Sad over historical deaths?

[Personyouneedisnannymcphee]

Obviously death happens every day and there are many recent, very sad deaths. But some historical ones actually make me ache a little when I think about them I think due to the details and historical background of them more so than sometimes things I hear on the news. Some of these being:

-the Romanov children. Of course the Tsar was horrific but how they died thinking they were going to safety and then didn’t get killed by bullets as jewels in their clothes protected them so they were finished with bayonets.

-Anne Boylyn’s death because the details of her ladies not letting the men touch her afterwards for fears they’d violate her headless body.

AIBU for sometimes being incredibly sad over these people I never knew or do you have your own historical death that makes your stomach drop when you think of it?

There are some truly horrific stories in here, many of which I'd never heard of before. (My internet search history probably currently looks a bit worrying!) I
I really can't get my head around the incidents of prolonged abuse, whether the children or adults (or indeed animals.) I can understand someone hitting out in anger - not condone it of course, but I see how it happens. Or killing someone in self defence or to protect your child makes sense. Even people in a kill or be killed situation. It's easy now for us all to say that we would have protected Ann Frank for instance...but if it was us or our loved ones who were going to be tortured and killed by the Gestapo if we got caught would we really? I can understand why some people act as they do in that kind of situation.
But protracted torture of another living thing, or killing someone, maybe a complete stranger, for pleasure? It is completely beyond my comprehension. And when people do things in groups, like that poor girl mentioned up thread who was tortured and burned...how did not one member of that gang feel any compassion and act to save her? Are all those people in fact mentally ill or damaged by some extrinsic factor or are some people just born evil?

She did in the end. She wrote from the tower ‘false vanities my pride hath tricked, oh would I were a child again on blicklings velvet lawn’. ( blickling hall in Norfolk where she grew up). So terribly poignant.

Ann Lovett

A 15 year old schoolgirl who died in childbirth along with her son. Ireland in the 1980’s was still firmly under the grip of the Catholic Church, and sex/childbirth outside of marriage was taboo. Ann didn’t confide in anybody that she was pregnant and when she went into labour she walked from school to a nearby religious grotto (like a shrine to Mary) and gave birth terrified and alone. She was found hours later next to her stillborn son, suffering from a post-partum haemorrhage and died shortly afterwards. It makes me cry to think what that poor girl went through, as well as all the suffering inflicted on countless women and children by the Catholic Church in Ireland.

I would like people to know about the Amphitrite shipwreck as I think it's been pretty much completely forgotten.

It was a ship of (I think) 108 British women and 12 children 'convicts' being sent to Australia in 1833. The ship got stuck on a sandbank off Boulougne and the locals knew that was treacherous and they were all at risk of dying. They pleaded with the captain/crew to put all the women ashore in rowing boats before the tide changed. If the captain had agreed, all of them could have been saved but he was arrogant and refused help. They all drowned bar 3 men. People were sent to Australia over such petty crimes, too, most of those women would have done very little wrong.

This is the list of some of the passengers, although this claims it was 99 women https://convictrecords.com.au/ships/amphitrite/1833

I would love to have the time to investigate who the women all were and write about it.

I think a lot about the Yazidi women too. They were tortured by ISIS and so little has been done to help them since. But yes to find all the others mentioned on this thread gut-wrenching.

Junilla I think.

There's a lot more to that story. That was a troubled family. Her 14 year old sister died a few months later from an overdose and reports said she had bruises on her face pointing to some abuse that Ann also mentioned.

Yes! The description of Jane in panic has always touched me. I remember watching the Helena Bonham-Carter film as a child.

Vladimir Komarov -- he knew he was going to die because of administrative failures, but he went up into space anyway because otherwise they'd have made his best friend, Yuri Gagarin, do it instead.

John Lennon, I can't think too much about him being shot outside his own house in front of his wife, for no reason.

Actually, he is not buried above her any more. His widow moved him to the plot next door. The plot above MM was then sold for 3 million on ebay several years ago.

In terms of crime , I find the murders committed by Fred and Rose west to be utterly horrific. The fact they killed their daughter as well .
Historically I’ve always found the Titsnic disaster and the murders of the Romanov children to be incredibly sad .

I find so many events in history too traumatic to think about too deeply. The cruelty and sadism of some rulers/warlords in the past doesn't bear thinking about. For your mental health's sake, best to put most of these events out of your mind - I've had to tell myself that their victims are now beyond help and their suffering is over, but it's a horrible indictment of human nature I'd rather not think about too much.

Being of a certain age I was upset at the Queen's death - as even several republicans were - because she's just always been there in the background, whatever the other changes happening in the world and British society.

The next one I'm dreading is David Attenborough!! When he goes, I'll expect the earth to wobble on its axis and I will certainly feel bereft.

