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?

Ectopic pregnancy.

Prematurity
I was born at 33 weeks

If not that, then I was plagued with childhood illnesses, including an ear infection from birth which left me deaf until I was 2.5.
Then hyperemisis in both pregnancies.

Whooping cough I almost died in this life so would certainly have been a gonna

Measles which I had around 5 or the Honk Kong flu which I had a few years later. (pandemic) I had both so doubt I would have made it to childbirth.

Breast cancer.

Appendicitis aged 14 or childbirth

Whooping cough or measles maybe? A couple of nasty bouts of bronchitis if I was unlucky.

Otherwise I might have been one of the lucky ones who made it to my age, but I would have been a Despised Barren Spinster.

Ruptured appendix and if that didn’t get haemorrhage after giving birth.

If meningitis didn't kill me before I was 2, being bitten by a rabid cat the following year would have done it.

Yes and people are countering those assumptions with actual historical fact, which I think is quite helpful! But then I do find that the whole 'oh they thought they were old if they made it to 30 then' is a particularly widespread misunderstanding (when I used to teach undergraduates it was one of the biggest myths I had to bust), so I'm always glad to see it dispelled.

Childbirth: twin pregnancy, failed induction, emergency section, post-partum haemorrhage.

Childbirth
Asthma
Diabetes

Something would have got me at a young age I'm sure

I had terrible teeth and recurrent ear infections as a kid. If one of those didn't do for me, it'd probably have been my eyesight starting to deteriorate when I was about nine; I'd have not seen a hansom cab or something coming and would've got mown down.

@FatYogaLady her grandfather and siblings surviving was the norm even with higher infant mortality rates, if you had 10 children on average 9 would make adulthood; 90% of children made their first birthday and if the got to 5 they had a relatively long life expectancy of 60-70, many workhouse records show numerous residents in the 60-80 age group,

Child birth with my first definitely would've killed me but maybe the severe anaemia in my teens would've killed me off before then

Severe gastroenteritis aged 9, if I survived that (very unlikely as I was hospitalised on a drip and in a very bad way) then appendicitis later that year.

Third degree burn on arm when I was 2, skin grafts didn't exist in Victorian times.

Oh wait mumps at age 13 probably would've also have finished me off. I only had it half as bad as I could've had due to the vaccine

Type 1 diabetes aged 22. Bit of a sobering thought.

Probably cancer but I much prefer @MobyJeff 's idea 😂

I wouldn’t have been born my mum and I would have died. Unless there were c-sections but unlikely as we were in a third world country and well dependant on healthcare at the time I think I would have died. In saying that I won’t even have existed as my parents met in this country unlikely they would have met in mum’s home country.

I wouldn’t be here as my lovely mom was very premature, but that aside, I would have died from severe asthma, my husband from appendicitis, so we definitely wouldn’t be here now expecting our first child.

Sepsis from a dog bite. However my mother would have died five years before she met my father, from meningitis.

Pneumonia as a baby, about 11-12 months old.

Nothing has defeated me as yet, I’ve never even had antibiotics!
I am pretty short sighted though so may well have fallen into a hole I didn’t see