Henry Nightingale's death 1901

My 3x great-grandmother Phoebe Wakefield (nee Wade) married for a second time in 1877. Her husband was Henry Nightingale, a pianoforte maker. In the 1901 census, Phoebe is shown as a widow, living at Upper St John's Road, Islington. A search for Henry's death revealed an index entry in 1901. The resulting certificate tells a fairly sad story. Henry died, aged 66, in Shoreditch Infirmary (St Leonard's workhouse), after a coma and cerebral Haemorrhage "accelerated by chronic alcoholism". An inquest into his death was held on 5th January 1901 - he died on 2nd January.

Henry is described as 'pianoforte maker of 47 De Beauvoir Crescent, Hackney'. This grand sounding place was part of an ambitious housing scheme of the 1820s that didn't fully come to fruition. Close to Regent's Canal, the street is described in the digitised casebooks of Charles Booth in 1897 as "not so good in the character of its inhabitants ". Henry's alcoholism was not, it seems, atypical, as the casebook also includes a description of the drinking habits of men and particularly the women of the district.

Quite a number of my ancestors (and those related by marriage) appear to have ended their days in workhouses .