Causes Of Early Death In 19th Century

There were five main factorist that caused an eary death in the 19th century. A lot of children died, but most of them in the comfort of their own home, surrounded by their loved ones. Here are some of the reasons why...

1. Infant mortality and childbirth


The Victorians did not have the medical knowledge that we have today and women were a lot more prone to having complications at childbirth such as blood loss and infections which then led to death. 
Many children did not survive infancy, and the ones who did would most likely have lost at least one sibling. Most common causes of death were diseases, accidents or undernourishment. In fact, in 1600, it was estimated that every third child died before the age of nine, and this numbers did not change until the second half of the 19th century.

Princess Charlotte, Queen Victoria's cousin, would have been the queen if she hadn't died at childbirth at the age of 21.

2. Diseases

Those who survived childhood, were most likely to die from a fatal disesase as teenagers. The most common diseases were Small Pox and Tuberculosis. 
About 25% of people who had Small Pox died, those who didn't had scars, some were even blind. Queen Elizabeth I was also faced with this disease. Tuberculosis, also knows as Consumption or TB was highly contagious. It caused cauging fits and fever and eventually death. Until the discovery of a vaccination in the 20th century, TB was the biggest cause of death in Western Europe.

3. Death and the city

With the Industrial Revoluton and urbanisation came the problem of overpopulation and towns and cities were full of contagious diseases. E.g. there was a 60% death rate in Manchester for working class children under the age of 5, and in London the averige expancy of death was just 22! 

4. Cholera

As London did not have sewers until 1859, cholera is a disease that was spread through contaminated water. It is a bacterial infection that without treatment causes a person to quickly become dehydrated and go into shock. It was not weird to find human and animal faeces on the streets or water supplies. Cholera came to Great Britain in 1831 and in its first year it took 7000 lives. John Snow discovered how it spread in 1854, and his discovery soon saved many lives.

5. Industrial deaths

During the Industrial Revolution many people took dangerous such as mining and working in factories, but without being introduced to the health and safety. Young children worked too, often long hours.
Most deaths and severe injuries in the factories were caused by machines of heavy industry, as many fell into it by accident of out of pure exhaustion. Mine workers were killed mostly by gas, explosions or due to tunnels caving in.

http://www.history.co.uk/study-topics/history-of-death/trends-in-death
http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/cholera/Pages/Definition.aspx
reference found on Feb 15th 2015