The Hampshire Family Historian | Volume 50 No.2 | Sept 2023

Member’s article

found some happiness after the ravages of war and bereavement. They both died when I was a child yet I have no recollection of my father ever saying anything about them or attending their funeral. He must surely have known about them and now there is nobody to ask. I called the Bereavement Services to see if a memorial was to be found at their joint grave. They told me there wasn’t but they did tell me of another burial in their plot – Walter Stanley BULEY ! I discovered that Walter Buley was Thora’s first husband who died in 1959 (aged 54). He must have originally been buried alone and then Alfred and Rosina later buried with him in 1965. This was a rather odd arrangement considering Thora had remarried in 1961, to a James TAYLOR . Both of Thora’s married names can be seen overwritten in her entry in the 1939 Register. Inquest Having lost my original request, and after a wait of almost a year, I finally received the inquest documents from the coroner’s office in June 2022. This enabled me to find out exactly what had happened and to finally solve the initial mystery of the joint burial. The documents included witness statements and medical reports, the former revealing some interesting personal information. Their house still had gas lighting (in 1965) and it appears that an ‘auxiliary tap’ (for a portable ring) next to the gas bracket for the light in the bedroom was left fully open – judged to be opened in error. It would have released 20 cubic feet of gas per hour. It was the milkman who first raised the alarm having smelt gas after the milk had not been collected on the Saturday morning. A police constable found

Alfred dead upstairs on the bedroom floor and Rosina (“his wife”) was dead in bed. Suspicions of suicide or foul play were quickly ruled out. The doctor’s report reveals that Alfred had recently been in the General Hospital for several weeks having been treated for his legs and pneumonia. He was discharged just days before his death, his “muddled state gone”. The couple were described as “both very difficult people to deal with”. Rosina’s daughter, Thora TAYLOR (aged 50), identified the bodies and gave a statement. She described Alfred as her “step-father” and added that “he had a very domineering personality and because of this there were frequent domestic arguments between him and my mother”. Conclusions The Hatcher family was torn apart by infant mortality, war, poor health and misadventure. It must have been traumatic for Annie (my grandmother). Besides having lost three infant siblings (before she was born), her sister-in law was admitted to the lunatic asylum in 1908; she lost both parents in 1913; was married in 1915; lost two brothers in WW1 and then lost a sister who was living with her in 1919. She nevertheless produced two sons of her own in this time (in 1916 and then my father in 1918). In the 1920s, her remarried sister-in-law Gladys moved to the US with her two children. Many a family story is left untold or forgotten about and it’s only through research that people’s lives are revealed. I wish I had some photographs of many of those relatives mentioned but sadly, I do not. But read on......

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