A Family Sad Tale
All too
often in doing my professional research for clients I find sad
disturbing evidence. I always have to
find a way to still be direct but to put it in the most delicate way possible. Sometimes I am lucky and I am able to send
them looking to where I found it with ease.
So I found the death of an unmarried 3rd great aunt
of a clients. The family is from the
northern east coast.
She did not die in her home town. She died in a large city at a catholic
hospital. On her death cert. the cause
of death is listed as Childbirth. The
cause of death had a contribution factor of Ether!!! I wonder if she died because of a doctors
screw up. She may have been better off
having the baby away from a hospital.
This was at the turn of the 1900’s How safe was medical care back then? For all the childbearing women reading this
it is daunting to think of losing your life due to an anesthetic given while
trying to deliver your baby. Eeh Gads .
Now back to the facts. Her parents names are listed correctly. But then the place of birth for them is not so correct.
My Ma tra of Death Certs. Death Certs are Only
as good as the one providing the family info.
Since the person is now dead no one can speak truth for them [meaning
that they can no longer correct a mistake in their details]
Most likely their parents are not there to
give the information. The only true info
is: the date of death, the place of
death, possibly the correct time of death.
Since she had died in child birth I decided to seek
the child. I quickly located the death
cert going by her name. The child was
given a name, lived for about a month after the death of the mother. I was shocked when I saw death was due to
lifetime of syphilis.
So many questions began ringing in my ears. First one was Syphilis killed a new born how
so? So I decided to digress and
investigate the effects on newborns.
So sad a newborn does not have a great survival
rate when born with syphilis. It is common
for it to be born stillborn so many internal issues etc… happens in vitro. So it is amazing that the child lived once
born at all. I have included a link here
to Wikipedia for you to look up ore info if you like:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congential_syphillis
On the childs death cert. only the mothers name is listed. No father.
Agggh !!! So the father gave the
mother and child syphilis. Thanks a lot
guy. Your child could of grown to a fine
person and been a credit to your name.
Good luck on how you digest information provided to
you by death certs. May you know that
there is always a deeper story then first appears. Someone likely had many tears over such sad
ending, their sense of loss and grief was great and heartfelt.
At the time
when I had first discovered Seeking Michigan . The death certs where still
there, I was looking through them just of curiosity. I hit on a bunch of children’s death certs. It was too much. I had to quit and walk away.
