FAMILY HISTORY - UNEXPECTED CAUSE OF DEATH

Family History - Unexpected Cause of Death

I've recently been researching the Lait family, a branch of my father's family who originated from Lincolnshire and who ended their lives in Liverpool. In particular, I've been looking at details surrounding the life of my great(x2) grandmother, Mary Ann Lait (formerly Graham).

She was born in a tiny village called Raithby in Lincolnshire in 1853. Following her marriage to my great(x2) grandfather, Charles Augustine Lait, the family eventually moved to Liverpool and they had 8 surviving children.

Her death in 1904 was a tragic one, and one which surprised me when the death certificate was actually purchased and received. Instead of finding one of the more common causes for death (such as heart disease, malignant cancers, pulmonary disease and pneumonia etc.), her own was attributed to ‘shock and exhaustion due to burns received by her clothes accidentally catching fire on the 9th instant’. An inquest into her death had been held in Liverpool on 12th January 1904 but I have yet to find any further details about it.

I've since found that this was a relatively common accidental cause of death during those times, (both for adults and children), which is hardly surprising perhaps when you consider the widespread use of open fires, candles for illumination, and lack of flame-retardent materials for nightdresses and clothing in general.

Death Certificate - Mary Ann Lait

Considering the hardships my great-grandmother must have faced - a country girl who brought her family up within the bustling city, having to learn to survive within basic slum dwellings and yet successfully helping to raise 8 children - to end her life in such a way is a tragedy indeed.

In all my years of researching my family history, I've only ever had goose-pimples twice when I opened an envelope and read the contents. This was the first...

FAMILY HISTORY - WHERE WE LIVE - BERTRAM ROAD, LIVERPOOL

Photo - National Archives

Details from the 1911 census on the property 5 Bertram Road in Liverpool. A search of Ancestry.com was made after receiving a request from my daughter, who currently rents a flat in the building. She was curious to see if we could find out who actually used to live there during the period when it was a single residential property.

Not only were we able to find out who lived in the house, (William Morton and his family), but also that he employed two servants.

The biggest surprise for my daughter was that the house, now split up into separate flats which are rented out, had 15 rooms in total.

This information was all obtained during a five minute search over a lunch-break in work. It just goes to show what you can achieve in your family history research if you know where to look.

FAMILY SOUND ARCHIVE - Recording Your Family Memories in Audio (Pt.1)

When researching our family history it is natural that we start to collect the information which is most obviously important for us to get things moving - all the paper documentation we can find; birth and death certificates, marriage and baptism records etc. 

We visit our elderly relatives, and have them relate to us the same old stories we might well have heard so many times before. Of course, the difference on this occasion is that we actually want to listen to them, and make sure that we extract every last bit of detail out of the tales of their early lives. Time waits for no man (or woman) as they say, and very often we will reach the point where we realize that the history of our family is important to us all too late, and the best source of our family data may be lost to us forever. During the visit we will undoubtedly sit in rapture on their couch as we listen with intense interest to our relative, nibbling on custard creams while we scribble details into our notebooks and pore over the folder of old photographs we have brought with us to try and jog their memory.

As I said previously such visits are vitally important to our continued research. However, this is not the only type of family information we should be asking about. When I first started collecting my family history data together, I thought that the most important thing for me to do would be to obtain a photograph of as many of the people within my tree as I possibly could. After ten years research, I’m reaching the point now where I can truthfully say that I have almost reached that goal. However, I’ve also realized that there is another, more important archive, which we should not ignore. And that is the archive of sound.

MARY DUNN - LILY OF LAGUNA (click here to play)

The soundclip above is a short extract taken from an old cassette tape of a Christmas family party in the D’annunzio household in Childwall, Liverpool. It was recorded in 1981 and features Mrs Mary Dunn (pictured), my wife’s grandmother, doing what she loved to do best and singing ‘Lily of Laguna’ at the top of her voice with her family around her. I was one of those present with her on that December evening, playing my guitar and singing along with the choruses. It was a wonderful party and hearing this clip played even now, I can close my eyes and I’m back there again.

