How did we survive the olden days?

[AnneLovesGilbert]

I watched a film last night, it wasn’t amazing but it got me thinking again about how so many people survived how awful life must have been so we’d end up here. A woman was giving birth on a muddy floor in a grim looking freezing cold castle. My mum wouldn’t have made it, so I wouldn’t be here and none of my younger siblings would exist. If I miraculously had I wouldn’t have survived several childhood illnesses, never mind appendicitis and the other things modern medicine has saved me from.

The film was about Mary queen of Scots so set in the mid 16th century and maternal and infant mortality was incredibly high but it wasn’t just that. Those women will have survived so many things to even get old enough to get pregnant. And how many men died in the endless sodding wars.

Baffles me.

@Imtoooldforallthis

Not quite the same, but everytime my elderly mum complains about how cold her house is I ask her how my grandparents managed without central heating or double glazing, she never answers me.

What have you done to help your Mum heat HER house?

Does she have GCH? Can she afford to run it? Does she need help with the controls?

A heated blanket?
Oil filled radiator?

How old is she? Does she/can she get the heating grant?

It's irrelevant how your Grandparents coped.

Yes, I can't really bear it when people reminisce about the good old days etc. etc. Within living memory most working-class people's lives were unimaginable to us today. I often think of the older people you would see in my childhood (northern working class area in the 80s) -- many elderly women disfigured with oedema, people whose entire teeth had rotted away, and other nasty medical conditions you just don't see today.

My mum is terrible for this. Likes to talk about how the past was so much better and she'd loved to have lived in the Victorian era and so on. Then in the next breath she'll talk about having to share a bed with her grandmother until she left home and do her personal care, make up the fire out of coals and sweep it out, how often girls got sexually harassed and assaulted on the street, how cold it was to have no central heating, how disgusting the food was and so on, and that was just in the Sixties! The cognitive dissonance is astounding to me! She literally doesn't put the two things together

Give the history of how most women lived up until relatively recently, unless you were both very rich and hardy and very very very lucky indeed (and even then...), there's no time in the past I'd want to live in as a woman before about 1981 at the earliest! (Except the 90s. The 90s was a good decade for women, probably more so than now, actually.)

(And that's not to even touch on the reality of living in lots of parts of the rest of the world...)

@Imtoooldforallthis

Not quite the same, but everytime my elderly mum complains about how cold her house is I ask her how my grandparents managed without central heating or double glazing, she never answers me.

Your elderly mum tells you how cold her house is and you retort with that?

Here y'ar

My grandparents lived on a farm so far away from a settlement that they went "to town" once a month. They would drive the wagon in on Saturday, shop, camp out under a tent and go to Sunday church services, they go back to the farm in time for evening chores. One of their five children would stay at the farm to take care of the stock.
All were home schooled through their first 8 years, then boarded in town for the last 4.
Now I read about all the "Poor mental health issues" because children and teenagers cannot get out to SEE their friends, even though they have f2f and Zoom and everything else. Parents complain that their children are not being educated when they have the internet and online classes. I don't understand it.

@GeorgiaGirl52 I guess they played with their siblings. Many would have been close in age. Nowadays a lot of families have 1-2 children and the children might have an age gap i.e. 4 -5 years so have less in common. And in the past education was less important, you didn't need qualifications for working on a farm! Nowadays, most people want their children to go to university and you probably need ok GCSEs to get an apprenticeships too. Parents are therefore worried about their kids falling behind.. different time, different worries.

If you were the duggars, you would not worry about the kids' lack of qualifications or that they have no friends to play with!

@Imtoooldforallthis

Not quite the same, but everytime my elderly mum complains about how cold her house is I ask her how my grandparents managed without central heating or double glazing, she never answers me.

I take it you can't stand her then? I love my DM to bits (she's 70 btw) and if she complained her house was too cold, I'd want to know why and help her remedy that, even if it meant giving her a few quid for the bills.

Amongst all the death, disease, destruction and deprivation outlined on this thread, the concern expressed for the poor old cold mum of one mumsnetter is really quite touching.

Are you taking a long hard look in the mirror yet Imtoooldforallthis?

In our family, there are some awful examples of how women were treated as domestic help just a few generations ago.. My Granny was brought up on a rural farm and walked four miles to primary school! She was bright and made it to university in the 1920’s, v. unusual for someone of her background. Then her mother died (had too many babies) and she was called home at 19 to look after her younger siblings. She never made it back to education, her youngest sibling was a toddler so she had years of childcare before she married my Grandpa.

