How healthy were Victorian children? Many Londoners died from illnesses such as cholera, measles and scarlet fever. Babies in over-crowded and damp housing were the most at risk from diarrhoea and tuberculosis.
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.
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.
With only filthy water to drink, dirty, smoke-filled air from nearby factories to breathe and scraps of bad food to eat, it was no surprise that many children fell ill and died. The only place for poor children to play was on the street.
Ischaemic heart diseases remained the leading cause of death in Victoria for both males and females, accounting for 11.67 per cent of all deaths.
The child mortality rate in the United Kingdom, for children under the age of five, was 329 deaths per thousand births in 1800.
Overview: The IMR was around 150 per thousand for England and Wales as a whole, and around 120 per thousand for Scotland, across the second half of the nineteenth century.
Scarlet fever, tuberculosis, typhus and typhoid are now quite rare but were untreatable killers 150 years ago. Living in such terrible conditions meant that poor children were weak, malnourished and unable to fight off illness.
Children worked on farms, in homes as servants, and in factories. Children provided a variety of skills and would do jobs that were as varied as needing to be small and work as a scavenger in a cotton mill to having to push heavy coal trucks along tunnels in coal mines.
Boys were usually caned on their backsides and girls were either beaten on their bare legs or across their hands. A pupil could receive a caning for a whole range of different reasons, including: rudeness, leaving a room without permission, laziness, not telling the truth and playing truant (missing school).
Diseases and epidemics of the 19th century included long-standing epidemic threats such as smallpox, typhus, yellow fever, and scarlet fever.
The 10 most common health conditions in the United States are heart disease, cancer, chronic lower respiratory diseases, obesity, Alzheimer's, diabetes, substance abuse disorders, the flu, kidney disease, and mental health conditions.
Smallpox virus was one of the deadliest diseases in the 18th century. It was likely brought to the colonies by British immigrants or African slaves in the 17th century, but because colonists were spread out, outbreaks were infrequent.
The idea of being quietly and inoffensively sick further explains why this disease was romanticized. The symptoms of tuberculosis were exponentially preferable to other epidemics and infection which ravaged 19th and 20th century society.
Heart disease is the leading cause of death for both men and women. This is the case in the U.S. and worldwide. More than half of all people who die due to heart disease are men. Medical professionals use the term heart disease to describe several conditions.
In its most virulent forms, it was a highly efficient killer and often resulted in a 50% mortality rate among its healthy adult victims. Deaths in India between 1817 and 1860 are generally considered to have exceeded 15,000,000 persons. Another 23,000,000 died between 1865 and 1917.
If a deep-fried oreo were given to a Victorian child, that child would fall into a coma probably from the cholesterol alone. But they would be revived by the delicious flavor of the gooey insides of the Oreo.
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.
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).
Pneumonia. Pneumonia is the leading infectious cause of death among children under 5, killing approximately 700,000 children a year. In many parts of the world, a child dies from pneumonia every minute – even though the disease is entirely preventable and can be easily managed with antibiotics.
Dysentery, diarrhea, and nausea were symptoms experienced by nearly every soldier in the Civil War. Poor sanitation, lack of medicine, and a terrible diet led many soldiers to experience minor dyspepsia (indigestion) at least.
Smallpox was probably the single most lethal disease in eighteenth-century Britain, but was a minor cause of death by the mid-nineteenth century.
Land transport accidents were the most common cause of death among children aged 1–14 (12%). Suicide was the leading cause of death among people aged 15–24 (38%), followed by land transport accidents (19%). For people aged 25–44, it was also suicide (22%), followed by accidental poisoning (12%).
The child mortality rate in the United States, for children under the age of five, was 462.9 deaths per thousand births in 1800. This means that for every thousand babies born in 1800, over 46 percent did not make it to their fifth birthday.
Globally, infectious diseases, including pneumonia, diarrhoea and malaria, along with pre-term birth complications, birth asphyxia and trauma and congenital anomalies remain the leading causes of death for children under 5 years.