In this modern digital age, where nearly all of us has a phone fitted with both a still and a video camera, it is easy to forget that it was not always like this. There was an old thing called analogue - where we recorded sound onto cassette or reel to reel tape, or even directly onto acetate discs themselves.

It should be remembered that some of these items might still be around - tucked away in a shoebox and kept in Auntie Minnie’s wardrobe. You won’t know unless you ask the question… but one thing is certain, you should be asking it now, for neither your Auntie Min nor the tapes will be around forever…

In part two we'll take a look at what you can do with your discs and tapes once you've tracked them down....

FAMILY HISTORY - MIDDLETON TOWER HOLIDAY CAMP

This is the story behind two ordinary family photographs.

For years I had not thought much about them, but then I embarked on this current fascination of looking at the record of our family heritage, and realized that there might be more to these familiar images than I had initially thought.

Betty, my Gran, Michael and Hannah having a meal at Middleton Tower

 The first image shows a small group from our family being served a meal in a restaurant. The second is an image of my aunt singing in a bar, with two members of the resident band backing her up. I had the first in my possession already, for it had been mounted in one of our family photo albums. The second was a new find, and one which only surfaced following my aunt’s passing in 2011. The fascinating part for me was the little-noticed legend featured in the bottom corner of both shots - ‘A Middleton Tower Holiday Picture’. It was only after I decided to do a little online research into this hitherto unheard of location that the backstory behind the photos gradually started to become clearer.

Middleton Tower was a holiday camp, situated on the north-west coast in Morecambe Bay, Lancashire. The camp, which originally opened in 1939, was managed by Pontins for the majority of its life until it closed in 1994. The site is now the location of a community of retirement homes. It was the usual practice in such places to employ a ‘house’ photographer - someone whose job it was to ensure that the holiday memories of the visitors of the camp would be captured and recorded. In these days of camera phones, iPad’s and computer tablets it is strange to think of a time when photography was quite an elite hobby, for even if your family was lucky enough to own a camera, (the box Brownie perhaps being the most common), the price of the film itself would be prohibitive for the majority of people. It was for this reason that the holiday camp photographer would be assured of being gainfully employed during their busy periods.

In the first photograph the subjects have been caught just settling down to eat their meal. This may be the reason why the older women, (my grandmother and her sister Hannah), look less comfortable with the situation. All they want to do is to get on and enjoy their food and instead they were being held captive by the photographers lens. The two empty seats in the foreground might belong to two people who were not part of the family group - strangers who vacated their seats temporarily to allow my family to be photographed on their own together - as it was common practice for campers to be encouraged to mingle with each other in such a way. In reality, the photos would be taken at different times throughout the day by the photographer. He or she would walk around the camp, paid to seek out likely suspects who were just going about their business of having a good time, and then talk them into posing for the shutter. After a few hours the photographs would be available for viewing and purchase in the camp shop. Ultimately this was meant to generate income and help with the advertising of the camp, so the photographer would try and ensure that they never took a bad shot - trying his/her best to have their subject posed comfortably smiling, eyes open as the flash went off, so that there would be more chance of the holidaymakers actually putting their hands in their pockets to buy them. The two photographs here have been printed on card, and have a postcard form laid out on the back. This meant that not only could the holidaymaker obtain a happy reminder of their holiday to keep for posterity, but they would also have the opportunity of sending the photograph back home to their nearest and dearest, and let their relatives all see just what a good time they were having during the holiday.

