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?

A friend of mine was one of the policemen involved in this case. He was never the same afterwards.

Sadly the sake on eBay fell through so he is still buried in the same place I believe, with Hugh Hefner next to her. 🤮

I live locally to this and there is a monument to them all in Gillingham Park

My friend worked in a local chippy with one of the surviving daughters. Horrific.

Everyone who died at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators. Those who had children who were disabled must have been horrific for them.

Sylvia Plath- I find her suicide distressing. Then the suicide of her son.

If we are talking a long time ago, then the deaths of the Earl of Warwick and Katherine Howard both make me really sad.

He was beheaded on the orders of Henry 7 but it is thought he had learning difficulties. He'd been imprisoned for about ten years previously too.

Howard was basically an abused teenager, used as a pawn by her ambitious relations.

Sophie Scholl....member of the nazi resistance group "The White Rose". She was only 18 years old when she was captured and beheaded by the nazis.
This one made me deeply sad, such a promising young life cut short. When I look at historical photos of her, she looks so innocent and vulnerable. The White Rose tried to make a difference but ended catastrophically.

The Lockerbie disaster and piper alpha are closer to home for me

The initial fault lay with her family who, like so many aristocratic families in history, sold her for power and social advancement. Ann Boleyn's uncle was involved in her 'trial' and subsequent death, he then promoted another young member of the family into Henry's bed.

I do transcribing of old parish records for a genealogy website and it wasn't uncommon for a family to bury three or four children in the space of a month or less or for a man to bury his newborn child and his wife within a couple of days.

Crying at all these 😢

I have always been haunted by what happened to Lesley Whittle. I was 6/7 when she was taken from her bedroom in 1975 but I read the newspaper reports and it absolutely terrified me.
She was 17 and an heiress. A botched ransom delivery ended with her losing her life, kept hanging in a drain underground.

And more recently...Grenfell. Residents who complained about the dangers were labelled trouble makers. No-one has been prosecuted or found responsible. The contractors didn't bother to install sprinklers.
A culture of deniability and buck-passing means that no-one will accept blame.

Also, there was the Felixstowe to Zeebrugge car ferry, there were over 150 deaths that day, as I remember??

That was a completely preventable tragedy and there was a push for the company to be charged with corporate manslaughter.

That tragedy was close to home for me, as our family had travelled on that route several times before. Just awful.

I'm always haunted by both the Kings Cross tube fire and Dunblane; the first, I think, because I was only three when it happened and the news pictures gave me nightmares. The tube still makes me horribly nervous because I keep thinking of all those people who couldn't get out.

Dunblane is one of those crystal clear memories for me; I was in Y6 when it happened, and my teacher cried when he told us. He told after lunch because he knew some of us went home alone and he didn't want us to be frightened if we saw/heard the news. Those kids were the same age as me, and Gwen Mayor was their teacher, and I could so easily picture it happening at my school instead that it made it really real. I still light a candle every year on the anniversary.

How did you get into that? Sounds fascinating. So sad though. I don’t know people in the past who lost multiple family members to things like flu kept going.

That is horrific.

I haven't read the full thread but the death that always sticks in my mind is Ann Lovett. Ann was only 15 when she died giving birth beside a grotto in the grounds of the local church in Granard, Co.Longford in 1984. It had a very big impact on Ireland at the time. I was only about 10 at the time when it happened and remember my mother and aunt discussing it in hushed tones as it was so scandalous. Unfortunately, many people thought that the scandal was the fact that a 15 year old had had a baby not that she had given birth in the open air in a graveyard and that both her and her baby son died. Even now if I'm travelling somewhere and see Granard on a road sign Ann is the first thing I think

@OwlDoll I hadn't heard of Ann before now. Just googled it and it's so terribly sad! The way the reporter announced it on tv was disgusting too. Poor girl must have been terrified.

Totally agree. I can’t stand reading about her, or other animals sent into space. It amounts to torture and it’s monstrous.

A seafaring relative of mine was killed by a u boat while traveling on a passenger ship in ww2.

I believe that this was possibly the start of the generational trauma in my family. It was my grandads brother, and his mother never got over the loss of her elder son - and bizarrely blamed my grandad even though he was only 4 or 5 at the time his brother died. She apparently would abuse him and tell him he should have died instead of his brother. He in turn abused his wife, my nan, who abused my mum, who abused me. I've broken the cycle. But i do wonder what would have happened if my great uncle had lived.

In 2018 my Dad, sister, some cousins and I all went to visit my Dad’s uncle’s war grave in rural France on the 100th anniversary of his death. A poor Welsh miner from a poor Welsh mining village, killed just a couple of weeks before WW1 ended, and we were the first members of the family to visit - his parents and siblings couldn’t have afforded it.

It was a really moving experience, I cried a lot, not just at Great-uncle Ted’s beautifully-tended grave, but also the thousands upon thousands of other beautifully-tended graves.

My father’s brother Ted, obviously named for his dead uncle Ted, was killed in WW2, at the age of 17, when my Dad was just 3. I sometimes think about the cousins I might have had. When my Mum was pregnant with my younger sister, my Grandad asked if she’d call the baby Ted if it was a boy, and Mum was horrified at the idea, it was hardly a lucky name for my Dad’s family.

So many people lost brothers and fathers in WW1, then husbands and sons 20 years later.

@MavisMcMinty What has upset me most about visiting war graves are the numbers of graves to unknown soldiers.

Yes! And the long lists of names, carved on memorials, for those without graves. It was a memorable, sobering experience.

Emotionalsupportviper · Yesterday 07:56

I hope this doesn't sound facile, but this reminded me of a death that always breaks my heart when I think of it.

That of little Laika - the first dog in space.

No need to apologise - I think people sometimes make a false differentiation between people who care about animal suffering and those who care about human. I think you are either a compassionate person or you're not, and if you are then any cruelty or sadism resulting in physical or emotional suffering is horrible to you.

Of course, if we HAD to make a choice, we'd prioritise humans, but why would that stop us feeling sorry for animals? I feel particularly sad for the horses involved in WWI (or any war, really). That doesn't mean I'm OK with the soldiers' suffering, by the way! I find it obscene and traumatic, but for the horses, they would not be able to understand anything about the terrible situation they were put in. My grandparents had a farm and a well-loved Shire horse. My grandfather always remembered the day, when he was a child, that the horse was requisitioned and taken to the Western Front.

I judge people who don't care about animal suffering - it's a pretty good indicator of their general level of empathy and kindness, I find.

I watched a programme on her abduction and murder the other week.

I can begin to comprehend the sheer terror she went through, being held captive in the dark with a metal noose around her neck.

I remember the case as I was about the same age as her at the time.