This was an interesting post from a few years back that we thought you'd enjoy again.

An interesting little read on our shelves is the book 'Til death us do part : causes of death 1300-1948.

As the author Janet Few says in the introduction, “One thing that all but our most recent ancestors have in common is that they are dead.”

This small but fulsome book discusses the many possibilities of our ancestor’s deaths. The cancers and heart disease that end our lives today were much more difficult to diagnose until the twentieth century and the lifestyles of our ancestors made them less prone to contacting them. Instead, they could look forward to famines, epidemics and infectious diseases.

http://www.traveldarkly.com/plague-pits-london/

Few describes the different kinds of plague that could be experienced and their symptoms’…hard dry boils, particularly in the groin or armpits and it normally took three days to die.’ A range of preventatives included what was known as a ‘tuzzy muzzy’ , a bunch of herbs to warn off the bad smells, and urinating on a mixture of yarrow, tansy and feverfew, and then drinking the strained liquid.

The Seventeenth century plague doctor www.medievalists.net

Work related diseases led to the demise of many of our ancestors. Tuberculosis, also referred to as consumption, phthisis, decline or the white plague, was a product of urban poverty, poor nutrition, and work conditions. It was very infectious, with late teenagers often the victims.

Occupations determined certain ailments in their workers. Examples are: knife grinder’s asthma, Mad hatters’ disease (mercury poisoning, which was often contracted by those working in the hat industry), and fossy jaw (caused from ingesting phosphorous; the disease of the match girls).

The names of these diseases are intriguing in themselves. Summer madness, also known as St Anthony’s fire, Sacred fire or Invisible fire, because the skin turned black as if burnt, was common in times of bad harvest when poorer quality crops were eaten.

The green disease, or chlorosis, also known as the virgin’s disease as it was prevalent in teenage girls, was blamed on tight corsets and studying too hard with matrimony frequently prescribed as a cure.

War was responsible for the deaths of many of our ancestors, with the armed forces far more likely to die of disease than in combat. In the Crimean War only one in six casualties died in battle.

www.medievalists.net

Being a wife was a dangerous profession with between five and ten percent of all mothers dying in childbirth until the mid-nineteenth century. The list of options was grim: childbed fever, blood loss, and toxemia. Abortions were illegal and therefore dangerous.

In the days before Health & Safety, our ancestors drowned in wells, were burnt by open fires, fell off horses and ladders and suffered frequent bouts of food poisoning caused by a lack of refrigeration and the foraging for food in woods and hedgerows.  Although our health is better and we are vaccinated against the very things that blighted our ancestor’s lives, we do manage to die in ways they could never imagine.

Bridget Simpson

Some treat reads have come into the Auckland Research Centre of late and if they pique you interest, there are borrowable copies within the Auckland Libraries system as well. These are the kind of books that are nice to pick up and dip into at any time.

First up, the 1950s gets a look-in with “Life in 1950s London.”  An interesting decade between the second world war and the counterculture of the sixties.

It’s worth flicking through for the fabulous photos, and if you did happen to have been around at the time, reminiscing about life. How, for example, nearly everybody smoked, the growing popularity of sports like boxing and football, the rise in coffee drinking, and international events like the Billy Graham crusades. It would be interesting for those who remember the decade to compare how it panned out with life here in New Zealand.  This is one of a series on decades, and we also have the 1940s title.


Sticking with the UK, we have another fascinating read, “Beneath the Big Top.”


It’s a “social history of the circus in Britain” and is laden with all sorts of titbits, misdemeanour and fun, from the beginning of the circus up to the more recent spectacle of Cirque du Soleil. A fascinating chapter on the 19th century looks at the likes of Barnum and Bailey and on the trend of mysticism and spiritualism that was big at the time. The author claims writers Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Elizabeth Barrett Browning were followers of the spiritualism fad - a combination of magic and spirituality. And even royalty loved the circus. Queen Victoria was apparently so fascinated with Isaac Van Amburgh, the big cat trainer known as the “Lion King,” that she had a portrait painted of him with his cats. Naturally clowns, murder and debauchery, and the effect of television on the circus get a look in. A book to have a browse through when you feel like some light but entertaining reading.

Joanne Graves

This book on the “What’s new?” shelf  at the Central Auckland Research Centre caught my eye the other day  –  “Family Secrets: Living with shame from the Victorians to the Present Day” by Deborah Cohen.

The issues covered – divorce, illegitimacy, homosexuality, adoption, interracial children - barely raise an eyebrow today but they have been huge causes of distress in the past.

It’s a fascinating book to dip in to as it traces real people and gives an understanding as to why they did what they did – why adoptee parents feared their children finding out they were adopted,  the stories behind the “bachelor uncle”, the stigma of being a “bastard” child. A fascinating chapter is devoted to the children who disappeared – mentally disabled institutionalised boys and girls and how attitudes differed Victorian to early 20th century times.

The author concludes the book by discussing how getting all these “shameful” secrets out in the open has become something of a badge of honour, with the growing popularity of celebrity-featured entertainment shows like “Who Do You Think You Are?”  This is a book that may well provide breakthroughs for the family historian in the brick walls of their sleuthing - well worth a dip in to. "Family Secrets” is in the Research Centre under 4 GBR FAM but there are borrowable copies in the Auckland Libraries collection.

Joanne