Newspaper stories

I was interested to read the article on newspapers in the March edition, especially the case study. It was in the Worcester newspapers that I found two reports on my great grandmother, Jessie Passey, née Green, who was born in 1841. On 3 April 1867, she was involved in a “very serious accident” near Worcester. She, her sister, and two friends were returning from market in a horse-drawn cart when the horse took fright and the passengers were thrown out. Jessie’s sister sustained a dislocated hip and a fractured ankle, while Jessie suffered facial bruises and a “smashed nose”.

Twenty years later, reported in the Worcester Journal of 27 August 1887, Jessie was involved in a very similar accident. This time she was going to market in Kidderminster, where she had been selling garden produce for many years. On a steep hill the horse stumbled and fell. Jessie was thrown forward on to her head, and was killed almost immediately. She left eleven children, aged from five to 25 years old.

To know this sort of detail really helps us understand how life was for those living just a generation or so before us. It seems a horse and cart could be just as dangerous as a car! Valerie Preece

Editor replies: As more and more newspapers are digitised, it will transform family history research and give us the details like this that bring us closer to the past.