General Chat

A lady I knew had a stillborn daughter about seventy years ago now. She was wheeled back on to the ward where the mothers were. Her husband was told never to mention the baby and, to everybody's surprise, she ended up being sectioned and having electric shock treatment.

The parish burial registers usually give the age of under-ones in months, weeks or days.

All children who died under the age of 1 are listed as '0' as this is the easiest way to record the age. It is very rare to find any child who dies under the age of 1 to have their age shown in the registers.

It is only when you buy the birth certificate that you can find the actual age at death.

I have several in my collection of '0' birth certificates and the ages of death range from hours to days and months. The hours ones are so sad though......

And you will often find in the census returns many children listed as age '0' but when you look at the original page the age will often be shown as any age up to 1 year.

Hope this helps..

Maggie, thats incredibly sad. xx Graham, I dont think any of the entries can be stillbirths, as stillbirths have their own register that isn't available to the public. Zero usually means died before the 1st birthday.

My great uncle's wife bucked the trend.

They got married, he went off to war, she found she was pregnant, he was killed.
Six months later, she gave birth to a stillborn daughter - and promptly put an announcement in the paper.
'To the late Edwin P and Gladys P, a stillborn daughter.' I have the newspaper cutting - and it always makes me sad.

Gladys was much loved by my g gran and the rest of the family, but sadly died 3 years later of TB.

Unfortunately in Banbury this still happened in the 1980s. I dont know whether they've improved. I had a late miscarriage in 1996 in Banbury and it was like the dark ages...fortunately other hospitals are a bit more modern. DazedConfused, you must have been over the moon to demolish that brick wall...what a result!!! Im sure we get gut feelings and our intuition leads us to info sometimes.

My g/grandfather is one of the hundreds of 'unknown' male/female births.

I spent years trying to trace a birth certificate for him. But never found one. Luckily he was baptised and this gave his DOB.

So one day about 6 weeks ago, I thought about those 'unknowns' and decided to look again, for the umpteenth time!

In the past I had done this exercise with the births & deaths in the year/area he was born and nothing turned up.

Well this time one birth did turn up in the right quarter and no corresponding death.

So I thought I would order that certificate and see. I knew he was disabled (walked with a pronounced limp) so he may have been registered quickly prior to baptism as he may not have been expected to survive.

Certificate duly arrived and YES it was my g/grandfather. Right DOB, Right Parents and home address.

So the moral of this is
1: not all unknown births are deaths/stillbirths unless you find a corresponding death
2: Never give up, the answer may turn up one day.

I feel so lucky to have finally found this record..... Have even added a Postem so others who may look can see he was eventually christened and survived....

If you look in parish burial records, particularly for coastal parishes, you often come across "A stranger found dead/drowned".

Very sad.

From 1890 to 1900 there were 45 deaths recorded where both first and surname were unknown and age was 0.

Stillbirths were treaty differently in earlier times. It has changed in my lifetime.

The corpse of a stillborn was removed, often without the parents seeing the child and even buried without parents. No first name was given to these babies. Often these mothers were returned to the maternity ward with all the other mothers with babies. This happened to my sister's friend in 1970 as well as my friend in 1971.

In my childhood many of the older generation were only referred to by their surnames so it could be if they lived alone that nobody would know their first names. Out of respect no one would expect to know their first names.

A friend with Ancestry pointed out all the unknowns on the BMD, I tried it for myself looking on the Death index 1916-2007, simply putting in unknown where it says first name ( I entered no other info), and a lot comes up - but I was surprised at how many babies!! I just find it very sad.