DH’s granny had it even worse-she was pulled out of school at 16 to help with her siblings after her mother had her seventh child. No thought for her future at all. It must’ve been horrible to be trapped like that, all your dreams taken away because you were the eldest daughter.☹️

I know that’s not the same as real deprivation, but it’s so different from our expectations nowadays.

@Cameleongirl it wasn't just girls though. DH's grandfather had to abandon his studies at 14 as his dad died in the war, his mum had cancer and he had a little brother to support.. This was in 1946 germany. He did very well in the company though and Germany experienced an economic boom but still. It was very normal in those days, older siblings having to take responsibility for their younger siblings.

@onlychildhamster. I’m sure it was, although apparently my Granny always resented the fact that her brother who was 15 months younger, wasn’t expected to give up anything when their mother died. She was the only one who had to give up her education to look after their siblings, he went off to college as expected. Different times.

Lots didn’t survive, visit any old cemetery and see the numbers of babies, children and young adults.

Mothers also tended to have many more children than they do now.

Imagine how even more over populated the world would be if we had olden day birth statistics with modern day life expectancy.

@NightLight2

Lots didn’t survive, visit any old cemetery and see the numbers of babies, children and young adults.

Mothers also tended to have many more children than they do now.

Imagine how even more over populated the world would be if we had olden day birth statistics with modern day life expectancy.

Nobody is going to want address that on here.

This thread is both depressing and inspiring all in one how spoilt we are, even in a pandemic. Theres a certain entitlement that we feel we should have and do whatever we want, when we want, as an absolute basic right, which is something to be grateful for but shows a lack of grit as a society too when its taken away.

I'm only mid 30s, but my DM was I think 9 when they got a fridge for the first time, and around that age when they got a TV which only had two channels! They weren't poor by most standards either. Her parents had emigrated from Ireland, and when going back to visit, if my aunt had an asthma attack, they'd have to pay a small fortune for a visit from the doctor. My grandad grew up dirt poor on a farm in Ireland and had to walk miles to school over fields with no shoes

Two generations later, I sit here with alexa, deliveroo in 20 mins, a heated throw and the ability to work from home, my bed if I choose, while he had been out at 10 years younger than me working to help build the Victoria line in dreadful conditions.

My grandmother was diagnosed with MS and was wheelchair and housebound from when my DM was 5. I often feel sad at how technology would have helped her feel more independent and less isolated today. By all accounts she had a horrible life, and whilst its still a terrible illness today, she didn't have the Internet to chat to anyone, couldn't get anything delivered, couldn't turn on a light or even some music without help or a huge effort. Born a couple of generations later, these seemingly small things would have made a huge difference to her and I respect her hugely for her stoic attitude when she was alive.

I like this thread. I think its important to be grateful even when life isn't what we would describe as perfect. Everyone has at least one thing to be grateful for.

Every time I go to the dentist I am overwhelmed by gratitude for the era we live in. Could you imagine having even minor dental treatment without painkillers? Not to mention that without X-rays and proper training, dentists often damaged the jaw bones which would be a scandal today.

@AiringOfGrievances

Remember reading something about this at Warwick castle.

Apparently life expectancy was about 36. Large numbers died in childhood which skewed that figure a bit.

Life was nasty, brutish and short.

If you could survive until your were 12-14 you had a fair chance of living a full life into your 50/60's.

Remember people led a lot less sedentary life and processed food wasn't available so the scourge of obesity, dibetes, heart desease and cancer didn't exist or was extremely rare, although you could die of a bad tooth.

diabetes

@Lockheart

Individuals may have died, but the population survived.

We are, today, rich and spoilt beyond the wildest dreams of our ancestors. I am not wealthy by modern standards and yet I'm sitting in a warm, waterproof room with carpet on the floor and glass in the windows. I have comfortable furniture and many more clothes than I need. I can go to my kitchen and have a choice of exotic fruit and vegetables. I can eat meat every day, if I choose, and have fresh bread and milk. I have (far too much) chocolate and other luxury sweets. I have ice cream! I have a shelf full of books. I have medicine which does not cripple me financially. I do not need to fear being ill or injured. Even just 4 generations ago this level of luxury would have been unthinkable.

We really do lose sight of just how lucky we are, sometimes.

So true!

