Tag Archives: death

A is for Alice

Posted on by

3

First cab off the rank for the 2020 A to Z Challenge is Alice Maud Coxon. Now, A is always an easy letter as so many names start with A and the individuals in my tree were no exception. But the hardest choice was who to choose to write about. All up, there are 252 individuals in my tree who have a first name starting with A. I chose Alice Maud for a few reasons, but the main reason is that I have a fair amount if information about her, both factual and anecdotal, and she’s always intrigued me from what I’ve heard about her.

First, the factual information. Alice was my great, great grandmother on my Father’s side and was born 27 September 1889 in West Maitland, NSW to parents Thomas Coxon, a coal miner who worked at nearby Four Mile Creek, and Elizabeth Robins. Alice was the youngest of six children born to the couple, and grew up in and around the East Maitland area. By the time she was 21 she was living at New Lambton, where she married her husband Matthew Iles. Alice and Matthew went on to have four children over the next eight years. So, there’s some bare facts about Alice. But what makes her so interesting to me?

When I first came across Alice, she was just a name on a piece of paper to me and I didn’t know much more about her than that. When I first started tracing my family tree, I took the direct approach and just followed the direct ancestors as far back as I could manage. However, as time went on I became interested in investigating some so-called ‘collateral’ ancestors. Now, as I already noted Alice had four children over eight years with her husband Matthew: Matthew Vernon Lorraine (my great grandfather); Hilton; Eunice and Kiffin. Now, that is all very unremarkable but what is remarkably sad to me is that after just eight years of marriage, Matthew unexpectedly died.

Matthew had been a railway worker throughout the entire time of their marriage, working variously as a traffic signaller, a porter and a night guard. It was a good, solid job and would have provided a reasonable income on which to support his family. Even better, being employed on the railways meant he was in a reserved occupation so spent the years of WWI at home in Australia rather than heading overseas. But by 1918 Matthew was dead from Tetanus and Toxaemia, leaving Alice with four children under the age of 8 years old. At the time of her husband’s death, Alice’s children were 7, 5, 3 and 16 months.

When I first found out this information, I thought about how sad it was but at the time didn’t give it much thought. It was only later as I spent some time talking with my great-uncle about his collection of family photos that I started to see her as an actual person. Alice had been his grandmother after all and he recalled his father talking a lot about her and he shared some interesting things with me.

Apparently, after her husband’s death the NSW Railway generously offered Alice a position working as a station attendant. This was explained as quite generous by the Railways at the time as women with young children didn’t typically work outside of the home. Alice continued to work for the Railways for many years, eventually moving from just a general station attendant to being an attendant in the refreshment rooms. To date, I have not been able to locate her Railway Personnel records to glean any more information about her employment but the electoral rolls have confirmed that she did in fact work for the railways.

Alice Iles (nee Coxon) on the right.

But the sadness didn’t end with just her husbands death. In 1920, just two years after her husband’s death, Alice lost her daughter Eunice who was aged only five years old at the time. Now, this one really broke my heart and I can vividly remember having tears in my eyes as I read the death certificate. At the age of only five years old, Eunice had died from Measles. She had suffered for 5 days from Measles, but the part that really got me teary was the fact that she had suffered from convulsions for 4 hours as a result of the disease.

Now, I don’t have children but for many years I worked with children and during my training I can remember doing a unit in infectious diseases and we watched some confronting videos on what diseases like measles can do to young children who aren’t vaccinated. And so, I could vividly picture in horrifying detail the violent convulsions that she probably suffered.

It then got me to thinking about the rest of Alice’s life and how little I knew about it. I researched her siblings and parents and found out one more sad fact. In 1893, when Alice was only 4 years old, her mother Elizabeth died. Just four years later her father Thomas also died, following a mining accident. At the time that her mother died, Alice’s eldest sister Florence was 16 years old. Being the eldest sister and of an age to be able to run the home, one can only assume that Florence would have taken over the running of the house and care of her father and younger siblings after the death of her mother. What happened to the younger children when their father died, I don’t know as neither of the two eldest children were over the age of 21.

What I do know is that Alice was obviously close to her sister Florence, who never married. When Alice died in 1958 at the age of 68 years old, she was buried in the same plot as her sister Florence who had died just three years earlier in 1955.

Inscription reads: In Loving Memory of Our Dear Mother Alice Maud Iles.

D is for . . .

Posted on by

0

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.

#52ancestors Week 3 – Unusual Name

Posted on by

0

*****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.