Betty singing in the 'Wonder Bar', Middleton Tower

Middleton Towers also had a 2000 seat theatre, otherwise known as the SS Berengaria, which had been constructed in the style of an ocean liner. Also within the building was housed a restaurant, two lounges and a bar. My aunt loved to sing and had a mezzo soprano vocal range which would often be heard during family parties etc. as she entertained us. Betty never pursued music professionally, and so the photograph of her singing into a mike with the house band might have been taken during the ‘talent show’ - a form of live entertainment which would have been popular at the time. While studying the photograph more closely I had noticed a partially visible sign to the top left of the image, having ‘…der Bar’ written upon it. Within the online research material I discovered, I found a photograph of a map of the site, which had been scanned from a copy of the holiday camp brochure that had been previously released in 1955. This clearly showed several bars dotted around the site, (..the Clubhouse Bar, Tudor Bar etc.), and I then spotted an area labelled the ‘Wonder Bar’ within the main building itself.

It seemed that not only had I been able to find out more about the camp itself, but I’d now also discovered the likely location of the place where my aunt had been photographed during her actual performance. I was really pleased in the information I’d been able to find about the camp in the end, as it had moved the story of these postcards forward so much for me. I’d progressed from knowing only the slightest details about them, to now being able to tie the images down to a physical location and learning more about its history.  The ‘devil is in the detail’ as they say. And the story behind every photograph can be discovered if you are lucky, and also look hard enough to find it. I wonder how many other photographs like these lie waiting to be discovered within family albums elsewhere?

FAMILY HISTORY - GERMAN BEERMUGS

GERMAN BEERMUGS

A pair of china beermugs given to me by my Dad before he died. 

He was left them by his uncle, William Laite, who he became close to after his mother died. Bill was in the Army and the rumour was that he brought them home after he had worked a stint over there.

They pride of place and are family heirlooms in our french dresser now. 

#Project365 #Photoaday #Beermugs

William Laite - our 'Uncle Bill'

FAMILY HISTORY - JOHN W. LAIT - DEATH BY FIRE

When I undertake research into my family history I learned a long time ago that it works best for me to keep looking slightly off-centre, even when looking for the most specific information on an individual. You never know what unexpected snippet of information is going to turn up, so I find its always worth looking a few pages forward, a few pages back, to see if there are any other bits of information which might correspond to another one of your family members.

And so it was with finding John William Lait.

The grave of my great(x2) grandfather - Charles Augustine LAITE
Image (c) 2014 - Graham Seaman 

I was carrying out research on the grave of my great(x2) grandfather, Charles Augustine (or as he latterly became known, Austin) Laite who is buried in Allerton Cemetary, Liverpool. Charles had been married twice, the first time to Mary Ann Graham, the second to Mary Ann Corkindale. The majority of the people in the grave are descended from his second marriage and so I was concentrating my research in looking at this family line.

I began to run through a few internet searches of the other names on the grave - Catherine, George E., Mary A. Laite etc., and it was while I was doing this that the following link showed up:

Coroner's report - Liverpool Mercury - 4 January 1894
Image (c) 2014 - OldMerseyTimes.co.uk

It was a report from the Liverpool Mercury from 4 January 1894 regarding the accidental death of a young lad, John W. Laite aged 12 years old, in Liverpool. The report states that ‘…on Christmas Day the deceased with his little brother in the absence of his parents, while playing near the fire with a paraffin lamp, spilled some oil on his trousers which caught fire. He was severely burned and died on Tuesday at Mill Road Infirmary.’

The verdict of the coroner was ‘accidental death’.

I had already found that this was a relatively common occurrence during the period as I had looked into other instances of accidental burning after finding another relative, my g(x2) grandmother, had suffered the same fate. I had previously thought that maybe this type of accidental death would be far more common for girls rather than boys. I felt that this might be the case as the deaths appeared to be linked to the type of clothing which the girls would have been wearing (flowing skirts and nightshirts etc.), and the fact that most coal fires in those days would have been open and not had a guard in front of it. However, the fact that the boy had spilled oil on his trousers meant that John’s death could possibly be blamed more on the type of flammable materials his clothes were made from, rather than the type of clothing itself.

The name John W. Lait seemed to be familiar to me, but after checking my database I found that he was not related to Charle’s marriage to his second wife at all.

