The Fen Child in Danger
Childhood
In the past, life was as hard and dangerous for children as it was for their parents. Many children died before their fifth birthday (estimated approximately 25%). It is only through doctor’s casebook records, the letters and diaries of parents and Parish Burial records that we can know much about childhood illness and death in the 16th to 18th centuries. The Ramsey Parish Burial Records provide some interesting local examples as well as more recent news reports of accidents with fire.
Read the records of accidental deaths by drowning, tragedies with horses, a poisoning, and a tragic choking...........as in the final entry on the page opposite taken from the Parish Burial Register of 1844.
Parish Registers
These began under a command from Thomas Cromwell in 1538. Ministers of parish churches were to record baptisms, marriages and burials occurring at their church and these records were to be stored in a 'parish chest'. Often written on loose sheets, very few of these records survive. But in 1598, Elizabeth I ordered that the loose-leaf registers were to be transferred to a parchment book, backdated to the commencement of her reign in 1558, and some parish registers start from this date.
The registers record baptisms, burials and marriages, mixed up together in the same volume but in chronological order.
While difficult to decipher, odd words help us to decode what at first appears to be too difficult to read. Fortunately, some of the entries have been scrutinised and a transcription provided by archivists.
Burial Register 1600
This register entry for Ffayth Beridge and Prudence Marshall appears to be a shocking poisoning accident. Ratsbane looks rather like flour so could easily be mistaken for a harmless powder. In the past there seems to be quite a few recorded instances of accidental ratsbane consumption.
During the 16th-century, people commonly used arsenic trioxide or "ratsbane" to keep vermin from their food and from scurrying about their houses.
Burial Register 1626
Apart from the two entries where the cause of death is recorded, just in this one year there are several child deaths listed here.
Biggin Malting
Burial Register 1669
There is an interesting entry here.
Look for the cross drawn towards the lower right section of the page. The section reads……
William son of William, a child, being killed by a horse running with his rider. O Gracious God, whom thou makest inquisition for blood, lay not (wee beseech thee) the guilt of this innocent blood, to the charge of any of the people in this parish, nor let it ever be required of us, or posterity: but be merciful unto the people whom thou hast Redeemed & be not angry with us for ever, but pardon us all for thy mercys sakee through the merits of they sonne Lord Jesus Christ. Amen
Burial Register 1746-47
Look here for names repeated to see the tragic loss suffered by some families- Lynford, Proud, Selby…
While not all ‘sons’ and ‘daughters’ listed here will be children – because of the high incidence of childhood deaths in this period of history, many will be children who died in this period between November 1746 and September 1747.
10_Newspaper Extracts.doc