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.

@Grumpyosaurus

Doing your family tree is very instructive. Many, many children died in infancy - and then you find adults in Victorian times surviving into their 60s (not unusual), 70s and even (rare) their 80s.

For anyone interested in childbirth in the past, have a read of 'A Midwife's Tale: the diary of Martha Ballard' by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. Martha lived in Maine in the 1800s and the book is fascinating, Ulrich dissects the diary and uses it to discuss the social history of the place and time, but esp Martha's work as a skilled midwife.

I've done my family tree way back, lots of ancestors living into their 80s which surprised me in the 1800s - however, they were not city dwellers, they lived in very rural areas which probably made a huge difference to general health. On the other scale, my g g grandmother died aged 30 from TB, in slums, 3 months after the birth of her 5th child.

I can also see that many ancestors had lots of children who died young. It's not unusual to find women who had 11 babies, with only 5 surviving. There are many reasons for why this could be, but it seems like something they just learned to accept and live with. Death and mourning were treated very differently from how we do today.

@Imtoooldforallthis

Her house isn't cold, it's constantly 26 degrees!!!

Older people feel the cold, as you will find out for yourself in due course. Hopefully your own DC will be less twattish about it.

My gran born 1908 left school at 12 and worked scrubbing door steps before she moved to a factory in the city.

She told me tales of walking through a notorious slum each day to reach the factory and the majority of women sat on their doorsteps had black eyes and bruises from domestic abuse. And the kids were riddled with fleas, constantly scratching.

It makes you humble to think about the past. I would not have survived my first childbirth without modern medicine.

We live in a time where we have never had so much in the way of comfort and material things, yet our mental health as a whole is so bad.
Covid is a wake up call that has been utterly lost on most, our ancestors must be turning in their graves at our stupidity.

Only 1 generation ago my family lived a rural Indian life of hard labour so for me it’s in very recent times.

Many people today are "well off" by past standards .However different times, so expectations were unlike those today .In the 40s and 50s most people would not have had Central Heating ,and a much less healthy diet.Watching "Call The Midwife" shows the often harsh reality of life then . Many people still lived in tenements with poor sanitation ,and did not have a kindly MW such as Trixie to talk to her well heeled chum Matthew to do something about it!Truth is we all have a strong survival instinct .You do what you can to get by .Living standards have gone up for MC .However the increasing use of food banks and long Council waiting lists highlight the fact that not everyone is as well off as it may appear even now!

My DPs now deceased (not from cold) lived through the War. Their house had one fire lit all day every day, heated the water. We don't need to heat the whole house like now. They had a paraffin heater in the kitchen.

Maybe it did come a cross twattish. I grew up in the 60/70s no CH and only DG when in my early teens. Only one fire to heat the whole house, my grandparents lived with us when I was very young. I remember ice on the windows. It never bothered me I was racing round at 100 miles an hour. Both grandparents lived til late 80s/90s.when I ask my mum how they managed she never tells me.

Her house isn't cold, it's constantly 26 degrees!!!

Then she shouldn’t be feeling cold. She needs to get some exercise/eat better/see the GP, whatever.

Not be referred to the uncomfortable living conditions of her forebears.

It wasn't a post about my mother feeling the cold, I was asking her how her parents coped with the the cold.

I was born in the early 70's. I remember ice on the windows and we didn't get a tv till I was 12 ( ish ) it was for the royal wedding so we could watch it.

My dad bought a new car about every ten years ( usually a Renault ) things were used till they broke unlike now when fashions tend to dictate and things are not manufactured to last.

My dad also had a poor 1920's childhood going to school with no shoes on his feet. I husky for a catholic family there were only four of them of which he was the youngest much favoured boy 🙄 sadly his eldest sister died when she was 21 of consumption.

I meant I've i t he inside of the windows and looking at dates I was actually 9 when we got our first tv.

@Imtoooldforallthis They probably heated one room with a fire and stayed in that room most of the time. Im not that old but I grew up in a large draughty Victorian house. It was too expensive to heat the hold house. We spent a lot of winter time in the smaller living room with the fire roaring. It was toasty. Obviously other rooms were cold but we didn’t spend much time in them and we had hot water bottles in bed.

@3WildOnes - I'm not in the UK, and central heating isn't a thing here, and it's mostly newer houses that have double glazing, so that is what many of us do now - only not with a roaring fire! My bedroom is like a fridge in winter, but my bed is toasty and I don't care about the room being cold (I also have the window open). I heat the living area and that's it.

What amazes me is that to be here now, you have come from a long line of women who survived until at least childbirth age, going back until the very first humans. It’s mind blowing.

I listened to a podcast the other day on Disability in the Ancient World and I was really sobered when they said "in the ancient world most people would have been disabled in one way or another".

@farendoftether if you were in Europe, you would also have come from a long line of men who survived wars. Most men went to fight in their teens and probably had not produced many DC by then. My Dh told me he had an ancestor who had 7 kids to avoid being drafted into the Prussian army. Other relatives were not so lucky and most died.

Well, they didn't - they're all dead!

Here’s a population pyramid of Scotland in 1901. It looks like only about half of people made it to the age of 30. People died at every age, not just infants and old people.

@Imtoooldforallthis

It wasn't a post about my mother feeling the cold, I was asking her how her parents coped with the the cold.

I bet you were. Genuinely and in a lovely tone of voice, every time she complained of feeling cold.

I'm going to do that annoying thing of jumping in to comment before I read, but I am in the middle of a conference which is, amongst other things, about women in the past giving birth. This is my research subject as well.

There has been some recent research suggesting maternal mortality in the period I study (late medieval) has been exaggerated. We have a myth that it was all absolutely grim back then, and people expected women and infants to die, and no one cared. It is absolutely, categorically not true.

There is a huge body of medical literature dedicated to helping women in labour survive, avoid pain, avoid losing their babies. Some of it, of course, wouldn't have worked and that is tragic. Some of it would have been actively harmful (not much, though). But some of it would have been helpful. Women were encouraged to give birth in a dark, comfortable, familiar environment; they were encouraged to move (and there are even chants to help time labour pains, like lamaze). People understood it was better to avoid any kind of surgery and there are cases of midwives knowing how to do things like turning a baby that was in a non-ideal position, or treating placenta abruption (which is a major killer).

Of course what they didn't have was 1) anaesthesia, so you can operate and 2) an understanding of the need for sterile conditions. But those are two things that took us as humans a very, very, very long time to figure out!

No one gave birth on muddy castle floors as a matter of course. In fact, I believe you could be taken to court for cruelty if you let your wife or relative get into that situation.

How dare you, I visit my mother every single day, do you?, my tone in my post may have been curt but my attitude to my mother certainly isn't.

@speakout

Many did die, but there was community based medicine, mostly wise women who were experienced ley midwives. Many of them murdered as witches. My granfmother was a ley midwife. Before the days of the NHS many people couldnt afford doctors, she delivered dozens of babies- with no formal training. She was born in 1890.

Midwives were fairly rare amongst those accused as witches, lay or trained (there was training in some countries, and registration). It's a myth.

I read The Foundling recently and couldn't believe the protagonist in it gave birth and went out to work the next day. Here I am 6 months after giving birth feeling miserable about going back to work in March!

@farendoftether

What amazes me is that to be here now, you have come from a long line of women who survived until at least childbirth age, going back until the very first humans. It’s mind blowing.

Yes that is mindblowing! It is so random, still.