I debated which blog corner to write this under, my own or Project Infant’s. But, I tend to keep Project Infant’s for new additions to the site and… this one isn’t complete yet. I’ll start to sound like a broken record after a while but one of the things that I’ve always said (especially ‘The butterfly’ in particular - which you can read below) is that the research that would be involved in looking at the deaths in Dublin would be extensive, to say the least.
So, we’re taking a similar approach with Cork - which is not as big but overall, it is still a sizeable task. From my research so far, I’ve uncovered at least 24 or 25. So, given time - here’s how this will benefit genealogists in particular. To save us (the volunteers) from having to go over the death registers over 20 times to find deaths for a particular institution, we’re recording every death. Every death for a decedent between the ages of 0 to 18. That way we do a thorough sweep through all the records to make sure we don’t miss any child who died in Ireland’s institutions. But, what we would often find is we’ve got a lot of data and instead of keeping it under lock and key for only the perusal of Project Infant’s volunteers, we want to make it available to you, to help benefit your research. Instead of me explaining to you what it would look like, take a look at this - a sample of what you can expect to see when the data has been compiled (and I’ve spent hours trying to get a WordPress plugin to work and hope it doesn’t crash under the strain!) I am aware the table stretches out, but the minor kinks with eventually be ironed out in the final version. This database as it stands will cover 1922 to 1973, but if I find additional proof that the institution operated before 1922 then the database could expand even further. We are making excellent progress as I write as we have been working on 1922 up to 1933 so far.
The data as you can see is searchable (apart from cause of death, I’m pretty sure) and will reinforce what Irish Genealogy has on its website. Each entry in the database, links to the image on Irish Genealogy’s website, so the only thing we hold is the transcripts of the records that we have produced. You’ll be able to search by address and more… but to make all this available, I need as much help as possible.
So, dear reader - if you are reading this and have some time here and there, consider volunteering for Project Infant. Don’t worry if you aren’t familiar with the Irish Genealogy website or the process, I will walk you through it, I just need you.
Help us turn over every stone.