Ways of Dying in 1665

[TheScarlettPimpernel]

So I'm just copying out a weekly Bill of Mortality from London, 1665 (don't ask!)

Look at some of the ways of dying - anyone care to hazard a guess at what some of them might be?!

Plague - 7165 (IN A WEEK!!!)
Childbed - 42 - just goes to show, it's all very well bemoaning medicalised childbirth/interventions/CSs but look at the alternative
Grief - 3 (Not bloody surprising - wonder what the actual medical cause was?)
Griping in the Guts - 51!
Rising of the Lights - 11 (WTF was that then? In offal, are the lights the lungs, right?)
Kingsevil - 2 (Don't ask me how I know this, but I believe this to be scrofula)
Wormes - 15 (OH EM GEE, you could die of worms )
Impostume - 11 (what?!)
Frighted - 3 (three people scared to death in a week )
Winde - 3 (Oh yeah. FARTED TO DEATH)

I realise I am a bit morbid

DH has just ordered me ( What kind of relationship is this?) to mention the bit in Parson Woodforde where he cuts himself shaving and claps a moth to the wound to see if it would staunch the bleeding. For no apparent reason.

Could I ask for a link to the Hilary something novel mentioned earlier, and the 1066 book?

Hilary Mantel The Giant, O'Brien

1066 and all that

Jux - not sure about that, rosebushes (for example) are exceedingly fond of a good dose of "blood and bone" so would grow quite happily (although not as big and certainly not tall enough).

In the days of tight corsetry to produce tiny waists, this may have contributed to some of the "childbed" deaths as well - women's internals were all squashed up and they couldn't breathe too well, so the effort required for childbirth may all have been too much for them. That and haemorrhages of course. And then the infections too.

That's very sad about your G.Grandmother Graham, - I never knew that about stillborn babies not being recorded, - 1922 is shockingly recent

My grandmother's baby (my uncle Tom) survived and is now a strapping 81 year old , my mother (who would have been 8 at the time) remembers her mother being away for a long time when she was ill, and they couldn't visit her partly because she was too ill, but also because they lived in the North and Grandma was moved to Queen Charlotte's Hospital in London, which I think specialised in obstetrics.

Loving this thread. DH has discovered Mumsnet though, i am not sure this is A Good Thing.

Thank you Turnip

Turnpit I meant

SHIT!!!! TUNIP

Can't bloody type today. My fingers must have some kind of lurgy.

Turnpit sounds suitably medieval for this thread

My Granny used to love to tell me that when she was born nobody was expecting her (she was the second of twins) and she had to sleep in a drawer as there wasn't a cot.

Sad about the handwriting, other Granny wrote me a letter this week and her beautiful cursive handwriting has turned all spidery. Not a good sign....

Has anyone been to the Thackray museum in Leeds recently? I think it might be an interesting day out for small boys.

I love 1066 and all that, I need to get another copy, I've lost mine.

I have no idea how my fingers did that, I can't even blame autocorrect, am on laptop for a change :o

1944 I am always thankful for modern medicine. Especially - dentists! Can't imagine having to have all your teeth removed as the preferable alternative to having them rotting in your head.

MrsChemist - talking of 1066, when I was a teenager we went to a large international guide camp on the field where the battle of Hastings took place. We weren't allowed to dig a cess pit just in case there were skeletons buried underground.

I am most grateful for penicillin and the knowledge about how diseases spread.
One of the saddest things when you read about the Great Plague is them killing all the cats and dogs thinking they were spreading the plague, when in fact that probably made things worse because they were helping keep the rat population down.

I found the John Snow / Broad Street pump / cholera story really interesting, people didn't realise that the water was a problem.

Still relevant today, as well - I read this article in the Guardian about Liberia, and how many lives could be saved by toilets.

www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2012/feb/03/liberia-sanitation-johnson-sirleaf-toilets

But on a more depressing note, it makes it even more frustrating that children and mothers are still dying all over the world from completely preventable and curable diseases. Only about 30% of babies with pneumonia in low income countries even get antibiotics :( They may as well be living 100 years ago.

We had exactly the same thought Endoplasmic!! Weird!

I've been to Liberia - it's poor and undeveloped beyond anything else I've ever seen.

Back in the C17th, I would have been dead by my 10th birthday of diabetes. In fact same would have been true in the early part of the C20th.

Measles and mumps might have carried me off as a toddler. Post-partum hemmorhage would probably have done it, too. DS wouldn't have made it either, as a 31-weeker who spent 5 weeks in NICU.

My favourite ever death certificate I found while doing my family tree had as the cause of death "fell over a stile while intoxicated and dislocated neck"

I was forced to study studied Energy Through Time at GCSE history. The library had a copy of Medicine Through Time, I remember being perpetually incensed that the teacher could possibly thing energy was more interesting than medicine :o

Fantastic thread - made it through all 17 pages without even noticing.

Not sure I would already be dead in 17th century but certainly maimed (badly broken arm at age 8, required re-breaking, GA surgery and pins etc) and now would probably be locked in an attic somewhere as the crazy, possessed auntie, the family's dirty secret never spoken of in Polite Company. e.g. bipolar disorder. That scene in Jane Eyre (the 1996 version) where Jane sees Mr. Rochester's wife is really disturbing because she obviously suffered from some sort of mental illness.

Harris's List is a good read for social history fans; it's an 18th century catalogue outlining all of London's prostitues- their address, description and 'specialities' offered!

Oooh now death on a medieval battlefield was particularly nasty.

In the Battle of Towton 1461, the bloodiest battle ever fought on English soil about 25,000 men died in 10 hours of fighting. That was 5% of the entire adult male population of the country at the time. That is equivalent to 1 million men scaled up to todays population.

First of all you were likely to be cut down in a hail of arrows. It was a lethal as machine gun fire. If you survived the archers most people at the front of the charge just got crushed or drowned in the mud.

If you survived that and actually made contact with the enemy you were likely to be cut, stabbed or bludgeoned but that wasn't really that bad because you were mainly just badly wounded. It was only after the battle that the archers (yes them again) came along to finish you off with an axe and steal your possessions. If you were a rich nobleman you were held hostage for blood money or kille dfor bounty.

If you were wounded but avoided being axed or captured you probably would die agonisingly slowly of dehydration and blood poisoning from your wounds.

MoreBeta, did you see the Branagh Henry V years ago? I thought particularly good at the archery scenes.