4 ms·

People who didn't die of violence, hunger, infectious diseases, accidents, or complications of child bearing could expect roughly as much remaining life span as

People who didn't die of violence, hunger, infectious diseases, accidents, or complications of child bearing could expect roughly as much remaining life span as adults as adults expect today. When you strike those caveats and look at every human born on Earth: yes, people really do live significantly longer now. Whether or not you find this surprising depends on how much you already knew about leading causes of death in centuries past.

NeedMoreTea 8y ago
The highest mortality was in the first five years of course. Take that out of the comparison and the figures change surprisingly. Once you got past that, and assuming you didn't get dragged off to war or succumb to some sort of pestilence, life span wasn't so different. Which makes watching or reading period fiction frustrating when they treat a 40 year old as we might an 80 year old. We live longer, but we sure don't age at half speed.
- philipkglass 8y ago
  I haven't encountered period fiction where a 40 year old is treated like an 80 year old, but that would grate on me too. There was still a significantly lowered life expectancy in adulthood due to disease, hunger, violence, childbearing, accidents. See for example John Graunt's life table of Tudor period Londoners: http://www.stat.rice.edu/stat/FACULTY/courses/stat431/Graunt.pdf http://www.stat.rice.edu/stat/FACULTY/courses/stat431/Graunt... Only 25% (!) of Londoners survived until age 27. More than a third of adults who lived to 27 died before age 37. In modern London you can neglect pestilence as almost a rounding error within overall life expectancy, but in some ages of London-past pestilence was the dominant term.
  - sharkmerry 8y ago
    But this is data analyzed in 1661, gathered 127 years prior. so its 1 data point from 1 year, tough to make an accurate call on it as variance would be ridiculously high right? I also did not see any data on sample size, etc. this seems to say life expectancy was ~50 years if you reached 21. https://books.google.com/books?id=T4DLK7zLxYMC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA8#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=T4DLK7zLxYMC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA... graunts life table says 33% chance of living to 21. 8.8% of living to 50. Shouldnt it be closer to 16%? if average is 50, means 50% beyond, 50% short. so 50% of 33% would be 16.5%? perhaps Im looking at this wrong
    - philipkglass 8y ago
      That table is for aristocrats only. It contains only men. The table also excludes "those who had died by accidents, violence, poison, or in battle." Admittedly, Tudor England was not a very urbanized society, so looking at Londoners alone is also unrepresentative of the whole nation. I think it is at least a bit broader than 52 noble men who managed not to die of accidents or violence. EDIT: a page later in your source, it also notes "These rates [of death for women] are very high by modern standards... In the 16th and 17th centuries, 11.3% of fertile women died from complications of childbearing."
      - sharkmerry 8y ago
        Does Graunt state his sample size? or provide the datasource? I cant find it. seems odd to dismiss the data i provided based on sample size when his data is not even avail for scrutiny. > In the 16th and 17th centuries, 11.3% of fertile women died from complications of childbearing." great, what was the average age of a woman at childbirth? We're discussing mortality after 21 right?
        philipkglass 8y ago
        According to Graunt's own account, he used London's bills of mortality (weekly records of deaths in in London parishes) that were kept in the parish clerk halls. According to the account beginning on page 51 (as numbered in the scan linked below), the people who collected corpses in London would report to the parish clerk how many people had died and the manner of death. Every Tuesday the reports were compiled, printed on Wednesday, published on Thursday. Graunt claims (page 59) that over a period of 20 years these bills recorded 229,250 deaths. Numbers of births came from records of christenings. Here is a scan of Graunt's book "Natural and Political Observations mentioned in a following Index, and made upon the Bills of Mortality." It is old and a bit hard to read. http://echo.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/ECHOdocuView?url=/permanent/echo/mpi_rostock/Graunt_1665/index.meta&start=51&viewMode=index&pn=59 http://echo.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/ECHOdocuView?url=/permanent/... There is also a transcription of it at Wikisource, but it contains frequent OCR/transcription errors: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Natural_and_Political_Observations_Made_upon_the_Bills_of_Mortality_(Graunt_1676) https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Natural_and_Political_Observa... Average age of a woman at marriage was 23.5, and vast majority of births were to married women, so mother's average age at first childbirth was above 24: https://www.plimoth.org/sites/default/files/media/pdf/edmaterials_demographics.pdf https://www.plimoth.org/sites/default/files/media/pdf/edmate... There appears to be a large collection of the actual bills of mortality scanned and archived here: https://archive.org/details/collectionyearl00hebegoog https://archive.org/details/collectionyearl00hebegoog
  - NeedMoreTea 8y ago
    It's not hugely common, thankfully. Last example I ran into was one of the better authors who do enough research to be historically convincing. Which made it stand out all the more as they should have known better! As you note there was a lot of death from pestilence. I'm happy for antibiotics preventing minor injuries turning into life threatening infections, and to share house with a few spiders rather than plague carrying fleas and rats.
  - dredmorbius 8y ago
    London was a net population sink until the 19th century. Its native replacement rate was dwarfed by mortality, and a constant stream of immigrants (largely from elsewhere in England) was required to sustain population. Gregory Clark details this in his books.
- ItsMe000001 8y ago
  > The highest mortality was in the first five years of course. Take that out of the comparison and the figures change surprisingly. Not just the children, but women too, mothers specifically. Child birth was very risky until only recently. Since they also had a lot more children the risk was really high.

