Bridget McEwan or McQueenie

[ficam]

Hello again everyone - can I ask anyone who has access to newspaper archives ( at no extra cost to themselves!) if they can find any trace of a death in Edinburgh on 10 March 1877?

An ancestor of my husband, Bridget Mcewan nee McQueenie, was found dead at Haymarket on that date from "injuries to the head and chest" but I can't find any more information than that...

The Death extract on SP has a notation at the side which I cannot read and there is no RCE which I would expect if there was a Post Mortem?

I can't even make out the death place - I think it says Haymarket ( which is in Edinburgh so that looks ok) but there appears to be more than that. I think it says she was found at 8:30PM...?

Any information gratefully received as always....

Thanks

[AndrewP]

Hi Ficam,

The annotation in the margin of the death certificate says:

See Reg of Corr Entr vol V
from(?) April 10th 1877

So, go back to the page you clicked on to see that image, and click on the link at:

"If you would like to send a comment to us about the quality or transcription of this image, click here."

From there, select "Statutory Index Reporting" and tell them that there is no button for you to click on to view the RCE. They should forward you a copy of the RCE by e-mail, and do their work in the bacxkground to correct their index. At some stage these corrections should appear on the SP site.

I had planned to consult the Scotsman Digital Archive for you, but am not getting access to it tonight.

All the best,

AndrewP

[ficam]

Thanks Andrew - I have done as you suggest , and will await their reply!

[nelmit]

I had a search of The Scotsman and 19th Century Newspapers but came up with nothing. Hopefully Alan or someone else will find something.

Regards,
Annette

[Currie]

Hello Ficam,

A rather nasty accident I’m sorry to say.

The Scotsman , [Edinburgh] 12 March, 1877.
WOMAN KILLED IN HAYMARKET TUNNEL— About eight o'clock on Saturday night while a train was proceeding through the Haymarket Tunnel the driver saw, in the light of his engine, a woman lying, apparently dead, on the opposite line. On his reaching Waverley Station, the officials at Haymarket were telegraphed to, and on a search being made an elderly person was found, fearfully mutilated about the head, and quite dead. The body was removed to the Central Police Station, High Street, and has since been identified as that of Bridget M’Queen or M’Ewan, residing at 13 Lady Lawson's Wynd. Deceased, who was sixty-five years of age, appears to have left her house about half-past six that evening to see a friend off to Gogar, and it is supposed she had in the dark mistaken her way, stumbled into the tunnel, and been run over by a train.

I’ll see if I can put the image in the TS gallery. Try here http://www.talkingscot.com/gallery/disp ... play_media

All the best,
Alan

[nelmit]

Poor woman.

I knew you'd be able to find it Alan. I searched for Bridget McEwan, Bridget McQueen, Bridget McQueenie, Bridget Haymarket, McEwan Haymarket and McQueen McEwan and came up with nothing!!!

Extract looks great in the gallery too.

Regards,
Annette

[Currie]

Hello Annette,

I just searched for bridget in the month of March and there were only a few. They usually have M’ instead of Mc in the old newspapers. In this case I think a M’Ewan search may work in the Scotsman but not in the 19C where I would normally just search for Ewan.

I just had another look and bridget by itself seems to be about the only thing that will find it. Looks like their OCR program didn’t make a very good job of that page. I used an OCR program to transcribe the snippet and corrected only a very few errors afterwards.

Better luck next time,
Alan

[Montrose Budie]

Weel done Alan!

A neat lesson that we should search not just on the basis of Mc or Mac, but also M'.

mb

[ficam]

Thanks so much Alan - like the others I had tried McEwan and McQueenie and other variations in the Scotsman archives index to see if it was worth paying for a pay to view - but came up empty - and now we can see why! Thanks for your perseverance and ingenuity! And it also fills in the gaps, as SP did come up with the goods on the RCE but all it says is that she was run over by a train....which seemed a bit strange....I wondered if she had fallen or worse, jumped in front of it; as it seemed unlikely that she should just be "run over" by a train at the railway station, where you would presumably have had to climb down onto the line as opposed to just crossing at a flat point outwith the station...

You do still wonder how she ended up on the line though? I don't know how built up the platforms would have been back then ...but I would presume they did have some sort of platform at the station?

I would not like to have been the poor soul who was sent into the tunnel to find her by the sound of things...

And thanks so much for also posting the image

[Currie]

That’s okay ficam, I’m glad I could help.

It may be interesting to track her progress on a map. It seems they built a new tunnel parallel to the original one in the 1890s, and altered things around the station, so a map older than that may help.

The only stations I can remember not having platforms (in the movies) were American ones in the back of beyond. Perhaps she fell or was knocked off the platform and wandered, or was dragged after being hit, from there into the tunnel.

I vaguely remember that old stations had ramps at the ends of the platforms where you could go through a gate and walk down to line level, but I may be thinking of something else.

All the best,
Alan