Feeling sorry for poor bloody Alice

[Crikeyblimey]

My sis is researching our family tree (spurred on by our mum dying in the summer).

She showed me where she's up to today and our great great great grandmother Alice was married at 22 and for the next 16 years she had a baby every year! 16 babies. Unfortunately, only 8 of them survived beyond 15 years old :(. Oddly, 4 of them (3 who died as infants and 1 who survived) were called Alice. She also had 3 called James.

I just feel so sad for her. She lived to be 70 but by god, she must have been knackered physically and emotionally.

I know times were different and thank goodness women now have more control over their fertility.

I just can't get her out of my head. I feel really sad for her. Having said that, she might have been a right battle axe!

Anyway - just wanted to share.

Thing is, you'd have coped because you had to, and knew no different.
Was definitely not unusual to name a child after a deceased child. Happened in my family. Does seem odd to me, like a replacement, but I suppose it can just as easily be seen as honouring. Very hard times but fascinating stuff.

there are still countries now where losing a child under the age of 5 is very likely. i dont think those parents feel it any less than we do on the uk.

yes sprinkle you are right, they coped because to them it was normal life. they didn't know that in 150/100 years time life would be immensely easier. it makes me wonder what people will think of our lives in 150 years' time. will they think we had hard lives?

A few people must have read about Darwin losing some children? He wrote about how his eldest daughter's death hit him particularly hard.
I don't think it was any easier in the past.

I've done quite a lot of research into both my DM's and DF's families.

DF's were Jewish immigrants who came to the UK in the late 1800s. DF's mother was a widow with 6 children by the age of 34. They lived in one room in an East London tennament building. She didn't even speak English. Her husband died at the age of 35 from exhaustion.

My DM's father was suffering from malnutrition when he married my nana in the early 1930s. He had multiple siblings who died before the age of 5. His father was a drunkard who frequently locked his wife and children out of their Birmingham slum. His mother and her mother were both born in the workhouse.

Maryz, until not that long ago (I forget when) a husband could certify his wife insane There was quite a bit of marrying the governess or housekeeper after the bred-out wife had been locked up.

I always felt sorry for my great great grandmother. 8 pregnancies, every single one of them was a twin. Not all the twins survived, but even so that must have been bloody knackering. The thought of one set of twins would kill me, let alone 8!

your poor gg grandmother lady

I read in the paper about how doctors used to recommend until relatively recently that women should have a replacement child to get over a loss. And how psychologically damaging it could be for the replacement child to try to live up to the little angel who went before them.