I managed to pinch a bit of time on Find My Past

[dothawkes31]

during the match but it took ages for every page to load, plus for some reason I could not view the originals, I didn;t really need to look at any direct lines but I copied a few of the sideways entries, just cos it was free! It was a real multi-tasking challenge and I lost the plot at one point!

[jackthehat]

It worked fine for me, Dot..............
I haven't had time to look through them all but saved about a dozen images :o)

[craft1948]

Hi dot......did you see my posts to you on my g.grandma's thread.......you were right again!!

[dothawkes31]

Hi craft, I hadn't seen it but just went to read it, glad you're on the way to sorting that line out.

[Rose Maybud]

I found FindMyPast slow last night too, and sometimes it went back to the home page instead of what I clicked on (I imagine that's a cookie thing). Transcripts loaded ok, but originals sometimes hiccuped and took a long time, which I put down to increased demand. I usually work that site along with FREEBMD and have a Word document open to record results and comments, so wasn't a problem.

Changing the subject, have you ever come across anything about vaccinations in the 1850s? There's a vaccinations time line in Wikipedia, so from that the only vaccination around then was for smallpox. Just that I came across a heart-breaking death certificate for a four-month old baby where the cause of death was 'diffuse inflammation of the whole body after vaccination'. Poor little soul.

[dothawkes31]

Hi Rosebud , this was the act, meant to protect everyone bt aimed at the poor:

The 1853 Act

By the Act it was required:

* 1. That every child, whose health permits, shall be vaccinated within three, or in case of orphanage within four mouths of birth, by the public vaccinator of the district, or by some other medical practitioner.
* 2. That notice of this requirement, and information as to the local arrangements for public vaccination, shall, whenever a birth is registered, be given by the registrar of births to the parents or guardians of the child.
* 3. That every medical practitioner who, whether in public or private practice, successfully vaccinates a child shall send to the local registrar of births a certificate that he has done so ; and the registrar shall keep a minute of all the notices given, and an account of all the certificates thus received.
* 4. That parents or guardians who, without sufficient reason, after having duly received the registrar's notice of the requirement of Vaccination, either omit to have a child duly vaccinated, or, this being done, omit to have it inspected as to the results of Vaccination, shall be liable to a penalty of £1; and all penalties shall be recoverable under Jervis's Act, and shall be paid toward the local poor-rate.

[Rose Maybud]

Thank you, Dot. That's more helpful than google, which came up with loads of stuff about the anti-vaccination movement. Death following vaccination is therefore something to bear in mind when finding a death where the age is 0. The parents of this child produced 8 children, probably more, and only two of them survived past hildhood. The majority died at around 2 years of age but without getting the certificates at £9 a go it's hard to speculate why, unless it was connected somehow to the arrival of the next child. I imagine it's the sort of case which prompted the inclusion of the boxes on the 1911 Census form about numbers of children produced and whether they were still alive...

[dothawkes31]

The poor accepted the vaccination programme not through a feat of smallpox but from a fear of the fine BUT remember that birth registration was NOT compulsory with threat of fine before the 1870s and so many poor families did avoid registering their child to avoid the compulsory vaccinations. In the living conditions of say the East Enmd, smallpox would have wiped out thousands, but also in rural areas where smallpox was more isolated, there were infants dying from the vaccine which may or may not have been necessary but I have no figures to offer a comparison.