Fathers mysterious Death, need information!

[DetectiveD]

Hello Wise Mumsnetters,

My DF Died 20 Years ago when I was a small Child.
It was out of the blue and I remember a lot of chaos and confusion surrounding the circumstances, at the time I was too devastated to ask questions.
So Long story short... I don't know how he died.
I'm looking for advice on how to obtain his Death certificate / Newspaper Articles around that time.
I have people in RL who I could ask but I feel it has been too long now so I don't want to unearth a very painful time for all involved.

I appreciate Google could help me in this situation but was hoping to find others who have faced anything similar!

Thanks so much in advance for any advice

If it was in England you can order a copy of the death certificate which will give a cause of death

www.gov.uk/order-copy-birth-death-marriage-certificate

You just need his name and rough idea of the date. Very easy and the cause of death will be on there.

Oh, goodness me, that sounds so hard for you. I worry that you will find out upsetting details and have no-one to share them with. Have you thought about getting a counsellor or making contact with a bereavement charity such as Cruse before you start digging so that you have someone to support you?

You need his name, his date of birth and his date of death.

Is there a headstone or somewhere you could get this information?

www.gov.uk/order-copy-birth-death-marriage-certificate

Thank you for the advice and Link!

Every time I tried to find his certificate online I was flooded with those ancestry websites which didn't help at all

@growinggreyer You sound lovely, Thank you for the concern. I had bereavement counselling as a teenager which helped even without knowing the specific details. I do believe you are right that the details might be painful but after all this time I finally feel ready to face them.

Search www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/search.pl, it will give you the info you need to order a certificate and get the correct one on www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/

Www.gro.gov.uk is the official government site that you can order a death certificate from.

There is a small charge, about £8 from memory

Definitely search freebmd - you can put in a wide range of dates to search. Has he got a common name?
Then you can send off for the death certificate. I might be able to help you if you DM me as I have done the same to find this out for members of my family.

The reason you need freebmd is to ascertain the date, then can go from there to GRO to order the cert.