NeedMoreTea 8y ago

The highest mortality was in the first five years of course. Take that out of the comparison and the figures change surprisingly. Once you got past that, and assuming you didn't get dragged off to war or succumb to some sort of pestilence, life span wasn't so different. Which makes watching or reading period fiction frustrating when they treat a 40 year old as we might an 80 year old. We live longer, but we sure don't age at half speed.

philipkglass 8y ago
I haven't encountered period fiction where a 40 year old is treated like an 80 year old, but that would grate on me too. There was still a significantly lowered life expectancy in adulthood due to disease, hunger, violence, childbearing, accidents. See for example John Graunt's life table of Tudor period Londoners: http://www.stat.rice.edu/stat/FACULTY/courses/stat431/Graunt.pdf http://www.stat.rice.edu/stat/FACULTY/courses/stat431/Graunt... Only 25% (!) of Londoners survived until age 27. More than a third of adults who lived to 27 died before age 37. In modern London you can neglect pestilence as almost a rounding error within overall life expectancy, but in some ages of London-past pestilence was the dominant term.
- sharkmerry 8y ago
  But this is data analyzed in 1661, gathered 127 years prior. so its 1 data point from 1 year, tough to make an accurate call on it as variance would be ridiculously high right? I also did not see any data on sample size, etc. this seems to say life expectancy was ~50 years if you reached 21. https://books.google.com/books?id=T4DLK7zLxYMC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA8#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=T4DLK7zLxYMC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA... graunts life table says 33% chance of living to 21. 8.8% of living to 50. Shouldnt it be closer to 16%? if average is 50, means 50% beyond, 50% short. so 50% of 33% would be 16.5%? perhaps Im looking at this wrong
  - philipkglass 8y ago
    That table is for aristocrats only. It contains only men. The table also excludes "those who had died by accidents, violence, poison, or in battle." Admittedly, Tudor England was not a very urbanized society, so looking at Londoners alone is also unrepresentative of the whole nation. I think it is at least a bit broader than 52 noble men who managed not to die of accidents or violence. EDIT: a page later in your source, it also notes "These rates [of death for women] are very high by modern standards... In the 16th and 17th centuries, 11.3% of fertile women died from complications of childbearing."
    - sharkmerry 8y ago
      Does Graunt state his sample size? or provide the datasource? I cant find it. seems odd to dismiss the data i provided based on sample size when his data is not even avail for scrutiny. > In the 16th and 17th centuries, 11.3% of fertile women died from complications of childbearing." great, what was the average age of a woman at childbirth? We're discussing mortality after 21 right?
      - philipkglass 8y ago
        According to Graunt's own account, he used London's bills of mortality (weekly records of deaths in in London parishes) that were kept in the parish clerk halls. According to the account beginning on page 51 (as numbered in the scan linked below), the people who collected corpses in London would report to the parish clerk how many people had died and the manner of death. Every Tuesday the reports were compiled, printed on Wednesday, published on Thursday. Graunt claims (page 59) that over a period of 20 years these bills recorded 229,250 deaths. Numbers of births came from records of christenings. Here is a scan of Graunt's book "Natural and Political Observations mentioned in a following Index, and made upon the Bills of Mortality." It is old and a bit hard to read. http://echo.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/ECHOdocuView?url=/permanent/echo/mpi_rostock/Graunt_1665/index.meta&start=51&viewMode=index&pn=59 http://echo.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/ECHOdocuView?url=/permanent/... There is also a transcription of it at Wikisource, but it contains frequent OCR/transcription errors: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Natural_and_Political_Observations_Made_upon_the_Bills_of_Mortality_(Graunt_1676) https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Natural_and_Political_Observa... Average age of a woman at marriage was 23.5, and vast majority of births were to married women, so mother's average age at first childbirth was above 24: https://www.plimoth.org/sites/default/files/media/pdf/edmaterials_demographics.pdf https://www.plimoth.org/sites/default/files/media/pdf/edmate... There appears to be a large collection of the actual bills of mortality scanned and archived here: https://archive.org/details/collectionyearl00hebegoog https://archive.org/details/collectionyearl00hebegoog
- NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  It's not hugely common, thankfully. Last example I ran into was one of the better authors who do enough research to be historically convincing. Which made it stand out all the more as they should have known better! As you note there was a lot of death from pestilence. I'm happy for antibiotics preventing minor injuries turning into life threatening infections, and to share house with a few spiders rather than plague carrying fleas and rats.
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  London was a net population sink until the 19th century. Its native replacement rate was dwarfed by mortality, and a constant stream of immigrants (largely from elsewhere in England) was required to sustain population. Gregory Clark details this in his books.
ItsMe000001 8y ago
> The highest mortality was in the first five years of course. Take that out of the comparison and the figures change surprisingly. Not just the children, but women too, mothers specifically. Child birth was very risky until only recently. Since they also had a lot more children the risk was really high.