Childbirth Deaths or “Accidents of Pregnancy”

After watching Sybil die from eclampsia on Downton Abbey nearly two weeks ago I started thinking about how many women died in childbirth in the past. So, naturally, I went to my go-to source for information on deaths, Michigan's annual reports on registrations of births, marriages, deaths and divorces. Maybe I'm just weird, but I find these reports fascinating. I've learned about some of the diseases children in my family died of (diphtheria and whooping cough, for example) as well as things I never went searching for like poisonous cheese. But, I digress. Here's what I found about childbirth related deaths in Michigan.

References for Graph: 1-9

The above graph shows deaths associated with childbirth from all causes. There is no obvious trend here, though it appears that rates of death resulting from childbirth actually increased between the 1870s and the early 1900s. This is more likely due to more accurate recording of deaths (see below) and to an alteration in the classification scheme for causes of death than to an actual increase in incidence. The term “accidents of pregnancy” first appeared in the 1898 Annual Report on Births, Marriages, Deaths and Divorces. [2] Under the new Bertillon classification of causes of death it includes “abortion or miscarriage (death of the mother); hemorrhage during pregnancy; uncontrollable vomiting; rupture of tubal pregnancy.” [2] This was often lumped together in the tables with “other accidents of childbirth” which included such things as Caesarian section, rupture of the uterus and retention or detachment of the placenta. [2]

References for graph: 1-12

Above I present the data for deaths from puerperal fever. We now know that death in these cases was the result of an infection contracted at the time of childbirth because of unhygienic conditions and a lack of hand-washing. I was surprised to note that there was no apparent decrease in death rates after the emergence of the germ theory of disease in the 1880s.

References for graph: 2-9

Back to Sybil, I present data from the early 20^th century for puerperal eclampsia which includes albuminuria, nephritis of pregnancy, convulsions of women in pregnancy and uremia. Though I have not run the numbers through a statistical analysis there is likely no significant difference between them as the rate of death from eclampsia for all of these years hovered around 3/100,000 population in the state. [2-9] My primary purpose in including the graph was to show the number of women who perished in this manner. Though the actual number of deaths was relatively small, if these deaths were anything like what was dramatized on Downton Abbey that would be pretty traumatic for the bystanders. It seems clear from perusing the reports that physicians were aware of eclampsia as early as the 1880s. However, from the presentation on Downton Abbey it seems there was very little if anything that could be done to treat the condition. Even if Sybil had survived a Caesarian section there is no guarantee that she would not have contracted an infection and died anyway. This seems especially true after noting no noticeable decrease in the rate of puerperal fever as late as 1917 when, in my opinion, those attending at births should have understood the importance of hygiene in preventing such infections.

One thing to note for all of the data I have presented is that we can't directly compare these deaths over time (though I combined them in the graphs for ease of viewing). The primary reason we cannot draw comparisons is that laws regulating the registration of deaths changed, affecting the accuracy of reporting deaths. Effective in 1897 the number of deaths recorded in Michigan was much more accurate than in previous years, because death certificates were now required prior to removal or burial of a body. [2] This change was a source of pride for Michigan and I'll write more about that in a later post. Another factor making it difficult to compare data over the years was that the classification system for causes of death was also altered in 1897. One good thing about the new, more rigorous system was that if a cause of death thought to be related to childbirth was vague a letter was sent to the physician to clarify it for accurate classification. [2]

All in all, I'm glad I live in an age when at least some of these issues have been dealt with.

