*****DISCLAIMER: This post makes reference to suicide and may upset some readers.**************

 

The Week 3 prompt for #52ancestors is ‘unusual name’. Now, most of the people in my tree have frustratingly common names which they then reuse over the generations. Last year for this challenge, I wrote about a group of siblings with names that stood out but I searched and searched to try and find someone different to write about this year. Finally I settled on one Thomas Collimore, my 3x great grandfather. Whilst his first name is fairly common, the surname is a relatively unusual one both in Australia and in England where it originated.

Thomas Collimore was born in Australia in 1847 to two convict parents: Robert Collimore (aka Cullimore) and Margaret Hartigan. But what makes Thomas so special? When I first started researching this family line, Thomas was simply a name on a piece of paper. But as I investigated further, I all of a sudden found a treasure trove of information about him. Having ordered his death certificate, I was sad and surprised to learn that his cause of death was suffocation by hanging at his own hand. Knowing that at this time (he died in 1912) suicide was very much frowned upon and seen as a sin i wondered what could have driven him to such an act.

So, I typed his name into Trove to see if there were any newspaper articles around the time of his death. All up, there was a total of 8 articles recounting his suicide and the subsequent finding of the body by his son. Apparently, Thomas (aged 65 at the time) had been despondent for some days and could go in no longer. Some articles mention that he left a note at his residence, whilst others state that he left the house early on a ‘sunday morning and a search ensued when he didn’t return at nightfall. Whatever the case, he was not found until it was too late: the papers all detail how he was found by his son hanging from a tree in a paddock of one of the family’s properties.

How must his son have felt, coming across a sigh such as that? I shudder to even think, but in my opinion it would be something that scarred him mentally for the rest of his life. No mention is made of why Thomas was so despondent, but his wife had died just three years earlier after suffering with tuberculosis for two years. His eldest daughter had also died suddenly three years before the death of his wife. Perhaps these contributed to his despondency?

Unfortunately, this is something we will probably never know as the reasons for his despondence are not discussed in the newspaper articles or the coronial inquest. One thing I did find interesting is that despite the fact that Thomas committed suicide he was buried in the local Church of England Cemetery with a full Anglican funeral. Perhaps this brought some comfort to the family that he left behind.