I had only a small amount of information on my own John W. previously, but there could be little doubt in my mind that here was the son of Charles Augustine and his first wife, Mary Ann Graham, my great(x2) grandmother, whose cause of death aged 50 on 10 January 1904 was said to be ‘…shock and exhaustion due to burns received by her clothes accidentally catching fire on the 9th instant…’

Mary Ann LAITE - death certificate 10 January 1904
Image (c) 2014 - Graham Seaman 

I am waiting on the death certificate for John to be absolutely sure, but it would seem that here we have the most tragic of coincidences… Mary Ann’s son is horrifically burned on Christmas Day in 1894, and then my great grandmother suffer’s the same fate herself almost exactly 10 years afterwards.

For further information regarding some of the more common (and also uncommon) causes of death in the Victorian era, you can find further information on the excellent blog at Victorian Domestic Dangers.com

All Content (c) 2014 - Graham Seaman

FAMILY HISTORY - GRANDFATHER'S LAST LETTER

I have a letter in my possession.

It is addressed to my father, who was then living at 25 Hughson Street in Toxteth, Liverpool.

The letter was written by my grandfather Joseph Seaman, and I am led to believe that it was the last correspondence he sent to his son before he eventually passed away in 1961.

The letter written by my grandfather Joseph...

The text of the letter is as follows:

‘Hello Son…

Just a line to let you know that I have recovered from my ailment and am back at Delphside again. I would have wrote before but but with having no material for writing with me and of course with being ill I have not felt like doing anything at all believe me.

Well son don’t worry about me now because I am allright now to a certain extent I have to go back in a months time but I don’t suppose they will keep me in although one leg has gone septic since I have come out but I am under thier doctor so think it will be alright but you have enough worry of your own without mine well son don’t worry to much about it, because its just one of those things give my regards and thats the lot.

Dad.’

I haven’t yet found a photograph of my grandfather as an adult and my mother’s last memory of him is of a hospital visit she made to see him. She can’t recall which hospital, or just who went with her to visit him, but she does remember that he started to cry at the time. My Dad couldn’t visit as often as he would have liked to, and as can be seen by the content of the letter, it seems he was actively dissuaded to do so by his father himself.

In researching the letter I found that ‘Delphside’ was one of the previous names for a part of, what is now called Whiston Hospital, Prescot, near Liverpool. The institution originally had opened in 1843 to house the mentally ill, but it also became a Poor Law Infirmary - a place where both the mental and physical health needs of the poor in the surrounding districts were catered for. At the time when my grandfather was there, the hospital had wards which catered for people with infectious diseases and also had a wing which provided respite care. I think my grandfather may have been in one of the latter wards when he composed the letter.

Joseph Seaman as a baby...

After I was given this document by my mother I was touched by it in a number of ways.

My grandfather’s written words provided me with a small insight into what he had been going through in relation to his health perhaps, and also went some way to support the facts my mother could remember about him. I had also been rather frustrated through not being able to find an adult photograph of him, therefore I found it an immense privilege to be able to hold in my own hands the three pieces of paper on which he had written.

However, I realized a little later that there was one further detail contained in the text which would perhaps prove to be more important to me than any of the others.

On the second page Joseph wrote to my father; ‘…but you have enough worry of your own without mine…’. The letter itself was not dated, however the postmark on the envelope confirmed that it had been posted at 6.30pm on 14 June 1956. This date was significant, for eleven days later a baby was born to my mother in Sefton General Hospital, Liverpool.

That new baby, the ‘worry’ my grandfather mentioned in his letter, was me.

Joseph eventually died on 18th December 1961 at Whiston Hospital after suffering a stroke, brought on by pneumonia and bronchitis. He was 58 years old - a year older than I now am as I write this.

From what I understand, my grandfather spent the final years of his life being treated in hospital, and not once does my mum remember taking myself or my brother in to visit him, a fact which I find very sad indeed. However, it gives me some satisfaction in knowing that although I did not get to physically meet him, I realize that at least on this one occasion I have proof that he thought of me.

I have certainly thought of him many times since.