Research sources suggestion *triggering*

[WeatherwaxOn]

I've been researching my late Dad's side of the family and have traced the family back to the 1800s.
In the mid/late 1800s were three deaths in the same family; father and two adult sons. Two were violent suicides and one an alleged accident.
The family lived in Barley and in Royston so some records in Cambs., and some in Herts.
I have death certs for all 3 - father 1867, sons 1873. However although all 3 required inquests the documents don't seem to exist for the two definite suicides. I have a transcript of the alleged accidental death.
The two suicides were in Cambs, and their archives don't have surviving inquest copies that date back this far.
I have looked in FindMyPast with no luck, but their coverage can be hazy/mistranscribed.
I was (gruesomely) hoping to find some more information from the time. Would old newspapers have carried info?

I have a short newspaper item about the accidental death which references the man's brother committing suicide 5 days previously in the next village, which came under Herts.
It seems that the brother who committed suicide in 1873 was in the workhouse, but again I can't seem to find anything.

The reason for my interest is that one of my uncles suffered badly with depression and I suspect it may be an inherent family trait.

It's a possiblity. The best place I've found for local newspaper stories is www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/, you get your first three articles free then have to buy a subscription - but even without a subscription you can often see enough to get the gist. I would just search by the name and see if anything comes up.

Have you followed them through the census returns? There may well be a family pre-disposition to depression but even 50 years ago it wasn't diagnosed and wasn't spoken about, go back 1870 and the understanding was even worse. It might also be helpful to do some reading around what was happening in the local area at the time, was there mass unemployment, food shortages or some other traumatic event?

If there were any asylums in the local area and their archives are still in existence, you might be able to find out about any inpatient stays in the family, as the charmingly named Lunacy Act of 1845 required asylums to keep an admission book. Depression would have been called 'melancholia' and was a fairly common reason for admission. Not exactly the information you were after, but it might shed some light on any family predisposition.

Thankyou!
I shall try with newspapers; haven't had much luck but someone in the archives in Cambs managed to find me a short article.
Haven't yet been able to find the workhouse records at the moment.
It seems that fewer historical docs have survived in Cambs, which is frustrating as 2 of the 3 were just inside that county boundary.

Have you got the death certificates? There might be ICD9 codes handwritten on them, this is helping me piece together the background circumstances around a cluster of suicides on my dad’s side (in North Carolina tho, not sure if everywhere used those codes routinely)

Sorry just saw how far back this happened, I don’t know if there even was a system for classifying causes of death like the ICD then

I don't think I've ever seen codes like that written on death certs in the UK.

That’s a shame because they’re often so revealing - I have a tendency to assume some kind of depressive disorder whenever there’s a clear suicide in the family tree but often that can be organic in nature and not truly psychological, or the person was terminally or chronically ill with something or other.

Have you checked any addresses given on the death certificates? Bear in mind that sometimes asylums were not listed as such on death certificates, but the address provided may have been for the asylum gate house or similar.

Ancestry.com has a search facility for asylum records.

If there was any kind of inquest, this should be written up in the local paper. I found the most extraordinary report of my great, great, great grandmother's death; she was brought up in a middle class family, but one of her children died and she became an alcoholic, and ended up separated and living in the slums. The inquest told me so much about her life there and how she had friends and people looking out for her.

The recurrences are fascinating. There's been recurrent alcoholism in my mother's family, and there were some even more direct echoes as well, it was very strange.

Oh but forgot to say, I could not get it online but had to go to the local studies library in Westminster to find it. Once there, I got it within 10 minutes.

The recurrences are fascinating

They really are, is this the sort of thing epigenetics is concerned with? I’d love to do psychobiographies of some ancestors even if they weren’t particularly important people.

Yes, I agree the recurrences are fascinating, and comforting somehow. I had a huge century-old dead end in my family tree that I finally pushed through only recently to find that I have hordes of ancestors who lived (and died) with melancholia. As well as being satisfying finally to find that side of the family, it put all the depression in the more recent family history into very clear perspective. Overnight the internal 'why are we like this' narrative became obsolete. I think this kind of knowledge can be actively useful in weighing up treatment options too. Because depression is usually multifactorial it can be hard to know what to focus on. A bit OT now, but of interest perhaps.

@SabrinaThwaite

Have you checked any addresses given on the death certificates? Bear in mind that sometimes asylums were not listed as such on death certificates, but the address provided may have been for the asylum gate house or similar.