Sources:

1. Secretary of State of Michigan. Twenty-Ninth Annual Report Relating To The Registry And Return of Births, Marriages And Deaths, In Michigan For The Year 1895, By the Secretary Of State Of The State Of Michigan. (Lansing, Michigan: Robert Smith Printing Co., 1897), 152, 158.
2. Secretary of State of Michigan. Thirty-Second Annual Report of the Secretary of State on the Registration of Births And Deaths Marriages And Divorces in Michigan For The Year 1898. (Lansing, Michigan: Robert Smith Printing Co, 1900), lxxv, ccxxxi.
3. Secretary of State of Michigan. Thirty-third Annual Report of the Secretary of State on the Registration of Births And Deaths Marriages And Divorces in Michigan For The Year 1899. (Lansing, Michigan: Wynkoop Hallenbeck Crawford Co., 1902), lxv.
4. Secretary of State of Michigan. Thirty-Fifth Annual Report of the Secretary of State on the Registration of Births And Deaths Marriages And Divorces in Michigan For The Year 1901. (Lansing, Michigan: Robert Smith Printing Co., 1905), xlvi.
5. Secretary of State of Michigan. Forty-First Annual Report of the Secretary of State on the Registration of Births And Deaths Marriages And Divorces in Michigan For The Year 1907. (Lansing, Michigan: Wynkoop Hallenbeck Crawford Co., 1909), 23.
6. Secretary of State of Michigan. Forty-Second Annual Report of the Secretary of State on the Registration of Births And Deaths Marriages And Divorces in Michigan For The Year 1908. (Lansing, Michigan: Wynkoop Hallenbeck Crawford Co., 1910), 27.
7. Secretary of State of Michigan. Forty-Third Annual Report of the Secretary of State on the Registration of Births And Deaths Marriages And Divorces in Michigan For The Year 1909. (Lansing, Michigan: Wynkoop Hallenbeck Crawford Co., 1911), 27.
8. Secretary of State of Michigan. Forty-Sixth Annual Report of the Secretary of State on the Registration of Births And Deaths Marriages And Divorces in Michigan For The Year 1912. (Lansing, Michigan: Wynkoop Hallenbeck Crawford Co., 1914), 28.
9. Secretary of State of Michigan. Fifty-First Annual Report of the Secretary of State on the Registration of Births And Deaths Marriages And Divorces in Michigan For The Year 1917. (Lansing, Michigan: Wynkoop Hallenbeck Crawford Co., 1920), 28.
10. Secretary of State of Michigan. Fourteenth Annual Report Relating To The Registry And Return of Births, Marriages And Deaths, In Michigan For The Year 1880, By the Secretary Of State Of The State Of Michigan. (Lansing, Michigan: W.S. George & Co., 1884), 234.
11. Secretary of State of Michigan. Seventeenth Annual Report Relating To The Registry And Return of Births, Marriages And Deaths, In Michigan For The Year 1883, By the Secretary Of State Of The State Of Michigan. (Lansing, Michigan: W.S. George & Co., 1885), 193.
12. Secretary of State of Michigan. Twenty-Second Annual Report Relating To The Registry And Return of Births, Marriages And Deaths, In Michigan For The Year 1888, By the Secretary Of State Of The State Of Michigan. (Lansing, Michigan: Robert Smith & Co., 1890), 154.

Laura Ingalls as Social History

After my bread machine died (see The Daily Bread) and I was forced to finish the bread on my own, I started thinking about how many of my ancestors surely made bread every day to feed their families. For some reason it reminded me of the Little House on the Prairie books, by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I imagine they baked their own bread regularly, and I remember reading about their trips into town to buy big bags of flour, sugar and other staples at the general store. I also recalled reading the Anne of Green Gables books and what daily life was like for her. Though I never realized it at the time, I was reading social history.

I don't know how many young people still read these books or if they consider them hopelessly old-fashioned. To get some sense of this I asked several friends, (some teachers, some not) about it. A couple said that their kids had been exposed to the Little House books at school. Several others said that they had introduced the books to their own children. A twenty-something downloaded the Anne of Green Gables books to her e-reader. A pediatrician friend told me she usually sees kids reading more current selections. I guess it boils down to having teachers and/or parents who continue to see the value in these books. I'm sure it doesn't hurt to have parents who are “book people.” Needless to say, when my daughter gets older I plan to share these stories with her.

