Before the age of five, 35 out of every 45 Victorian children had experienced either smallpox, measles, scarlet fever, diphtheria, whooping cough, typhus or enteric fever — or some combination of those illnesses — and many of them did not survive.
What did Victorian children die of?
Babies in over-crowded and damp housing were the most at risk from diarrhoea and tuberculosis. Even those in rich families died because of poor medical knowledge. This mourning card shows that three children in the same family died between 1897 and 1899. They were all under three years old.
What was the most common disease in Victorian times?
Typhoid. Typhoid during the Victorian era was incredibly common and remains so in parts of the world where there is poor sanitation and limited access to clean water. No section of society was spared – Prince Albert the husband of Queen Victoria contracted typhoid and died from it.
What was life like for Victorian children?
Life for Victorian children was very different from our lives today. Children in rich households had toys to play with and did not have to work, but children in poor households often had to work long hours in difficult, dangerous jobs. They didn’t have toys to play with but sometimes made their own.
How were children treated in the Victorian era?
With no laws to protect children, this meant they had few rights and were badly treated. Seen as simply the property of their parents, many children were abandoned, abused and even bought and sold. Thought to be born evil, children needed to be corrected, punished and made to become good citizens.
What did babies die of in the 1800s?
THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY IN AMERICA
From 1800 to about 1870, the major causes of death in children were tuberculosis, diarrhea of infancy, bacillary dysentery, typhoid fever, and the highly contagious diseases of childhood, especially scarlet fever, diphtheria, and lobar pneumonia (5).
Why did so many children die in the early 1900s?
Leading Causes of Death in Childhood Have Changed
In 1900, pneumonia and influenza, tuberculosis, and enteritis with diarrhea were the three leading causes of death in the United States, and children under 5 accounted for 40 percent of all deaths from these infections (CDC, 1999a).
What did Victorian children drink?
Godfrey’s Cordial was a patent medicine, containing laudanum (tincture of opium) in a sweet syrup, which was commonly used as a sedative to quiet infants and children in Victorian England.
What was the hygiene like in Victorian times?
Showers were not yet en vogue and everyone bathed to keep clean. Poorer families would have boiled water on the stove then added it along with cool water to a wooden or metal tub, usually in the kitchen area, when it was time for a deep scrub down.
What were 3 major diseases during the Victorian era?
THE FIGHT AGAINST DISEASE
Infectious diseases were the greatest cause of Victorian mortality. Most of these, such as smallpox, tuberculosis and influenza, were old scourges, but in 1831 Britain suffered its first epidemic of cholera.
Did Victorian children have toys?
The toys children played with in Victorian times often depended on how wealthy their family was. Children from rich families played with rocking horses, train sets, doll’s houses and toy soldiers, whereas children from poor families tended to play with home-made toys such as peg dolls, spinning tops and skipping ropes.
What did rich Victorian girls do?
More specifically, it was a rich, upper-class, man’s world, and even better if you had land, a large house, a title, and a doting wife. Women of this class enjoyed a life full of all the things money could buy; travel, fine clothes, good food and of course, servants and staff to do chores for them.
How many hours did Victorian children work?
Children as young as seven years old could be found working fourteen hours a day in the region’s mills. Being small and nimble, they were given dangerous jobs such as climbing underneath moving machinery to remove any cotton pieces that had fallen below – this role was called being a ‘scavenger’.
What were the worst Victorian punishments?
Some prisoners were sentenced to hard labour, they had to do tough physical work. They were made to turn a crank, a heavy metal handle or walk on treadmills hundreds of times a day as punishment. Prisoners could be hurt or have their food taken away for misbehaving.
How were Victorian girls treated?
Women’s rights were extremely limited in this era, losing ownership of their wages, all of their physical property, excluding land property, and all other cash they generated once married. When a Victorian man and woman married, the rights of the woman were legally given over to her spouse.
How were females treated in the Victorian era?
They were viewed as only supposed to be housewives and mothers to their children. The women during this era were only viewed as people that should only concern themselves with keeping a successful household. However, during this time women were forced into working positions outside of the household.
Why did so many kids die in the 1800s?
In a time when almost half the children under age five died, scarlet fever and diphtheria were the major causes of childhood death. The symptoms of scarlet fever and diphtheria were so similar that there was no differentiation until the late 1800s.
Why did so many infants die in the 1700s?
Quaker records there show that between 1700 and 1775 one-third of the infants died in their first year. During this time smallpox was one of the primary killers in society. It took over when outbreaks of the bubonic plague abated.
What did children die of in 1883?
The Victoria Hall disaster occurred on 16 June 1883 at the Victoria Hall in Sunderland, England, when a stampede for free toys caused 183 children (aged between 3 and 14 years old) to be crushed to death due to compressive asphyxia.
What is the number 1 killer of children?
Children and adolescents under age 18 represent 22.2% of the United States population. Accidents (unintentional injuries) are the leading cause of death in children ages 1-4, 5-9 and 10-14.
What is the #1 cause of child death?
Firearms recently became the number one cause of death for children in the United States, surpassing motor vehicle deaths and those caused by other injuries.
| U.S. | |
| Firearm | 1 (4,357) |
| Motor vehicles | 2 (4,112) |
| Other injuries | 3 (3,879) |
| Congenital disease | 4 (3,166) |