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 in the first place, but, getting past that, presuming I would still have survived all the childhood illnesses I had (measles, mumps, whooping cough, German measles and chickenpox) I would definitely had died of internal bleeding at 21. It's a sobering thought.

Probably gastro-enteritis as I had this at six weeks - also six weeks premature and weighed only four and a half pounds. My parents thought that I'd die and as dad so elegantly put it, I was 'coming out' at both ends.

Being born. Probably would have killed my mother in the process. Placenta praevia; would have been GOODBYE in the days before safe c-sections.

If by some miracle I'd survived birth, pneumonia would have finished me off at age 7.

Quinsy at 11

I would have died at birth, my birth.

I probably wouldn't have made it past the first few months due to pyloric stenosis. A weird thought!

My mother nearly died delivering my stillborn elder sister, she wouldn’t have survived in Victorian times so I wouldn’t exist.

If I had survived several childhood illnesses which required antibiotics and many UTIs in my 20s and 30s (ditto antibiotics), then I would have died in childbirth and DS would have died too. I had massive fibroids which blocked my cervix (and hence the exit route) and required a planned c-section. In the event I haemorrhaged during the c-section anyway (a whole fibroids/arterial bleed disaster) and required an emergency hysterectomy to survive - it was touch and go even with modern surgery and medicines.

Dental abscess, aged 24, I think.

My asthma is pretty severe I think that would have killed me in childhood.
If I did survive that the pneumonia in my 20's would have definitely done it.

What an awesome question. I think bacterial infection because I had strep as a kid about a bazillion times before they took my tonsils out.

I might still be here but I'd be blind (uveitis) and incontinent (childbirth)

Was going to say childbirth (emergency C Section) but then remembered Gastroenteritis as a baby. Funny thought!

That's what DB had. You would have starved because you couldn't get enough food through your system. DB couldn't keep milk down at all.

Although come to think of it, I had measles aged 8, so might not have got past that?

I was born with both hips dislocated and can only assume I would have been completely crippled, and would have died of some common respiratory illness after being confined to the house with no sunlight for most of my short life.

I might have made it to 19, when I needed a few days in hospital on Flagyl - though Victorian me wouldn't have been gallivanting in the Sahara in the first place.

Staying in the Highlands, hunger or exposure in childhood? Drowning, falling from a cliff, other nasty accident? Or burned as a witch, for being a woman with a mind of her own. High chance that someone would have bashed my head in for not doing what they wanted me to!

Depends on your location during that time.

Slavery was banned in the British Empire in 1833, so pre Victorian era you wouldn’t had you been in any outposts of the Empire (I say outposts as slavery in England was never legalised thus never officially existed there).

Had you been in america though, very likely you would have been one of the four million who were enslaved up to 1865 (the year it was finally abolished). There’s also a high chance you would have been separated from the rest of your family as the domestic slave trade broke up families.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States#Domestic_slave_trade_and_forced_migration

Most of the circa 40 million black descendants of slaves who live in america today cannot trace their origins further back than the 1870 us census.

Appendicitis at 21. And if that hadn't happened the birth of my first child as I had a failed induction and emergency section.

Sepsis from bacterial tonsillitis.

Measles, childbirth or consumption.

Wouldn’t have been born alive for a start. Rhesus incompatibility would have meant stillbirth - I find it interesting to speculate on past royal marriages where there were a lot of miscarriages, stillbirths and neonatal deaths. Look at Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Catherine of Braganza, Queen Anne.

Even without that, I wouldn’t have survived giving birth myself, in a distinctly Princess Charlotte scenario.

I was a 7 month c section baby so probably wouldn't have stood much chance.
Broke my back later in life.
Have auto immune conditions.

Haemorrhaging during a miscarriage, aged 34.

Somewhere out there are complete strangers who have no idea that their blood donations saved my life. They are living their lives oblivious to how incredibly grateful I am.

I’d have died from gynae issues - either from excessive blood loss during pregnancy or excessive bleeding from menstruation - basically I’d have died for the sole reason that I’m a woman.