If you were a Victorian, what would you have died of?

[AhoyThereShipmates]

Reading a children’s book to my daughter that is partly set in a Victorian workhouse and it got me thinking.

I had a broken collarbone aged 9, and a pulmonary embolism, and then of course childbirth. If I was Victorian any of these might have killed me, but my money is on childbirth. DH reckons he would have been carted off to an asylum with unusual thoughts and would have just wasted away. Go on, indulge me.

If you were a Victorian, what would you have died of?

I wouldn’t have been born.

Appendicitis aged 12.

Childbirth. I had an emergency c section and a blood transfusion with my first baby.

As a lifetime 'fussy' eater I probably would have failed to thrive.

I would have been in the workhouse at one point in my life and caught a fatal disease there most likely.

My own birth.

Being pregnant. Body would never have gone into labour!

Childbirth - emergency section with first and pre-eclampsia with second.

Own birth

Probably died in childbirth since my first was an emergency cesarean. I also suffer from autoimmune diseases whuch prevent me from working so probably from starvation too.

Suspect this would be common! My daughters birth was fine, as in, she was absolutely fine, but I had to have my placenta removed manually in theatre. So that’s why I would have died for sure, if I wasn’t already from a broken bone or a tooth ache.

My birth
My first child
My second child
Many many episodes of tonsillitis as a child

My own birth or that of my first child. Though both I and my DC may not have been such big babies had we lived then so maybe I’d have made it!

Sorry, I failed to quote there those who had said their own birth

Boredom. I'm not one for gender roles or being 'a lady'.

Childbirth, if pneumonia hadn’t carried me off first. Ds was born by emergency c-section due to his over-large head; my mother is an only child after her sibling died (more likely was killed through forceps use to reduce the diameter of the skull and enable birth) to save her mother in the 1930s.

I would have died at 6yrs of age of scarlet fever, or aged 34 of sepsis. Terrible waste!

I was a back to back forceps delivery so if I'd got through being born then probably would have died of asthma at 2 or measles at 4 or scarlet fever at 5. I was vaccinated but still quite ill so if I hadnt been vaccinated and also had the underlying issue of asthma I'd have been in the paupers grave before I was 10
Should I have made it to adulthood then the post partum haemorrhage would have done for me after my first baby

Scrub that, meningitis as a child would've killed me.

I was born prem so probably wouldn't have survived.

If I had though, the appendicitis age 13 would've seen me off.

Disobedience

Yes! Rich ladies seemed to die of overexcitement or long walks or long dresses or fainting if some Victorian and Victoriana novels are to be believed

Nothing I don’t think unless I was destined for a childhood bout of diptheria or similar. I haven’t had my life saved yet.
Doubt I would have found a husband tho as I wouldn’t have had my squint corrected and my teeth would look like Stonehenge.

Asthma, or puerperal endometritis after my first birth.

Scarlet fever. Mumps. Failed kidneys. Childbirth. Inherited genetic order. Blood poisoning.

Thanks to the NHS I have had treatment for all of the above without worrying how to pay for it.