It's a long time since I posted anything here, mainly because I haven't really done much research for a few years.  The publishing of the 1921 census has started me looking at it again.  I have found some of my family on the census and one of the entries is that of my maternal grandparents Herbert William Tirrell and Edith Butler who had only been married for about 6 months when the census was taken on 19th June.

This reminded me that a couple of years ago I had started writing the story of Edith's ancestry back to the first half of the 18th century which is as far as I have been able to go.  I have now finished it and it is a sad story.  I will tell it here a chapter at a time.  

This is a photo of  Edith taken in about 1914 taking part in a school Christmas concert. Edith is second from the left on the top row. 

Butler Ancestry

Chapter 1.

To anybody doing family history research it soon becomes obvious that the health of our ancestors was quite precarious compared to this day and age. There was no health care service and knowledge of disease was very limited so life expectancy was nowhere near that of today. 

In the 18^th and 19^th centuries life expectancy at birth was probably about 35 years, 25% of people dying before the age of 5 and 40% dying before reaching adulthood. If you survived childhood and teenage years there was every chance you could live into your 50s or 60s.

Improvements in agriculture helped improve people’s diets and things did get better. By  the beginning of the 20^th century the life expectancy for men was 47 years and for women 50 years. This was helped by the improvement in public health with sewers being dug and improved water supplies. There was still a high mortality rate in children and also, although women had a higher life expectancy than men, many of them died in childbirth or as a result of it.

My mother’s mother was called Edith Butler and I found her ancestry quite upsetting as so many of the women died young. It seemed like a blighted line which ended with her death at 25, when my mother was only 3 years old. Not, in this case due to childbirth, but following a tragic accident while she was cleaning her home. I will give details of this event at the end of my story.