General Chat

I have been looking up my OH's family on the latest London records,and in 1848 they lost 2 children,aged 3 and 5 on Christmas Day.I carried on looking at the other records in the book and there seemed to be one after the other of children's deaths within the next few months.
I know that child mortality was common in the 17th and 18th centuries,but this seemed excessive.
It really upset me to think of their loss,especially at that time of year.
Brenda x

I don't know of one offhand but it could have been Colera which had just arrived in London.

Then again all the diseases that we think of as minor childhood illnesses where killers then. Measles, Mumps, Chickenpox, Whooping cough. Add to those Scarlet Fever, Scarletina, Rheumatic fever, Gastro enteritis, Small pox etc and add to that list TB and malnutrition.

Is it any wonder that the chance of surviving from birth to the age of ten were only 50/50.

Dear Brenda

Hello

I looked this up:

1837 Start of a smallpox epidemic, which continued until 1840, causing an estimated 42,000 deaths. There was also an outbreak of typhus in London.

1847 Cholera epidemics in London and elsewhere. Typhus epidemic in Scotland.

1848 Major cholera epidemic with about 60,000 deaths, about 14,000 in London.

Influenza pandemic; there were about 50,000 deaths in London alone.


1849 Cholera epidemic reached its peak in the week ending 15th September, when 3,183 deaths were reported in London.

During the 1850s one death in every three was attributed to an infectious disease, among which tuberculosis dominated.

It is always very upsetting when coming across this type of info about our families.

Very sincere wishes
xx

news.nationalgeographic.com/.../0614_040614_tvcholera.html

I believe the cause was cholera, as I discovered some of my ancestors from N/Bucks died late 1840's early 1850's from an outbreak of cholera.

Thanks for your replies everyone.I was just about to go to bed when I wrote that,and then I wondered if it was diphtheria or smallpox.Never thought of cholera or typhus.It is sad whatever and makes us realise that we are fortunate in having so many drugs to treat these diseases these days.

Brenda x

I was looking at some of the London records that ancestry has put online recently and the causes of death around 1808-1809 where I was looking were often very vague- 'teeth', 'age,' 'fever', 'lunacy', 'fits' etc as well as the usual consumption, smallpox etc. Set me to thinking that there could have been a lot of murders and infanticides and no one would ever have known!

I had a cholera death in that period, I think it was classed as "Asian cholera".