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?

My own birth

although maternal deaths were common in |Victorian times it had significantly improved by the end of the Victorian era, there were disinfectants and antiseptics but no antibiotics the rate of maternal deaths was approx 50 per thousand births so about 5% so 95% of mothers survived.
Infant mortality before 1st birth was about 10%, however if you survived to age 10 life expectancy was then much closer to 60-70 it was skewed to around 50 by high infant mortality rates

I may also have been too "lusty" and ended up in an asylum, mad as a hatter

🤔old age after running out of lives

i might try & take certain people out with me for each life & hope that’d be enough human sacrifice/witchcraft to bag an extra couple though 😼🧙🏼‍♀️

If I managed to survive the pneumonia I had as a child, I would definitely have died trying to deliver DC1 who was an emergency section.

If I'd of survived through all the eradicated/vaccinated against childhood illnesses and all the bouts of tonsillitis, child birth would have 100% killed me due to massive PPH due to retained placenta.

Pulmonary embolism. All my children would have died from pneumonia!

I'm looking at church records in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire for 1894 right now (family research). As expected, most of the deaths are newborns or toddlers. If you make it past early childhood, then you can expect to live till 60 or so. Where the cause of death is noted, most of the kids die of scarlet fever, whooping cough, angina (whatever that was in 1894 - not the angina of today), or TB. The adults most commonly die of TB and pulmonary inflammation (complications of TB?). I've only seen a couple of cancer deaths, and a few burns when houses caught fire.

The only time I've seen young adults die in huge numbers is when there is a cholera outbreak.

Scarlet fever when I was about 6 probably. But if that didn't get me, measles, mumps, rubella, various broken bones, childbirth. I definitely don't see myself as having lasted all that long, 35 at the very most.

most people would have survived broken bones though they may not have healed in right place, also just like now lots of people would have survived measles and whooping cough and scarlet fever, it would have taken longer to get better and may have left weak chest etc, but childhood infections though sometimes fatal were not an automatic death sentence most survived though not as many as now

I would have died at birth - I needed an incubator to breathe.

Childbirth

I would have died shortly after being born as my mum was rh -ve

I would have died during my own birth, as would my mother. After that I got ear infections all the time from the age of about two until I had gromits put in aged 11 that needed antibiotics so I suppose any one of those might have killed me.

Childbirth, I went into a coma and needed 3 pints blood transfusion

I had bad tonsillitis as a child, so maybe that? Failing that, my DD got stuck during labour ending in an EMCS so that would have been the end of both of us. A depressing thought!

Fascinating, thank you! I agree. Depressing!

Death from sepsis or similar from an incomplete miscarriage. I’d have been 19.

though my family at the time were farmers and soldiers so it explains why I’m so robust so maybe the farming life would’ve had a different impact? 🤔

actually growing up in the midlands I’d probably have lost an appendage in the mill, maybe have ‘phish jaw’ from making matches or hit with dysentery, typhoid or polio.

my great uncle had polio and was left severely disabled.

Pneumonia at 3, or if I survived that , childbirth ( induced labour as suffering from pre eclampsia)

So many things - bring born preemie, weak chest, cancer, flu.
Would definitely have had stints in a workhouse.

If by some miracle I’d have lived through all of that, I’d have been committed to an asylum for my wayward ways!

All in all, I would not have thrived in a previous era!

Did tonsillitis really kill lots of people? It’s a self limiting illness in most cases and definitely doesn’t need AB’s in most cases.

I assume appendicitis or being run over might have killed me, or one of my children being born as I had some complications.

Phossy jaw. From the toxic phosphorus vapours in matchmaking.

I would have hemorrhaged to death or died of cervical cancer a decade later.

@DeadButDelicious you would have been highly unlikely to die from broken bones, mumps or rubella most kids recover from these without any medication today, some kids die of measles but for most they would also have got better. Childbirth a 5% chance of dying; so even at the worst times the odds were still in favour of making it to 60+

Whooping cough would have got me as a 3 year old.