Ancestry.com has a search facility for asylum records.

Death 1 - suicide - 1867 - just gives the date of the death and the village. Informant is the coroner and there was an inquest but apparently this hasn't survived.

Death 2 -suicide - 1873 - exactly the same.

Death 3 -accidental (but 5 days after death 2, his brother), as death 1.

I found out from a newspaper article that one of the brothers was in the workhouse at the time of his death. Seems that he'd only married the year before. I find no evidence of any children, nor of his wife on later records.
It appears that the records for Herts. which is where the family were based are scant, and some years are missing - and those seem to be the years I wanted to review.

@requiredwriting

If there was any kind of inquest, this should be written up in the local paper. I found the most extraordinary report of my great, great, great grandmother's death; she was brought up in a middle class family, but one of her children died and she became an alcoholic, and ended up separated and living in the slums. The inquest told me so much about her life there and how she had friends and people looking out for her.

The recurrences are fascinating. There's been recurrent alcoholism in my mother's family, and there were some even more direct echoes as well, it was very strange.

I expected to see this but am struggling to find anything. I don't know what the local paper would be as they lived in small villages. An archivist sent me a copy of one small newspaper article which was about the accidental death and alluded to the suicide of his brother 5 days previously (in a different village). British Newspaper Archives isn't returning any matches on the names/villags.

It might be worth looking at the Royston Workhouse Guardians' Minute Books. They'd probably just note there had been a death though. But perhaps he might have been in trouble there previously.
www.workhouses.org.uk/Royston/

Thanks Winter, I will check it out.

What are the villages? If you drop a line to the local studies centre in the nearest town, or even the local library, they should be able to tell you what the local paper would have been. And most of them aren't on British Newspapers Online, sadly.

By way of an update - Herts archives have newspapers for various years but do not have newspapers which cover dates 1866 – Aug 1876.
Their workhouse records are only reports of meeting - no admissions or discharge document survive.
They don't have inquest copies which go back to 1869 either.
Looks like I've hit a dead end.

You don't mention a name, but I just had a look and found a newspaper report of a Benjamin Jackson, a sad article about a man who slit his throat while temporarily insane. He does have a brother who died the same month, so I thought it might be him.

That is him, Winter - you are marvellous!!
Can you point me to the article please? Everyone I've approached says there are no newspaper reports covering this time/location
I have a little item about his brother John Jackson who was involved in an accident involving his horses, just 5 days after Benjamin's death.

You'll be pleased to know I've found his father too. He also slit his throat

Do you subscribe to FindMyPast? You want:
Hertfordshire Express and General Advertiser 10 August 1867, page 3 of 4, top of column 3

Cambridge Independent Press 20 December 1873 page 5 of 8, column 7 approx middle

(For searching FMP, you're best to select the county and date you're interested in, then if the name doesn't come up, try other words like died)

Their workhouse records are only reports of meeting - no admissions or discharge document survive.
They might still mention this in the meeting, although the newspaper account is very thorough

Brilliant sleuthing @WinterIsGone, way to go. But what sad stories.

Yes, aren't they. I'm researching my ggg grandmother at the moment, and she ended up in St Luke's lunatic asylum in London. Very sad.

Now if only it could be discovered that the inquests are still in existence somewhere! :)

I'm potentially giving a talk some time late this year/early next year about my family history and wanted to see what reportage and other documentation existed. It all seems so tragic and unexplained. I believe that the conditions and prospects for agricultural workers particularly in the 1870s were dire, but it seems strange that in the cases of both John & Joseph there was no indication that anything was amiss. I suppose, when I consider people like Robin Williams or Kurt Cobain, that nobody noticed anything amiss with them either.

@WinterIsGone

You'll be pleased to know I've found his father too. He also slit his throat

Do you subscribe to FindMyPast? You want:
Hertfordshire Express and General Advertiser 10 August 1867, page 3 of 4, top of column 3

Cambridge Independent Press 20 December 1873 page 5 of 8, column 7 approx middle

(For searching FMP, you're best to select the county and date you're interested in, then if the name doesn't come up, try other words like died)

Their workhouse records are only reports of meeting - no admissions or discharge document survive.
They might still mention this in the meeting, although the newspaper account is very thorough

I've found and saved all this information now.

I can't believe neither archive service could locate this information though. You put them to shame! Thanks so much once again.