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 would have died at 16 of an 18cm ovarian cyst. Surgeon said it was a bad sort (filled with poison) that if it had burst before the emergency surgery, I would have been in serious trouble. This thread has just reminded me not to take that for granted

Parents (or their stand-ins) would never have met.

If I had existed it would probably have been a few decades of peasant braids before death in childbirth. Far too busy getting by to wonder what my Narodnik brother was doing at those meetings before his arrest. I doubt I would have the consciousness to be bothered by my illiteracy.

Failure to thrive age 2. I ended up in hospital and social services became involved.
If I'd survived that, then an emergency C section with pre-eclampsia when I was 21.

Birth probably - I was 8 weeks premature and my own mother died in childbirth -well shortly after, which is pretty Victorian actually.

If I’d managed to get through that then maybe a childhood illnesses like measles, mumps, chickenpox.

If I’d got through all that then I’d have been alright for a good few years but my own daughters birth would have finished me off (EMCS, pph and sepsis).

Childbirth, my first child got stuck in the transverse position. I had an epidural (which in the early 70s I’d never heard of) and needed three pints of blood after the several doctors who were in the delivery room battled to get the baby out.

My GP told me later that in earlier time neither of us were likely to have survived.

Maybe not died, but definitely crippled by rheumatoid arthritis. It's fairly well controlled but still painful, but I can't imagine how much worse it would have been without the drugs I inject weekly.

I definitely would have been put in an asylum at several points in my life, and also the workhouse (I've been homeless and lived in poverty in the past). That, with my RA, would probably have finished me off.

Failure to thrive.

Hypothermia probably.

Childbirth (baby got stuck) or maybe Pneumonia.

I was blue lighted to hospital when I was about 2, maybe it would have turned into pneumonia and I'd have died. If not I had an EMCS with one of my babies so probably that.

Blood loss

My mum is type 1 diabetic, so I guess I wouldn’t have been born.

My granny was a transverse baby in the 1930's. Probably lucky that I am here tbf.

Asthma or in childbirth.

I would have died when pregnant, HG would have killed me off with dehydration

At 6, I might have died from measles. I would have died of kidney failure at 19. At 26 I'd have died in labour from eclampsia, with the stuck baby still inside. At 36 I'd have died of cancer.
At 76 I'm expecting to die of old age, when I get there.

I would probably have died at birth as I was in foetal distress, delivered by forceps and then in an incubator for 3 days.
If I'd survived that the pneumonia I contracted aged 10 would have done for me I think.

Defo my first childs birth...he was born facing up and I needed a blood transfusion afterwards.

I doubt he'd have made it either :(

Like Charlotte Bronte.

I reckon I would have loved to a ripe old age, so don't know yet.

another one with own birth.
My mum would have died too.
Placenta previa and emergency C-section.

Or if they had whisked me out and I survived then it would have been when I gave birth to ds probably, although I might just have been in labour for days and days.

Or infected gall bladder. (might have survived that I suppose)
I would be crippled from terrible broken ankle too.

as a teen I had recurrant tonsilitis. So I guess I would have been plagued with that all my life.

dd2 would be interesting: 13 general anesthetics between 18 months and 2.5.
She would have survived without them, but would only be able to drink smooth fluids. I wonder how that would have worked?

I would have probably died at birth, DH would have died as a baby as he had pyloric stenosis

Probably bedlam asylum for me.

Sever allergies so would have succumbed to malnutrition or endless tonsillitis and asthma.

Apparently cholera, typhus and smallpox were likely culprits. You've inspired me to learn more about all the nasty ways we could have died young, OP!