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [GLS] birth of twins and cornors of church yards I have been following this thread and offer a suggestion as to why people are not finding the deaths of still and near still deaths in church registers. Other have said before certain dates they did not have to be registered with the register general and don't forget the hospital does not do the registration you have to physically go to the registers office or at least you have to in NSW Australia. In NSW lots of people forgot to register the birth of live babies, it was a crime with penalties not to register an event within a certain time. In a time before passports etc with no incentive to register, baby bonus etc, if the time had lapsed why bother. With so many of our laws, certainly before 1900, based on English laws, this may also have applied in the UK. But the reason for this email, my mother was born in England in 1920 to an Australian mother, she was privately baptized at home as soon as possible after she was born as her mother was so horrified at the then English practice of insisting unbaptised babies had to be buried in un-concentrated ground. The back corner of the church yard for babies seems like either unconsecrated ground or a carry over of this practice. Logically if the burial was not in consecrated ground it may not have to be recorded in the church register. I gather you did not have General Cemeteries in England only those attached to a church (unless they were Quaker cemeteries). What sorts of notations have the people transcribing parish records found for unbaptised babies and suicides, another lot that were not buried in consecrated ground. Has anyone with a known suicide found the burial recorded in a English local parish register for the period say 1900 to 1920? Elizabeth Roberts Sydney Australia