Two examples from the 1871 census
I’ve been looking into childbirth-related deaths and the ways in which they were recorded (or not recorded, in some cases). I have many examples from 19th-century Carleton and Lanark Counties, but for this post I’m only going to focus on two. In both cases, I discovered the childbirth-related death in the 1871 census, and then looked for supporting/supplementary evidence.
For the 1871 census of Canada, enumerators were instructed to be
very particular in enquiring of every family whether any death has occurred in it during the last twelve months, never failing to explain that deaths of newly-born infants are to be given, as well as all other deaths whatever 1
The results of their enquiries were recorded on Schedule no. 2, Nominal Return of the Deaths within last twelve months. Thankfully, many of these 1871 Schedule no. 2s have survived.
Here is the 1871 schedule of deaths for Huntley Township, Carleton County, Ontario:

There are actually two childbirth deaths recorded here, but I’ll start with the more straightforward example, that of Catherine Vaughan.
Catherine “Kitty” Ann (Kennedy) Vaughan
Catherine “Kitty” Ann Kennedy, daughter of John Kennedy and Margaret Manion, married James Vaughan about 1857. The couple had six known children, three sons and three daughters. Unfortunately, with the birth of her sixth child, son Thomas, Catherine died of complications from childbirth.
Line 7 on the above death schedule records the death of Catherine Ann Vaughan, a married 35-year-old woman who was born in Ontario2 and whose religion was Roman Catholic. She died in December 1870, with her cause of death recorded as Child Birth.

In this case, there is both an Ontario civil death record and a church burial record, and both records support the census record.
Catherine Vaughan’s death was registered on December 31, 1870, with the death informant being her husband James Vaughan. According to this record, Catherine died on December 20, 1870, with the cause of death recorded as Accouchment [Accouchement/Childbirth], 2 days. James Vaughan also reported (on January 4, 1871) the birth of his son Thomas, with the child’s birth date given as December 20, 1870.
There is also a burial record for Catherine, which immediately follows the baptismal record for her son Thomas. And here we find a slight discrepancy with the dates: while the Ontario civil records have Thomas born, and his mother Catherine dying, on December 20, 1870, here Father O’Malley records that he baptized Thomas, who was “born the Same day,” on December 19, and buried Catherine, “who died on the nineteenth,” on December 21. Perhaps Catherine gave birth on the 19th and died on the 20th, which would account for the 2-days duration of her cause of death? But in any case, this is clearly a childbirth-related death.

Thomas Vaughan grew up to adulthood (which was not always the case when an infant lost his or her mother — feeding the motherless infant was a real challenge) and died in Alberta in 1937. As far as I know, he never married.
Mary (O’Brien) Liston
Mary O’Brien married John Liston about 1860. The couple had at least five children, two daughters and three sons, before Mary gave birth to twins in August 1870. Sadly, the delivery of twins (which even today carries some risks, though the risks are now manageable) proved fatal to the mother.
Line 2 on the above death schedule records the death of Mary Liston, a 34-year old married woman who was born in Ireland and whose religion was Roman Catholic. She died in August 1870, with her cause of death listed as Confinement (Childbirth).3 In the Remarks column, there is the brief notation: “Had Twins one is living.”
Line 3 records the death of the other twin: Johanna Liston, a female child who died in September 1870, and who “Died for want of nourishment.” But here again there is a discrepancy with the recorded dates: the census enumerator has recorded Johanna’s age at death as 11 months, which would have her born in October 1869. But this is surely a clerical error. It’s just not plausible that a woman could give birth to a child in October 1869, and then give birth to twins in August 1870; and the “Had Twins one is living” remark indicates that one of the twins born in August 1870 is no longer living; and “want of nourishment” was an all-too common cause of death for a motherless infant.

I cannot find either a civil birth or a civil death record for Johanna Liston, nor a civil birth record for the surviving (that is, surviving as of April 1871) twin. But there is a civil death record for Mary Liston, with a pretty major discrepancy as to the cause of death.
To the left is the Ontario civil death record for Mary Liston, a 34-year old Irish-born farmer’s wife who died in Huntley Township on August 18, 1870. There is no recorded registration date, but the surrounding death records suggest it might have been reported in September 1870. And the cause of death recorded here is “Trying to escape the fire.”
Wait, what?! How do we go from died of childbirth to died trying to escape a fire? Or rather, how do we go from died trying to escape a fire (probably recorded in September 1870) to died of childbirth after delivering twins (as recorded in the census of early April 1871)?
There was a terrible fire (known as the Great Fire of 1870) in Carleton County, which began on August 18, 1870, and the Liston farm would have been in its path. And the 1871 census (schedule 1) records the sad story (or at least, part of the sad story). In April 1871, the widowed John Liston was living with his sister Judith, along with five of his children, including Mary Ann, aged 8 months old (the surviving twin).



There is a marginal note: “Living with Judith Liston,” with a reference to an explanation on the next page. And the explanation is that, like Ben Ryan on the next page, John Liston has been “Burnt out by the Great fire.” So John Liston lost his wife, his infant daughter, and his house?! From now on, whenever I think I’m having a rough day, I will remind myself of the sad tale of John Liston and Mary O’Brien.
But if Mary died on August 18, 1870, as per her Ontario civil death record, does this mean she gave birth and died while trying to escape the fire? No. The death date recorded on the civil record is clearly inaccurate. According to the parish registers for St. Michael’s, Corkery, Mary O’Brien died on August 24, 1870, after giving birth to twin daughters Mary Ann and Johanna Liston. Mary died on August 24, and was buried on August 25, 1870. Her daughters Mary Ann and Johanna were born on August 24, and were baptized on September 2, 1870.

This is clearly a childbirth-related death, with Mary (O’Brien) Liston dying a day or two after the delivery of twin daughters. Why, then, is Mary Liston’s cause of death recorded as “Trying to escape the fire” on her civil death record?
My best guess is that, although John Liston is recorded as the death informant for his wife Mary, he didn’t actually report this death to the registrar directly. Perhaps a neighbour reported the death on his behalf, or perhaps the township clerk himself recorded the death, based on local and common knowledge (“Poor John Liston, he lost both his wife and his farm to the Great Fire…”). But wouldn’t this hypothetical death informant have known about the birth of the twins, the death of the mother from childbirth, and so on? No, not necessarily. The realm of childbirth was a female domain, shrouded in mystery and with its secrets kept closely guarded. An unrelated male could easily have overlooked the details of the demise of both mother and child, because you just didn’t talk about that in polite society and the details were not forthcoming.
- Manual containing the Census Act and the instructions to officers employed in the taking of the first census of Canada (1871) / Department of Agriculture (Census Branch), Ottawa, 1871. ↩︎
- The enumerator first wrote Ireland, then crossed that out and replaced with ditto marks for Ontario. ↩︎
- Confinement was the Victorian term for “the condition of being in childbirth” (Mary Elizabeth Leighton and Lisa Surridge, “The Vocabulary of Pregnancy,” The Victorian Web). ↩︎