3 Apr 2021

Steph and I have been adding information to the Tew, Rogers and Facer side of the tree on Ancestry. Mostly this has been going through the information we found in 2005 and linking it together in Ancestry.

We entered all the information on William Frederick Facer, the brother of Steph’s ancestor Alfred Facer. William was a schoolteacher who was living in Montgomeryshire with his wife and family However by the time of the 1891 census both he and his wifer were dead and each of their children were living with different family members across the country, including with Alfred (see the 2005 diary for details). We looked in the British Newspaper Archive to see if there were any reports into his death and found the following in the Portsmouth Evening News on 10 October 1889:

SUICIDE OF A SCHOOLMASTER. William Facer, B.A., master of the Board School Caersws, Montgomeryshire, committed suicide on Tuesday by taking a dose of aconite. He left the school in the morning for the village surgery, and, in the absence of Dr. Snow, went up to the surgery wait. In a few minutes he came out, and became very ill on the way home. When assistance arrived he said he had taken his last dose — one of poison — and died shortly afterwards in great agony. He leaves a widow, and a large family. The Coroner’s jury returned a verdict of suicide during temporary insanity.¹

We also found a long description of the inquest in the Oswestry Advertiser of 16 October 1889 which we will need to transcribe.

We switched back to Alfred Facer and noticed that his eldest child William died aged 5 in 1886. On the off chance of finding something we looked for a report of his death and found that he had drowned! From the Buckingham Express, 31 July 1886:

An inquest was held at the Railway tavern last week, on the body of the little boy, William Henry Facer, who was drowned on Wednesday week, and a verdict of accidentally drowned was returned The accident appeared in last week’s issue. The little fellow was buried in the church yard of St. James’, Stantonbury, on Saturday afternoon, the Rev. C. P Cotter, officiating. There were a number of wreaths and crosses sent by teachers and friends, and a large number of sympathisers were present, Mr Facer being greatly respected.²

Unfortunately the text extraction does not appear to match up with the newspaper image so we can’t get a copy of the original page.