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?

Type 1 diabetes age 16! I feel very grateful every day to have access to medicine that keeps me alive ☺️

Scarlett fever. Asthma. Childbirth.

Antibiotics and vaccines do nothing for the childbirth stories posted above.

Breach/twins/transverse weren't automatically fatal for the mothers.

If you can stomach it you can look up how they saved the mums.

Actually, thinking about it again, I would probably have stood on a phosphorous match that I'd earlier dropped, and set fire to my stupidly long skirts. I have a history of clumsy accidents, and it seems that phosphorous matches were a particular peril.

I was 26yo and really slim when I had dd unfortunately I'd developed complications during the pregnancy which meant I went into labour 3 weeks early (waters broke.)

The labour didn't progress (I never went passed 4cm) and ended up needing an emcs after 3 days.

Without that myself and dd would have definitely died, as it was dd was seriously ill when she was born and spent a week in SCBU.

I'm very grateful to the Drs and scientists!

Why are so many women led to believe they would have died in childbirth if not for the magic doctors and their scalpels?

Well around 1 in 100, perhaps more women died during or just after childbirth.

Childbirth is historically dangerous and if you had had a prolapsed cord baby, emcs, child resuscitation, hemorrhage and blood transfusions you might be less dismissive of modern healthcare.

Also I was slim and in conventional child bearing years.

childbirth was historically dangerous but most women survived the worst figures are about 1 in 10 but by early victorian times it was 50 per 1000 ie 5% the biggest problemswere post- birth bleeding and infection and although the mechanism of it being contagious wasn't known it was known by 1790 an Aberdeen Doctor wrote that it could be passed from woman to woman by nurses and doctors and that after childbirth in hospital the woman's bedclothes should be burnt and doctors fumigated to avoid passing it to next woman but there was a reluctance of the medical establishment to accept this rates fell during the victorian period so it by the end it was about 3.5%
by the late victorian period there were anaesthetics and women were routinely surviving caesarean operations though still very very risky but better than before
overall the chances of dying in childbirth in the Victorian era were on average about 4-5%, about 1 in 20 not great but a huge improvement on the 75-90% this thread gives the impression of

My sister - childbirth. Myself - appendicitis. My niece and dad would be gonners too. Our ancestors sure as hell went through a lot to get us here!

From very frequent bouts of tonsillitis in childhood.

Maybe from fairly frequent abscesses in my teeth.

Most definitely from Pernicious Anaemia as an adult.

I had an ingrowing absess as a child which could have caused sepsis so likely that as needed an op to remove the infection.

Childbirth was pretty straightforward for me so think I'd have been one of the women with about 20 kids lol.

If I was a poor as I am now by there standards it would likely be poverty that killed me.

Poss perpural fever after DD1 was born - she would have "failed to thrive" & died a few days later from a lung infection that needed antibiotics & oxygen.
If not, then childbirth of DD2 - she got stuck & was delivered under an emergency General & forceps.

At least we're less likely to die of the second most historically common accidentally death (after childbirth) - burns as a result of setting light to long clothing.

Various infections from cuts and scrapes, UTIs, that sort of thing. Failing that, childbirth. Except I wouldn’t be here at all because my own my mother would herself have died in childbirth.

it was known by 1790 an Aberdeen Doctor wrote that it could be passed from woman to woman by nurses and doctors and that after childbirth in hospital the woman's bedclothes should be burnt and doctors fumigated to avoid passing it to next woman but there was a reluctance of the medical establishment to accept this rates fell during the victorian period so it by the end it was about 3.5%

Yes, my great grandfather in practice in Victorian/Edwardian times told my grandfather that the idea doctors should wash their hands, between attending a post mortem and then going to see a woman in childbirth was “new fangled nonsense”! My grandfather, who started practice in the 1920s could turn a breech baby, so I am guessing doctors had that skill in Victorian times?

Not all breech babies can be turned and pre-antibiotics women were less likely to survive an infection. Dismissing the decrease in the maternal mortality rate as ignorance doesn’t sit well with me.

I don't doubt modern medicine has made a huge difference. One thing now for sure now though, is how much intervention there is with childbirth which is what leads to so many problems in the first place. I was shocked at how many people wanted to be induced and how many people told me this was a good thing. The more natural the better (which is also just common sense). That said, I'd like my odds better now than in Victorian times!

Meningitis. I don't remember it, I was two years old.

Not all breech babies can be turned

I know that, but didn’t want to go into it! If he couldn’t deliver the baby vaginally, and women living in the back streets couldn’t afford to go to hospital, he’d look at the 10 children and think:

”What do they need more - their mother or a newborn baby?”

He’d dismember the baby and deliver it in pieces.

and pre-antibiotics women were less likely to survive an infection.

I am sure, as my grandfather found being a GP boring and he didn’t know what to say to bereaved relatives, he became a pathologist, so he didn’t have to deal with the bereaved. Then he became a Director of Public Health. He always said what made the big difference to mortality rates was clean water, proper sewers, vaccinations and antibiotics. Then, the main things left to kill us were the three Cs - cancer, heart attacks and strokes! When he first started practice, if a person was taken for a post mortem and they’d died of a heart attack, it was so rare, all the doctors went to look at it!

Scarlet fever or pneumonia. If those didn’t kill me, childbirth definitely would have.

I think one thing you are not taking into account is the fact that our parents and/or grandparents are the first generations to be born with the help of more modern medical interventions themselves. Many babies these days are born to people whose genetic inheritance in previous eras would have meant they would either have been picked off by natural selection in either childhood or in childbirth. In short, most of the ‘weaker’ ones now make it to adulthood these days, so it’s not just the robust ideally-built-for-childbirth ‘survivors’ giving birth and passing on their genes anymore.

Pernicious anaemia. There was no effective treatment until the 1920s. It would have been a long lingering demise. So grateful to live in the times I do.

@Grumpafrump that is to a certain extent true but it doesn't account for the difference between an actual maternal death rate of around 5% and the reports here of over 75%, also I do not think people remember that routine handwashing was generally in practice by 1880's though was employed in many areas much earlier, anaesthetics were also available Queen Victoria had it for childbirth in 1850's maternal death rates from infections had dropped to 2% by 1900 though the overall death rate was still higher due to other cases like bleeding etc
Generally on thread there has been a lack of acknowledgment that even before antibiotics most people survived bacterial infections, antibiotics were not generally available until after WWII so anyone over 80 today survived all childhood illnesses without antibiotics. Childhood illnesses are not all caused by bacteria, in 1900 the mortality rate for measles was 1.6% and diphtheria 9%

By 1940 before vaccination the mortality rate for measles amongst children was about 0.2% 857 deaths in 409,521 cases ( it was a notifiable disease but the cases are most likely still to have been higher) a big drop from1900 just because of overall better health and probably war time rationing so everyone got a limited ration of healthy food, the general health of children improved during WWII

Either Asthma or Malnutrition (I'm a coeliac).

you do know that breech babies, even footling breech can be delivered vaginally quite safely?

Not always of course, but it is perfectly possible.