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They probably would have paid to see someone over 60 too.
by corruption 16y ago
They probably would have paid to see someone over 60 too.
- eru 16y agoOld people weren't that rare. Over 80 would been more of a show, I guess. (But we should find some data, before we speculate.)
- byrneseyeview 16y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joice_Heth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joice_Heth P. T. Barnum traveled with this person, whom he claimed was 161 years old. She was, in fact, about 80 when she died.
- jonp 16y agoEven 80 wasn't that exceptional. In 1910 there were over 200,000 people in England & Wales aged over 80; about 1 in 170 of the population. (Calculations based on data from http://www.mortality.org/ http://www.mortality.org/)
- david_adams 16y agoThe way that life expectancy works is that it was low because so many people died of disease in their youth that it dragged the average down. But people who lived to old age still lived to what we would consider an old age today. There would just be fewer people who lived that long, but not dramatically fewer.
- astine 16y agoNot likely. Average life-expectancy at the time was about that, so there were plenty of people over 60.