I remember crying, SOBBING, on my lactation consultant when I just couldn’t breastfeed my baby. I felt like such a failure and like I just wasn’t trying hard enough and felt really guilty about using formula. I wailed something along the lines of what would have happened back in the day, no formula then etc, and she told me that babies died. Plenty of babies died

Shit. Sobered me right up. Fed my baby formula and will support any single woman in however she wants to feed her baby.

The depressing truth is that the vast majority didn't survive very long at all! Just take a look at the older headstones in churchyards - sometimes 8 or 9 children from one family! There's one down the road from me where 5 of a family's children died during 2 weeks of a pandemic. 5 in 2 weeks!! I mean, fucking hell.

We really do lose sight of just how lucky we are, sometimes.

I agree, we are really so spoiled these days and most of us take it for granted.

OP people coped because there was no other choice. People really are more resilient than you might think and they just do their best with what they have. You are descended from some of those people. Also, it wasn't just in the "olden days" - take a look at how some people are living in other parts of the world today.

Most of my family have had appendicitis. Presumably we’d have reached young adulthood, procreated then expired. Grim

Last year I was visiting a graveyard in West Yorkshire and noticed there were a lot of young adult deaths around 1783. I looked this up when I got home and there was a volcanic eruption which caused acid fog atmospheric conditions at the time and a large increase in mortality in young otherwise healthy (for the time) adults. I was entirely unaware of this and I’m sure there were many other disease outbreaks and events throughout history.

@Lockheart

Individuals may have died, but the population survived.

We are, today, rich and spoilt beyond the wildest dreams of our ancestors. I am not wealthy by modern standards and yet I'm sitting in a warm, waterproof room with carpet on the floor and glass in the windows. I have comfortable furniture and many more clothes than I need. I can go to my kitchen and have a choice of exotic fruit and vegetables. I can eat meat every day, if I choose, and have fresh bread and milk. I have (far too much) chocolate and other luxury sweets. I have ice cream! I have a shelf full of books. I have medicine which does not cripple me financially. I do not need to fear being ill or injured. Even just 4 generations ago this level of luxury would have been unthinkable.

We really do lose sight of just how lucky we are, sometimes.

This.

Not so long ago, not everyone did survive. People died of childhood diseases that vaccinations and other modern medicine have more or less irradicated. Women died in childbirth, men died in industrial accidents. More babies were born but they often didn't survive even to primary school age.

Look in any cemetery that was operating at the time, this is something I've always done on local walks, just walk through graveyards of your local churches to see.

We take so much for granted, painkillers, antibiotics, vaccinations, contraception and safe and legal access to abortion also health and safety at work.

It's not so long ago that I read that antibiotics were only discovered in the 1928, not even 100 years ago. There's been so much change in the last 50 to 100 years, it's unbelievable.

The impact can be seen in population growth over the last couple of centuries. Despite the birth rate per person dropping dramatically in developed countries, populations have increased, mostly because people live longer.

I know that people have suffered during the pandemic, but life is so much easier these days for most people and sometimes we need to take a look at ourselves.

In the second world war, teenage boys and young men were sent away to fight in a war and many were killed or permanently disabled, women had to work in dangerous factories, with explosives and molten metal etc, children were sent to the countryside to live with strangers for years on end and today people talk about having to stay in warm dry homes for a few months and only communicate with their relatives on the internet or in an outdoor location as 'destroying their mental health'. And this is in a world where millions of people in places like Syria and Afghanistan are suffering in refugee camps etc and half the world don't have services we take for granted like clean safe water on tap.

It's not about a race to the bottom but about being grateful for the significant comforts we have compared with many.

I guess lots of people just didn’t. I mean how many of us know people who have died in childbirth recently? We’re so lucky that it isn’t very common due to medical intervention now. But you read a book set a couple of hundred years ago and it’s not uncommon for mothers to die in childbirth. And I read an old book recently where a husband referred to his wife as the mother of his ‘six living children and three dead.’ Just matter of factly not as a ‘how tragic is this’ thing. Nowadays to lose three little children (or even one) would be a horrific tragedy but back then it was a fact of life. Not that people wouldn’t still be heartbroken but it was uncommon or unexpected.

I wouldn’t have survived until now since I have health issues necessitating surgeries plus two c-sections. It reminds you how very lucky we are.

I was thinking something similar about how bad injury care used to be. Amazing that people would still do things like rock climbing and ice skating back then even knowing that a broken leg would be a very very different situation than a broken leg now!