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Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Death Notice, Julia and Joseph T. Toner

I searched the New York Times for the Toners, and came upon this, another notice of the death of the first Julia Toner and her brother. It's a PDF, so I can't post it, but you should be able to view the original by clicking here. From August 21, 1866, in a section counting local deaths from the cholera epidemic:

The Cholera in Brooklyn
The official returns of yesterday show an apparent decrease of cholera
cases, while at the same time the proportion of deaths is greater than
heretofore. Nine cases are reported, of which seven died. The following is the
list:
. . .
Joseph T. Toner, corner of Van Brunt and Tremont streets. Died 19th.
Julia Toner, same residence. Died 20th.
. . .
The report of the Registrar shows that 27 burial certificates were granted
on Sunday as follows,
Cholera - 7
Cholera Infantum, Cholera Morbus, Dysentery, &c. - 11
Other zymotic diseases - 1
All other diseases - 8
Total - 27
Which shows a reduction of 12, as compared with the day
previous.


This doesn't shed much light on them, but it brings to the fore a lot about their lives. These two didn't just die of cholera; they died during a cholera epidemic. That's much different, and probably a much scarier situation to live in, both for them and for their family. Interestingly, Julia's brother is listed here as Joseph T. Toner. This poor boy's been called every name in the book! He's James Thomas in the Eagle, but that was mistranscribed as John Thomas in the first record I saw of it. Here, in the Times, he's Joseph T. I'm assuming that his name was actually James; the notice in the Eagle was more of an obituary than a statistic (it mentioned the funeral times, etc.), so I want to give that one more credence, as it was probably submitted directly by the family. I'd imagine that the information that went to the Times took a more circuitous route, probably going from the doctor treating them to, say, the County Health Commissioner (if he existed back then), to the Times.

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