I have found no reference in contemporary newspapers of Micheal Donovan's wife, Alice, and his son Thomas. But the dates of death of the mother and child suggest that childbirth complications were the cause.
In my few years' experience in blogging I have found a few similar cases, fairly easy to work out from the dates on a gravestone. It is my assumption that childbirth was so bound with the taboos of its time that death from it was not generally reported.
I have found references from the 1870s of a Michael Donovan who was a police constable in Oamaru at the time but cannot positively identify him as the husband of Alice.
Oamaru Cemetery.
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