Peter Maxwell OPR

morgano · Post by **morgano** » Wed May 20, 2009 1:50 am

Hello.
I have yet another document that I am having trouble deciphering and I'd greatly appreciate any help, please. It's a melancholy one, this, because it concerns the death and burial of Peter Maxwell, aged 1 year and 5 months, on the 12th of July, 1830, in Glasgow. The date and age make him the right age for my great-great-great-uncle, born in Edinburgh in February, 1829. I know that the Maxwells moved to Glasgow at about that time and that they lost Peter, because they christened another Peter there in 1831.

http://talkingscot.com/gallery/displayi ... ?pos=-1852

The problem columns are the one following Peter's name, which is the cause of death, and the column following that. I can't read the cause of death. I can read the name after that, Brown, but I don't know what that column is for. There is no set format for these death/burial OPRs, but I'd guess that Brown was the mother's maiden name. (My Peter's mother's maiden name was McKenzie, or McKinzie.)
Many thanks for any ideas,

Morgano

Gallery url added by marilyn

Post by **paddyscar** » Wed May 20, 2009 3:40 am

Hi Morgano:

The first column following the names seems to be the cause of death which in Peter's case and another on the page as chin gh chincough or whooping cough http://www.neonatology.org/classics/old.terms.html

The next column may be the name of the person present or in charge of the patient at the time of death as there are 2 Campbells, 2 McDonalds, 1 Dr. Mcnichol, 2 Timsons and 8 Loch'ds

Is there any indication what this is? It looks to me like some log book from a ward or hospital, or morgue intake based on:

- 10:30 in the top left corner indicating a time
- July 4 indicating date
- over 6 | 6 indicating the count of males and females carried forward from the previous page
- all the items are in the same hand

That's my suggestion anyway. Perhaps someone has experience of this type of document.

Frances

morgano · Post by **morgano** » Wed May 20, 2009 5:25 am

paddyscar, many thanks for your reading of this document. It's an OPR of poor Peter's death, but without any reference to his burial. Another Peter Maxwell died in Glasgow, even younger, in May of 1830. His record covered two pages, including an indication of where interment had taken place. The two OPRs, for the two Peter Maxwells who died, in infancy, in Glasgow in 1830, are quite different in format. This one, I now strongly believe, does refer to my relative.

Many thanks again,

Morgano

Post by **AndrewP** » Wed May 20, 2009 6:43 am

Hi Morgano,

I reckon the column after the cause of death is the name of the undertaker. The one that is there repeatedly is Loch<sup>d</sup>, which I take to be Lochhead, a large firm of undertakers in Glasgow.

All the best,

AndrewP

morgano · Post by **morgano** » Wed May 20, 2009 8:23 am

Thank you, very much. That explanation would never have occurred to me!

Morgano

JustJean · Post by **JustJean** » Wed May 20, 2009 12:23 pm

It looks like a basic burial record. The numerals in the top left are not time but the year 1830 written sloppily. The tally of males and females is correct and a total that has been brought forward. The Column after the day of the month then is for males and the one after that females. The numerals in the columns at the end appear to represent age at death in years-months-days.

Best wishes
Jean

WilmaM · Post by **WilmaM** » Wed May 20, 2009 1:00 pm

What is interesting, and perhaps unusual, is the inclusion of 3 still born children with thier father's name.

Post by **joette** » Wed May 20, 2009 3:26 pm

I wonder if the poor wee babies were interred with other corpses.?
A few cases of smallpox too.
I find the burials records the most interesting in a social history context.
Also note the number of young adults dying of "decline" which I presume to be TB or some other wasting disease.
We really have nothing much to complain of these days.

JustJean · Post by **JustJean** » Wed May 20, 2009 3:27 pm

As a further twist on what Wilma has noticed (and apologies in advance for a wee bit of thread drift) just over a year ago I stumbled upon an OPR birth recorded like so:

26/05/1845 BRASH ----- JOHN BRASH/ M Glasgow GLASGOW CITY/LANARK 644/001 0560 0234

and upon viewing the record on SP discovered I was viewing a page of burial records (long before the OPR death/burial records were put online!!!)...... it was clearly NOT a birth or christening record. Soooo...off went a query to the guid folks at GROS and back came a speedy answer. Seems that when the LDS folks orginally indexed the OPR records for Glasgow (not sure if this applies to other areas) they did not index deaths , but did include stillbirths into the births as this is the only record of this person ever having existed. This was done for their own religious purposes but it has been kept in for the same reason- it is the only record of the child. I had erroneously assumed that this practice was contrary to Scottish recorkeeping whereas stillbirths only became public in 1939. It was also pointed out that the time and resources necessary to trawl the OPR birth indexes and remove all the stillbirth references would be substantial.

Best wishes
Jean

Post by **paddyscar** » Wed May 20, 2009 3:39 pm

Hi JustJean:

That is very interesting and something to tuck away for future use about the stillborn births.

It was sloppy writing on the 1830, but also sloppy reading on my part, because the date is even in the header.

Andrew - it was the shortened form of Loch'd that made me think that it couldn't be the parents' name. It seemed it would likely be a reference to something very common to the recorder for it to be abbreviated, but didn't even think of an undertaker. Locheads must provide good service if they've managed to stay in business all this time.

Frances