Judy Garland always makes me sad. She was given drugs by her mother from such a young age, and substance abuse plagued her until the end of her days. To think that one of the most beloved actresses of all time died alone, in a tiny flat, with debts her daughter had to work to pay off, always hits me hard.

Yes I have vague memories of Charles Greenhaugh who was landlord of The Ship Inn Mousehole and was on The Solomon Browne lifeboat that night and perished. I went to the pub on holiday as a child.

But probably the worst one I've ever heard of: Hisashi Ouchi. Don't Google him unless you're prepared for some horrifying details, but basically he died of radiation poisoning over an excruciatingly protracted period, whilst doctors tried a variety of experimental treatments. Whatever you're imagining, its worse. Worse than any of the Chernobl stories I've heard of.

The Hartley Pit disaster, one of the worst mining accidents in England and the cause of a law stating that all pits from that point on had to have two shafts so workers had a means of escape should the first become blocked.

It happened in January 1862 when a piece of machinery broke and blocked the shaft, trapping all of the men and boys inside where they slowly suffocated as gas from the furnace built up inside the pit, they didn't stand a chance. 204 men and boys died, the youngest of the victims was just 10yrs old. Hartley is tiny and nearly everyone in the village lost someone or multiple someone's, one family alone lost nine people. When the first rescuers got inside the pit they reporting finding fathers holding their sons close and brothers embracing brothers so that none had died alone. Some had left goodbye messages on scraps of paper or scratched into tobacco tins, onto glass bottles and other belongings.

The entrance to the pit is now a memorial garden with all of their names and a poem written on the path, every year the village has a service in the garden to commemorate the disaster and lots of their descendants still live roundabout.

https://www.nmrs.org.uk/mines-map/accidents-disasters/durham/new-hartley-colliery-shaft-accident-hartley-1862/

Also the Victoria Hall disaster in Sunderland when 183 children were crushed to death in a stampede to obtain a free toy. A door at the bottom of a stairwell had been set up to only open inwards and even then only wide enough to allow one person through at a time, as the children began to pile up behind it they all got trapped. Unbelievably sad that so many could be killed so quickly at what was supposed to be a fun event.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Hall_disaster

This. My mother lost all faith over Aberfan. It was entirely preventable. Nobody gave a flying fuck and nobody was prosecuted - can you believe it? By that I mean, of course the whole world grieved, but no one cared enough beforehand not to put a bloody spoil heap at the top of a hill in a notoriously rainy country. And there was an inquiry, but no one was really held properly accountable.
Once they extracted the coal, they didn’t care.
My paternal grandmother looked at Sengenydd, and forbade any of her sons to go underground. And they didn’t.
Wales still has tips on hills above towns. The Welsh government is locked in a quarrel with Westminster about the money to take them down. Still. Today.

The Five is also available as a podcast for those interested

I read a article from a group of boys who had gone from the same town. Some were in the Celtic end and some in Rangers. What so sad was when it said how they stood waiting for the train coming to their town to see if their friends got off..but never did as had all died.

All of these😭. And also want to add the little girl found in the cooler, Jessica I believe. No one knew who she was for a while. The Dad realized it was her and he shared video of her playing with a water hose laughing and laughing. Will forever break my heart.

My mum's family live nearby and I remember as a child driving past the rows of tiny gravestones on the hillside. The way the Coal Board wanted to use the disaster find that the public donated to to pay for the clean up.

April Jones totally broke my heart. And Baby P.

I haven’t been able to watch The Crown’s Aberfan or Romanov episodes yet.

A family story tore me up inside when I heard it. My Gran’s aunt’s only son, aged about six, drowned in a mill pond when out playing. The other kids didn’t tell anyone when they got home.

Freckleton Air Disaster.
In WW2 a US plane from the local airbase crashed, probably after being struck by lightening, on the village school. Only 2 of the infant class escaped. Some of the children were evacuees, sent there to be safe from the war.

Also Rye Harbour (Mary Standford) Lifeboat disaster in around 1930s. The lifeboat set out in stormy seas to rescue a wrecked ship. Almost immediately after they launched the boat, A message came that another lifeboat had got there and rescued the crew, but the Mary Sandford's crew was too far out to see the recall sent up. The boat capsized with the loss of all crew on board. There's a book by Monica Edwards, who lived in Rye Harbour at the time called Storm Ahead, which she wrote remembering it.
The face that it was so unnecessary because the crew had already been rescued, makes offer worse.

The tragedy is so many non-natural disasters could have been easily avoided, lots of them there were warning signs, people raised issues, there were lesser incidents in the run up and so on. And often the reason ultimately comes down to money.

In the case of Senghenydd, laws had changed to improve safety and work should have been done to implement those changes - but wasn't so an extension was given.

There's a quote, I can't recall where from, saying that mine owners cared more for the welfare of the ponies than the men - because replacing the ponies cost more.

Bhopal.