Finding out about a dead child

[Sandra15]

I am an amateur genealogist and am looking into the history of a woman in our book group. I've done well and got her back to 1540 on one line. However there is a bit of a dilemma. She's 62 and had a difficult upbringing, her parents are dead now. Her father was illegitimate as it was known then and brought up by an aunt when his mother married and had more children.

My book club friend had an older brother, now deceased, 15 years older than her and was given to understand that between the brother and herself there was a sister who died in infancy. She remembers vague conversations with her parents and an aunt. But she has no family members to ask. She says it was one of those families who discussed nothing and was told to shut up.

I have done the searching on Ancestry for children born with her surname and mother's maiden name between her brother's birth and hers (I have found both her and her brother) and found nothing, nor have I found a death for the child. She swears it was not an urban myth as it was mentioned several times. I've found a cousin of hers, living not too far away who is in her early 70s and she is thinking of asking her.

But my question is, is there any way of finding this stuff out through the NHS or any other way? Where else would these records be? I've never had a challenge like this before.

The records could have been mistranscribed....try a wider search. It could also be that the child was still born/not registered? In which case, there may be no records.

My grandad had a younger sister who died at a few days old. There doesn't appear to be any trace. They were rural and poor. We know her name but that's it. They didn't register her and she wasn't baptised.

@Einszwei

The records could have been mistranscribed....try a wider search. It could also be that the child was still born/not registered? In which case, there may be no records.

I thought about that, but are stillborn children not registered? This birth would have been the 40s or 50s so perhaps they weren't.

Sandra the birth may well pre-date the NHS if it was early 40s.

My mum had a stillborn brother, who I have been unable to trace. Slightly earlier than you - late 1930s / early 1940s. I did seek advice on a specialist forum and it was suggested (IIRC) that I would have to seek the records of cemeteries local to specific maternity hospitals, as those sometimes kept records of stillborn infants who were buried there. I also seem to remember that there was a barrier in terms of accessing official records, in that my mum herself would have had to request the records, which she was reluctant to do.

Ever since registration, babies who have been born alive and lived for just a short time, were registered with a birth and death certificate. Perhaps in the Victorian times when a baby was born at home, lived for an hour and then died, parents didn't bother.

Stillbirths, where a baby was born dead and never lived, were only registered in England and Wales after 1874 as as death if the parents wanted to bury them. In practice, many still didn't bother. I have seen the pages of a register kept by a gravedigger in a rural area, lots of stillbirths listed, none of which appear in the official record. There's also the whole thing about what's a stillbirth and what's a late miscarriage, and as we're talking about times where women didn't have antenatal care and scans, dating pregnancies wasn't an exact science. It's .... difficult.

After 1927, all stillbirths were recorded in a special register, but getting access isn't straightforward. There's a really good guide here:

www.rbwm.gov.uk/home/community-and-living/births-deaths-and-ceremonies/registering-stillborn-baby/how-do-i-obtain-certificate-historic-stillbirth-entry

So in short - your friend needs to clarify if she is looking for a stillbirth, or an infant death.

If it's a stillbirth, she can apply to the GRO but will need her parents' death certificates and her birth certificate to prove she's a sibling.

I am assuming you've searched on FreeBMD for births using the surname of father and maiden surname of mother?

Oh and meant to add that the Stillbirths Register is closed and not searchable on Ancestry or other sites. So that would be explain why you couldn't find it.

I think there may be a stillbirth register as opposed to being registered separately on births and deaths register.

Rather than searching for the possible birth record on Ancestry, you would be better off using FreeBMD, which is the original database Ancestry uses. You can easily search between dates with a surname. You know the mother's surname, too. It should be no problem at all

If it's a stillbirth, she can apply to the GRO but will need her parents' death certificates and her birth certificate to prove she's a sibling.

Yes, that's what I remember. As it is my great-uncle, and my mum- the only living child of the marriage - is developing dementia, I think we have no opportunity now of ever knowing more about her stillborn brother.

Thanks everyone for the useful information, I will go back to Val with it.

Potentially the area’s records office may have a register of stillbirths and burials. I don’t know if these are currently allowing visits what with Covid.

If this helps I had a stillborn sister, born sometime in the 40's/50's. It was in the days when babies were left on a windowsill in a draught to die if they were very sick. I also had a brother who lived for a very short time about the same time. Brother appears in searches as he was registered, and shows as being born one year and died the next, but nothing is known about my sister other than stillborn and a possible year. I haven't been able to find a complete record. What I did find out is that stillborn births were not always registered and records not kept, or in some cases were destroyed at that time. There is no birth certificate for her and I don't even know if she had a name, she would have been about 84 now, that is all I have managed to find.

Depending on the area there might be some sketchy records, but you would need to do a lot of searching. I did find a site where you could ask for the family you are researching, among all the 'free' ancestry sites that charge you once you open them up to look. There are some useful ones but you have to be determined and try many searches with all the names you have available, and every combination.

Is it possible to find out from Church records if you know the parish concerned?

@newtb

Is it possible to find out from Church records if you know the parish concerned?

There is a thought ..........

Going off at a tangent…
With a 15 year age-gap, was the mother quite young when the first baby was born? If she was unmarried, he might have been registered as her mother's child to avoid the stigma of an illegitimate birth.

Anything in the church records? He might be recorded alongside another entry, e.g. a grandparent's death, as a side note.

Have you checked billiongraves.com and findagrave.com ? Last week I came across several which were titled 'Stillborn or Unnamed Baby' some with a surname and some without, the ones without any name would be almost impossible to trace unless you had access to the church or cemetery records.

If an undertaker still operates in the area that might be another place to check.

I know how frustrating it can be searching for someone, I've been trying to find a whole family for the last few weeks.

Good luck.

@SnowdaySewday

Going off at a tangent… With a 15 year age-gap, was the mother quite young when the first baby was born? If she was unmarried, he might have been registered as her mother's child to avoid the stigma of an illegitimate birth.

Anything in the church records? He might be recorded alongside another entry, e.g. a grandparent's death, as a side note.

No, none of that applied. The parents were married, had a child, then this dead child after that, then a gap of about 14 years when our book club lady was born. I am going to check the church records next so thanks for that.

In some areas, there was a tradition whereby babies would be buried with a woman, maybe completely unrelated but who happened to die at approximately the same time, who could then “take care of” the infant in the after-life/ Heaven.