I now have birth and death certificates for Uncle George - full name George James Pepper Slator. The Slator is his surname and Pepper is his mother's maiden name and probably his paternal grandfather's surname as well. He was born in Crowland, Lincolnshire on 4th March 1918 and died on 19th June 1926 at home in Dunston - a small village not far from Lincoln - of chronic gastritis and Myocarditis heart failure. There was no post mortem and death was certified by the GP - so presumably it was expected. So all this time I've been cheerfully telling doctors that there has been no one in my immediate family with heart problems under the age of 40 I've actually been wrong!
I would assume though that perhaps he'd been suffering from either or both of those conditions for some time as my father implied he'd always been in poor health. He could perhaps have been Downs Syndrome as I think they often have heart and digestive problems - which could account for why my father was never keen to talk about him. At least I know a bit more about an uncle who was born and died before I was born. Fascinating.
Now I want to try and find out who my great great grandfather's second wife was and what happened to my great grandmother after 1891.
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Yes, always fascinating, this stuff. And I seem to remember that there are quite a few conditions which come with digestive or metabolical problems - the one I came across at work was Hurler's Syndrome, because we were given some items from a child who'd had it and died at about eight. It probably wasn't even known in the 20s and I think there wasn't much you could do about it even in the 60s; such children were certainly not expected to live long. These days the outlook is rather better medically of course but there is still a rather negative perception from the public.
On a more cheerful note, I always feel it's intriguing to have a relative who should be older than you are but who died so much younger - in my case a baby great-aunt.
Good luck with the other two mysteries - one of my current questions is what happened to my great grandmother Anne Wood Thurston after 1901. I'm currently wondering if like my grandmother (her daughter) she may have left her husband but been unable to remarry and called herself by another surname. But you never know until the magic moment when it all falls into place, if it ever does.
Yes I believe there are all sorts of conditions which cause similar porblems. I shall probably never know the definitive answer now but at least I know more than I did.
I'm wondering whether my great grandmother Sarah's name has been badly mispelled in which case I'm probably going to stumble across it by accident. I'm gradually trawling through all the aunts and uncles in that generation to see where they all were after 1891 - maybe she's living with one of them. It's fascinating - but time consuming.
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