Hi Folks I just want to know if babies who died at a few weeks old had proper funerals? I had a brother and sister who were born premature and died at six/eight weeks old respectively in the early 1930's in Newcastle. Would I seek dates from the normal cemeteries? I have dates of their births and deaths. Fran

Fran: In a word, Yes. You have only to look at the burial registers of any cemetery or churchyard to see that those buried there had often lived for only a very short time - minutes in some cases. These days we tend to forget how prevalent infant death was until very recently. The religious - and, I'm pleased to say, the legal/moral attitude towards death is that any child which lived at all - ie which ever literally drew breath - was a person and when they died they deserved a "proper" funeral, just like any other person. In the cases you quote they would probably have been buried with the full usual religious ceremony, in accordance with the parents' wishes. This sort of question is often confused with that of "What happened to stillbirths?". As far as I know, they, too, would have been buried in a cemetery/churchyard, but (usually) without a religious service and, also usually, all together in one plot kept for that purpose and not in ANY "family grave", that being because they were not, in theory, actual persons, never having had any separate existence away from their mother. I also have a feeling, though I could well be wrong, that for Newcastle there was a part of the churchyard of St Anthony's, Walker , which was used for the burial of stillbirths. However, that is really just a half-remembered thing I may have been told "once". Of course, none of this alters the fact that each live birth (but not still-births) would result in the issue of a Birth Certificate and, after that person had died, the issue of a Death Certificate, whether they lived for one minute or a hundred years. Geoff Nicholson -----Original Message----- From: knight frances via <northumbria@rootsweb.com> To: NORTHUMBRIA <NORTHUMBRIA@rootsweb.com> Sent: Wed, 20 Aug 2014 21:22 Subject: [NMB] infant Deaths in 1930's Hi Folks I just want to know if babies who died at a few weeks old had proper funerals? I had a brother and sister who were born premature and died at six/eight weeks old respectively in the early 1930's in Newcastle. Would I seek dates from the normal cemeteries? I have dates of their births and deaths. Fran .. Please quote the minimum necessary to put your reply on context. Please introduce yourself at the top of every post. The NORTHUMBRIA FAQ page is located at http://www.bpears.org.uk/NorthumbriaFAQ/ ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to NORTHUMBRIA-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message