This CD comprises of deaths reported in various media, but not located in the South Australian Registry of BDM Indexes. It is a useful resource when a death is known to have occurred in South Australia, but cannot be found in the South Australian Deaths Index.
Death details (when known) are:
- Name of deceased
- Age
- Occupation
- Address
- Place of death
- Cause of death
- Source of the information
- Any extracts from publications
While the system of Death Certificates and Burial Orders were designed to account for all deaths, the size of the colony and remote deaths made the system quite difficult to administer. Clearly it was quite indecent to leave a body unburied in the heat of summer while waiting to the arrival of someone with the appropriate authority to authorise the burial. There are examples in the records of police being notified of a remote death by letter from a pastoralist. There are also examples of police attending a remote burial and requiring an exhumation to certify the death. Many wandering men lay where they died for many years before being discovered.
There is no rule of thumb to determine is a deceased person's death was registered. There are examples of persons lost at sea having their deaths registered when their body was never recovered and others suffering the same fate not being registered. Likewise some skeletons found in the outback were registered and others not. Some accident victims, the subject of an inquest, were registered and others not.
Just how many deaths were not registered is something of a mystery. About 200,000 deaths were registered in South Australian in the 19th century. The compiler writes: "I would be surprised if the unregistered ones amounted to even 1% of that total, but if one of them was the subject of your research, I am sure you would like to know the details".
So brought together for the first time, is a collection of over 800 unregistered deaths of people who died in South Australia, ranging from 1842 through to 1970, that the compiler has come across during his research. Produced on CD-ROM, it is in a database format, and is searchable, and sortable on numerous fields. The 'extracts from publications' field has the entry in its context, sometimes a small note, sometimes a lengthy article/report.
The data on this CD is completely self-contained, and requires no installation.
