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?

If my first Labour hadn't killed me my second probably would ,
My son is recovering from acute pancreatitis,if by some miracle he had survived that ,the fact he's now type one diabetic,would almost certainly have finished him off.

...and I was a weedy little thing!

Scarlet fever or chronic tonsillitis as a child.
If I'd miraculously survived probably in childbirth which was touch and go.
Dc1 would have been failure to thrive as has multiple medical issues.
Dc2 would have been chest related, as spent 8 years on prophylactic antibiotics.
Dc3 would have survived.

Without diminishing the life saving power of antibiotics, I think we sometimes forget that our bodies do fight a lot of these infections off successfully - it just takes longer.

An infected insect bite.

I wouldn't have been born (Ivf).
If I had been born, asthma during childhood would probably have seen me off. If not pre eclampsia would have been it at 25

id have died after being hit at 50mph as a pedestrian (althought i guess cars wernt invented then so it wouldnt have happened)

I'd have died from 3 nasty staph skin infections which ABs have saved me from

I'd have died 3 times from being pregnant (severe HG, wouldnt have survived without NHS)

Currently waiting for some more extreme surgery (General aneasthetic number 7 for me) which if I was victorian would also evenutally kill me.

I'm so very greatful to the NHS because id have died so many times by now without it.

Are you from a rich family? Most of us would have had long, hard days of domestic drudgery cleaning and scrubbing with no electical devices to help. Coal fires and ranges would have made a huge amount of filth. No washing machines. No fridge, so shopping every day. No wonder people died younger. They'd have been worn out by the endless physical labour.

Childbirth, probably, if my teeth didn't get me first.

The thread is a fascinating idea but I also have to point out there is a problem in that we don't know if we would have had TB or diphtheria. A lot of us thinking we would have died from appendicitis would never have made it that far.

I think I would have been murdered for shagging the priest before marriage

😁

I'd have died of premature birth, born breach at 26 weeks with a hole in my heart, jaundice, and the cord around my neck.

Childbirth.
Breech baby, prolapse cord and hemorrhage.

I’d still be alive but I think I’d be a miserable governess, who probably wouldn’t mind if she wasn’t..

A broken arm which needed emergency surgery aged 2. If not that, then probably the flu when I was 18.

Probably run down by a horse and cart as my eyesight has been so bad all my life. My 2 child births were okay though maybe it would have been my massive kidney infection or my strangulated hernia, I don’t know that I would have died with my gall stones but the pain at times meant I might have welcomed it.

Scarlet Fever aged 5. Or if I survived childhood an ectopic pregnancy would have got me at 22, it nearly did anyway!

Consumption
Pneumonia
Sepsis
If still alive; childbirth

I had a retained placenta and haemorrhaged with my third child, so that would have done it. I've also had numerous tooth abscesses and kidney infections that had the potential to kill me pre-antibiotics.
The thought of living in a world without modern medicine (namely general anesthesia and antibiotics) horrifies me. Although their pain relief was top notch if you didn't mind becoming a heroine addict.

Measles. Mumps. Childbirth. Breast cancer. I'd have been dead long ago.

I probably would have died as a newborn due to a serious hernia (was in hospital for quite some time after birth). If not, I'm pretty sure my parents and siblings and I would have all ended up in the workhouse and/or prison or possibly even hanged (we'd probably be described as a family of gypsies, vagabonds, beggars and thieves) so I'm sure there would have been ample opportunity to catch various diseases or die of malnutrition.

If I made it through all of that I'm pretty sure that I would have ended up in the asylum and quite possibly lobotomised (have BPD and C-PTSD and have been temporarily sectioned twice).

So that's a jolly thought 😅

Pneumonia age 11. Very unwell and in hospital for 10 days.

Relatively straightforward childbirths x 3, but possible infections might have carried me off after any one of them.

dc1 born at 36 weeks on the dot and whisked straight off to SCBU as had breathing difficulties and severely jaundiced. Both dc2 and 3 in rude good health, but not sure dc1 would have survived his first year.

Gosh, it’s good to stop and count one’s blessings sometimes.

Type 1 diabetes

Probably chickenpox when I was a baby.

Failing that, mild bronchitis in my 20s.

Or, childbirth, as I had a breech +10lb baby.

I've sometimes pondered on this - especially since I gave birth and it's only due to modern medicine that my baby and I are still here.

Did one of the Brontës die from HG?