D is for . . .

D is for Doris. Another great-grandmother, this time on my paternal side and with a bit of a sad twist. 

Doris was born in Liverpool, Sydney in the year of Federation 1901. At the time of her birth, her father was working as a bricklayer but just a few years later he was the proprietor of  a confectionist and tobacconist. So, presumably Doris’s life followed the same course as most girls of that era which culminated in her marriage shortly before her twenty-first birthday.

The couple’s first child followed the year after their marriage and four years later Doris gave birth to a section child. All seems normal up to this point, a young couple with two young children. But life was to change for the young family when Doris became pregnant with the couple’s third child. I don’t know whether Doris had a difficult pregnancy from the very start or if her troubles developed later. However by March 1931, just one month prior to giving birth, by all accounts Doris was suffering more and more which made it hard to care for the two young children she had at home.

I know that things must have bene looking dire, because in March of that year her husband Herbert Samuel Starr was caught stealing grocery items from the Officers’ Mess at the local army base. The case went to court in May and it is mentioned in the defence that at the time he was caught, Herbert first denied stealing the items then when it became apparent denials wouldn’t do he pleaded his wife’s illness resulting in him taking time off work. This resulted in him resorting to stealing grocery items to feed his sick wife and two young sons.

But back to March, when Doris was suffering through her third pregnancy. On 8 April 1931, she gave birth to her third son (my grandfather). Apparently, he was born small but healthy which must have seemed a relief after such an illness riddled pregnancy. But the relief was to be short lived.

Doris developed an in infection called Puerperal Pyaemia also known as childbed fever. As I understand it, the condition develops during situations such as childbirth through a lack of sterilisation of the medical environment which allows germs and bacteria to enter the body of the patient through bodily fluids. It is likely that Doris contracted childbed fever either during or shortly after the birth. Whatever the case, just eleven days after the birth of her child Doris died from Puerperal Pyaemia or childbed fever. She left behind two small children, a newborn and a husband.

Now, I had heard of childbed fever before but it astounded me that it was still prevalent in relatively modern times. When I first read Puerperal Pyeamia as the cause of Doris’s death, I didn’t know what it meant. But when I read that she had had the illness for eleven days and that her youngest child was also listed as being eleven days old, I started to get a sinking feeling in my stomach about what the unfamiliar term meant. I dutifully looked it up in google, and sadly had my suspicions confirmed.

I feel so sad to think about that she barely had time to hold her new baby before she was overtaken with sickness that she ultimately died from. And to think that it could likely have been prevented had proper sterilisation been carried out. As a result, my grandfather never got to know his mother at all which seems such a sad way to grow up.