NKinney said...
BillyBob@388 said...
But what about if they survived the wars and traumas and infections/epidemics that took so many people so much earlier in life, including so many children?
The
dramatic increase in life expectancy from birth — increasing 65% from 47.3 years in 1900 in the US, both sexes, to 78.8 years — wasn't so much from dangerous work or wars as it was from the very high rates of infant and childhood mortality (especially from infectious diseases) 100 years ago.
I can't imagine the large differences in the likelihood of living to age 90 in 1900 versus the same likelihood today...but once you get there, you're likely to live another several years.Yep, once you get there, you are likely to live a few more years, whether 1900 or 2017. Pretty small changes, especially when compared to the 31 year increase of life expectancy from birth.
You are right about
those childhood deaths. Out where I often hike off trail, there is an abandoned community reclaimed by nature, and it's cemetery. It is rumored that Davy Crockett was raising horses there after he left Congress and just before he left there to head for the Alamo. Anyway, at the cemetery, the last of the headstones were put there about
maybe 1900. A very significant majority of the headstones are children, including infants.
Unrelated, OT fun note: There is also a young lady buried there named Charity Cain, born 1883, died Nov. 1900. She was the daughter of Fannie and Virgil Cain. If her father was about
40 when she was born, he would have been old enough to have been a confederate soldier. Anyone remember 60s group The Band's(and later Joan Baez) song "(the night they drove old) Dixie Down"? With it's
opening lyrics "
Virgil Cain is the name, and I served on the Danville train, 'Till Stoneman's cavalry came and tore up the tracks again
In the winter of '65, we were hungry, just barely alive
By May the tenth, Richmond had fell, it's a time I remember, oh so well...."?
No doubt, old Virgil from the song's daughter is buried in that deserted southern cemetery!
(I have not found Virgil's grave yet) If that was not enough of a coincidence, the Band also had the song "The Weight" with Fanny(Charity's mom) in the lyrics: "Take a load off Fanny, take a load for free
Take a load off Fanny, and you put the load right on me".
But that is a kind of sad place, where so many people- with plenty of children- are buried in such a lonely, deserted place, completely totally overgrown and in the middle of nowhere. The only visitors hikers like me(or occasional dirt bikers) that stumble onto it.