William Hall in India and In Scotland

Bangladore Again – and then Wellington Hospital

July 26, 2012 at 11:52 am Leave a comment

William and Lydia’s fourth child was born in Bangalore on May 15, 1874. Her name was Florence Edith, and she died at the Wellington Military Hospital on September 27, 1876, when she was two years old.  She was buried the next day, in the Wellington Cantonment Cemetery. I found this record on Barry Lewis’ site detailing cemeteries in South India. On her death record from LDS, her name is listed as Florence Ada. I don’t know the cause of her death.

Wellington Military Hospital in the 1860s.

Wellington Military hospital was within Wellington Barracks which had been completed as a hill station in 1860. A cantonment town grew up around the barracks taking the name Wellington. It is situated in the Niligris District of Tamil Nadu. The cantonment is still in use by the Indian Army as home to the Madras Regiment and it also houses the Indian Defence Services Staff College. The cantonment had its own cemetery.

This child’s name has particular significance to me and my mom. Jane Hall Gray named one of her daughters Florence Edith. My grandmother Lydia Gray Porter named her second daughter Edith (my mom), but she was called Ada by her family. When my mom wan adult, she needed to get a birth certificate in order to get a passport to travel abroad. She found out her name was Florence Edith and that she had been born on September 15, 1919 and not on September 23 as she had always thought. Her solution was to make her name Edith F. Duffy and to keep September 23 as her birthday. Then when I was born in 1943, she game me her own name of Edith. She really thought she was going to have a boy and would name him after my father James Joseph.

S-o-o-o-o-o, if everyone had known all the facts about family names, I could have been Florence Edith the Fourth!

Entry filed under: Halls. Tags: Cantonment, Cemetery, Hospital.