General Chat

Yes, the traditional epidemics and killer diseases certainly took their toll. I've been looking through my records again, some 340 people over two centuries, and it's quite amazing how often a large family of 8+ children includes some 2 or 3 infant deaths. Another interesting point is how often "second" children were given the same name as the earlier child they were seen as "replacing" in some way. Further up the age scale and going back to the original message, the two world wars knocked a massive hole in the social and family fabric of this country. We've known it for many years through films, books and other archives, as well as from our own family memories. And the sheer horror and enormity of the loss has been further brought home through recent films like "Private Ryan", as well as through commemorations like the recent D Day + 60 weekend. Although my immediate family wasn't affected, I didn't have to go far afield to find relatives killed on the Western Front in WW1, or RAF aircrew lost in WW2. My greatest joy, however, is to find really recently from someone's cryptic note added to a family memoir, that a second cousin who emigrated to Canada after the last war was a Spitfire pilot during the Battle of Britain and survived. One of The Few! THAT I will always treasure! Philip

My family seem to be very hardy. One death aged 25 from TB and one aged 10 of meningitis, plus a death from being knocked down by a runaway horse are the sum total of deaths under 30 from my relatives in Norfolk, Gloucestershire, Cornwall & Surrey. On the other hand, my London lot weren't so healthy. One gt granddad lost two sons - one aged 5 weeks and one aged 2, both from diseases connected with malnutrition and poor conditions. Their father dropped dead in the street aged 40 of heart disease. The mother had two surviving children, married again and had two more, of which one survived. She had 3 children that lived to adulthood, plus the 3 that died young, but my mother says apparently she was pregnant 9 times, so she obviously lost some before term too. It brought the sadness home to me when I realised that my grandmother was a baby of 2 months when her mother had to register the death of a son aged 2 years 5 months. Helen

Philip- I agree with your point about a genetic link. My daughter has a heart defect, thanks to modern early detection techniques and a fantastic surgeon who I thank God for, it has been operated on and she is now a healthy two year old with a normal life expectancy. This made me think about whether it could be something in our family, so I have been looking into cases of early deaths in the past. The trouble with heart conditions is that without modern technology to detect them, there were often no symptoms in a child. Yet the exta strain on a heart could cause someone to suddenly drop dead.Often doctors could find no reason for the death, so they put it down to 'fever' or something vague like that. I guess it is something I will never really know for sure, but I am always grateful that she was born into a time when the condition could be treated!!!!

I am transcribing death records for free BMD at the moment and it's the same, lots of age 0 at death, if they reached mid teens they seem OK until middle and old age. Lots of twins, one possible triplets and also mother and baby deaths. it does make you think.

Hello Gillian, Yes, it is striking when you come across regular instances of early death like that. Of course doctors social historians have identified the main factors for some time, such as poor nutrition (and the lack of it), grim and harsh working conditions, regular visits from killer diseases and epidemics and, of course, the absence of modern drugs to treat them until after the discovery of penicillin in the late 1930s. The other thing that has struck me has been the continuing rate of deaths of infants at birth or in the first few months of life. Although infant mortality rates have fallen dramatically over the past half century in particular, it's noticeable how often family history records throw up the death of yet another very young child. I was particularly struck when looking through the records of my own family. I'd never considered the subject in the past, certainly as far as my own family was concerned, but I found that my Grandpa's elder sister was born in 1871 but died at 15, then my Granny had a fourth child in 1911, a son who lived for exactly one year before dying of some illness or other. Her younger daughter, my aunt, had a third son who was born and died in 1940. Then my sister's second son was stillborn in 1974. Although there's no apparent connection between these deaths occuring during a period of over a century, it still does make you wonder if there might be some kind of sub-level genetic link which predisposes children of certain families to be more susceptible to the factors which tend to be killers of young children. I wonder......? Philip

I have just been to Manchester records office and I was looking at the death records for the mid 1800's and most of the ages at death were no older than in the 20's. It made me feel really sad.