April 2019

Elizabeth Clarke: Teething Death

Knowing that the infant mortality rate was higher in the nineteenth century than it is now does not make the discovery of a child’s death any easier. I am curious as to what my ancestors’ children died of, and I have previously blogged about 4-year-old Agnes Owen, who died from measles.

Elizabeth Clarke was born on 10 March 1866 in Palgrave, Suffolk.1 She was one of my grandfather’s older siblings, and she was the fourth child born to Benjamin Clarke, an agricultural labourer, and Mary Ann Warby Hunt. The couple had their daughter, Elizabeth, baptised at the parish church of Palgrave when she was about one month old, on 8 April 1866.… Continue reading