I can’t find a death record for my great grandmother
We help Heather Chapman track down what happened to her mother’s grandmother
It’s tempting to assume that Birch Hill is where she spent the end of her life
QI can’t find a death record for my maternal great grandmother, Mary Elizabeth Phythian (née Alexander). She was born in 1877 in Wardleworth, Rochdale and was married to Thomas Phythian who died in 1920.
I know that in March 1947 she was living in Birch Hill, Rochdale. The building was the union workhouse, known as the Dearnley Work House, Rochdale. I have a letter which my grandfather wrote to my mother after her wedding confirming that he had been up to Birch Hill to deliver her and ‘Jack’ a piece of my mother’s wedding cake.
The local studies centre only has workhouse records up to 1930, and do not know what happened to the residents after the building was taken over by the NHS. Heather Chapman, via email
A1930 was the year that the Boards of Guardians, who had administered the poor relief system for almost a century, were abolished and their responsibilities taken over by county and borough councils. That’s why workhouse records generally come to a halt at 1930 and also why they are so patchy – it would have been a wonderful opportunity for a clear-out and many would have been dumped.
Under their new management, most former workhouses, now known as Public Assistance Institutions (PAIs), carried on unchanged. The inmates continued to live in the same buildings and were looked after by the same staff. Some workhouses, particularly in urban areas, had medical facilities which were split off for use as council-run municipal hospitals. At Rochdale, the medical section was turned into Birch Hill Hospital, while the main workhouse building became Birch Hill Institution, accommodating the elderly poor, the chronic sick and so on.
Although you know your grandmother was in Birch Hill in 1947, we don’t know whether she was there for medical treatment in the hospital or as an inmate of the institution. Then aged 70, it’s tempting to assume that Birch Hill is where she spent the end of her life, but that’s not necessarily the case.
Things changed again in July 1948 when many PAIs, especially those that had seen use as municipal hospitals, joined the new National Health Service. The Birch Hill site then became a general hospital. If Mary was still a resident at that date, it’s possible that she may have been moved to another institution better suited to her situation.
PAI and municipal hospital records from the 1930- 48 era sometimes end up in the local county or borough record office. There’s also a chance that the present-day NHS Trust responsible for the site may have inherited them. I have checked with the relevant NHS Trust for Birch Hill but they don’t hold anything from that period.
Browsing around on Ancestry, however, I noticed that the Civil Registration Death Index has an entry for a Mary E Phythian, born c1876, died June 1955 in Salford. This led me to discover that another Ancestry member has traced Mary’s life as part of their Swinbourne family tree research ( person.ancestry.co. uk/tree/34375342/person/ 18718223670/facts).
Apart from confirming that Mary died in Salford, you can use links from the tree to follow up other useful leads such as Thomas’s First World War Enlistment Report from 1917. This provides some fascinating information, including that fact that he was only 5 feet 1 inch tall. You could also obtain Mary’s death certificate which might throw some light on why she died in Salford rather than Rochdale.
You may wish to contact the member concerned via Ancestry and see where that takes you. Maybe you’ll find some new cousins you didn’t about, or even identify the mysterious Jack! Peter Higginbotham