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Archiver > OLD-ENGLISH > 2006-06 > 1150991700


From: Eve McLaughlin <>
Subject: Re: [OEL] 15 & 16C Statistics
Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2006 16:55:00 +0100
In-Reply-To: <BAY106-F142ABAC77EEFCA54493773CD840@phx.gbl>


In message <>, Liz Parkinson
<> writes
>Life expectancy is a funny one, because so many babies died in the first
>year of life that it drastically skews the figures. It makes the apparent
>life expectancy as an average seem low, but in fact if you survivied early
>childhood you often survived to a good age,

One of the interesting reflections is that very many women died in
childbirth, which was unhygienic and dangerous. So if a woman manged to
get through a dozen or so pregnancies alive, she was tough as old boots
and often went on to a remarkable age.

>especially if you had a lower
>risk job - lead miners for example died early of lead poisoning, but farm
>workers were out in the open air, had cottages to live in, and the
>opprotunity to grow their own food and perhaps keep a pig.

A good point - though they were at risk from things like tetanus, which
now is sorted with a quick jab of antiobiotic. If you cut your hand or
foot in the fields, and soil got in, you were generally for it.

> I have
>realtives who lived to be 70+
This was the bible ration 'three score years and ten'. It was the habit
to delay making wills until the testator was on his deathbed (any
serious illness, that's yer lot). So if a man frivolously makes a will
when he is not 'weake and sicke of body', the chances are he is 70 and
is feeling fine, but well, better be on the safe side.

--
Eve McLaughlin

Author of the McLaughlin Guides for family historians
Secretary Bucks Genealogical Society

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