Cannot find the burial place of an ancestor? Maybe they died in a hospital far from home. Many seriously ill patients left their regional home towns for further treatment or surgery in Brisbane. Unfortunately, some did not survive the experience and were buried in the cemetery contracted to accept burials from the hospital.
In fact, so many patients died in the Brisbane Births, Deaths and Marriages Registration district, that the Registrar General felt compelled to observe periodically that Brisbane was not necessarily that unhealthy a place; it just had a preponderance of medical facilities and patients who waited until their cases were hopeless before seeking hospital admission.[1]
In the Register of Deaths at the Brisbane Hospital 1899-1913[2], fifty Chinese deaths were recorded. Some have travelled quite some distance to seek treatment at the Brisbane Hospital. For example, Sam Foo, late of Tambo, travelled over 850km in order to be admitted on 9 September 1901. He died on 6 October of hydrothorax aged about 40 and was buried at Toowong Cemetery.[3]
A distance travelled of 200 kilometres was more usual. Hock Lay journeyed from Dalby to Brisbane for treatment for chronic nephritis. He died the day after he was admitted on 9 November 1911 aged “about 50” and was buried the next day at Toowong Cemetery. This is where the knowledge of the fact that the overwhelming majority of the deceased were buried on the day they died or the day after, is important. In the Brisbane Hospital register he is named as Hock Lay. His death was registered as Hook Lay.[4] However in the Toowong Cemetery Burial Register, he is named as Lay Hog.[5]
Coming to Brisbane from an equivalent distance was thirty year old Stanthorpe resident Kum Choy. He was suffering from carcinoma of the pleura (lung membrane) with a secondary carcinoma of the liver. After being hospitalised for ten weeks, he died on 18 May 1907 and was buried in Portion 19 at Toowong Cemetery.[6]
A number of digitised hospital admission records are available online from the Queensland State Archives, but these, on the whole, have not been indexed yet. However, they are worth browsing as admission registers contain a great deal more information about the patient than the hospital death registers, such as place of birth, age, occupation, marital status etc.
In the case of 38 year old labourer Ah Sing, the registrar at the Cooktown Hospital, did not know the name of the ship he had arrived on, or the names of his parents, but he was able to fill in that Ah Sing was born in Canton, had been in the Colony for ten years and was single. Ah Sing was admitted on a hospital subscriber’s ticket belonging to Kin Hee to the Chinese Ward on 26 October 1889 and died of diarrhoea four days later.[7]
The Chinese were generous subscribers to their local hospitals which allowed for free treatment for either themselves, or a nominee. Subscriber lists can be found in the annual report for each hospital and comprise another under-utilised family history resource. A blog post for another time.
[1] Queenslander 15 July 1876:27)
[2] Queensland State Archives ITM2887
[3] Queensland Death Registration 1901/B1726
[4] Queensland Death Registration 1911/B14937 Hook Lay
[5] Brisbane General Cemetery Burial Register 10 Vovember1911. Portion 19 Section 1 Grave 2.
[6] Brisbane General Cemetery Burial Register 18 May 1907. Portion 19 Section 3.
[7] Cooktown Hospital Admission Register 9 September 1889 to 10 February 1890 QSA ITM7355. Digital record DR70004.
Cemetrees 
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