Though the ways of life described in these books are vastly different from those of modern generations, I think these books still deserve our attention. After all, the characters and their conflicts are very much like those from the present day. As my mom says “times change, people don't.” Though young people may not make the connection between the lifestyles of Laura and Anne and their own ancestors, they may someday. Or maybe, the family genealogist could mention that Laura's life might not be that different from ggg-grandma's. Who knows, perhaps the story will then mean just a little bit more.

Why Make Floor Plans?

I'm curious to know more about the homes of my ancestors. Are they still standing? What did they look like, inside and out? How many bedrooms did they have? In large families how many kids slept in a single bedroom? I might eventually find answers to some of these questions, but I can make sure that genealogists who come after me have more information at their disposal.

I wish I had more photographs of the interior of the house where I grew up. Naturally, I have some, but they are more about the people than the place. As I no longer have access to the house (and live hours away anyway) acquiring photographs is currently out of the question. What I can do is to draw up a simple floor plan.

Since I lived there, a bedroom and dormer window were added in what used to be the attic. Here's the basic floor plan I drew up. Nothing is to scale because I can't go back and measure, but it provides an idea of what the house was like. It's not much, but it might answer some of my descendant's questions about where I lived over the years. Now I just need to draw up some more of these for other places I have lived and my grandma's house.

The Daily Bread

My bread machine gave out on me a few days ago. I knew it was coming. For the past six months it has been acting flaky. Several times I've had to take the bottom off the machine to unstick the belt so the shaft would spin. Maybe the crusty, black gunk that has been seeping around the shaft had something to do with that. Anyway, the dough had only mixed for about ten minutes when the machine konked out and I detected a faint burning odor. I had to dump the dough out onto a marble slab and knead it myself. Though I'm sure my female ancestors could tell by feel exactly when the dough was ready to raise, I had no clue. I just kneaded it for a while before I plopped it into a loaf pan and stuck it in the microwave with a moist and toasty washcloth to raise for a while. 

While kneading the bread I thought about how spoiled we are by modern conveniences (bread machines, washing machines, dishwashers and electric ranges among other things). Even a toaster, an appliance used daily in my household, was new in the time of Downton Abbey. How different my daily life is from my ancestors'. While I can put my ingredients into a machine, press a button and forget about it until my bread is baked I'm sure many of the women in my tree baked bread by hand every single day. They did that while they kept a constant fire in the stove, cooked three meals a day, boiled their clothes in a big vat to wash them, mended, ironed, etc. etc. I still may not know by feel exactly how long to knead my bread dough, but considering all of the daily chores my appliances save me from, I'm willing to live with a slightly imperfect loaf of bread every now and then.

RIP:
Breadman
2005-2013
Your hundreds of loaves of bread were definitely appreciated (often with just a bit of butter).

Liebster Blog Award

I would like to thank Angie Rodesky for selecting my blog as one of her five Liebster blog picks! (Liebster means "favorite" or "dearest" in German) The premise behind this award is that when you are nominated, you are supposed to answer 11 questions about yourself (chosen by the person who nominated you), and then nominate 5 bloggers with less than 200 readers and provide 11 questions for them to answer.


Here are the questions I was asked to answer:

1.  What is your favorite birthday party memory?
The birthdays I celebrated in high school were the best. My friends came to my house and we hung out in the basement playing games like Pictionary while we snacked on chips and dip. One year we covered the room with straws by shooting little straws through big straws. We still found the occasional straw in that room years later.

2.  What was your first book report about?

Now you're asking me about ancient history. Though I've had to do book reports since grade school, the only one I actually remember writing was on “Heart of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad in high school.

3.  What is your favorite family dish?

I know it's boring, but mashed potatoes and gravy. I always had seconds. I wasn't such a big fan of the squirrel that sometimes appeared on my grandma's table, however.

4.  What do you like to do on a snowy day?

I would like to take my daughter sledding, but on the few occasions when it does snow here there usually isn't much of it and it doesn't last very long.

5.  What was the best job you've ever had and why?

As much as I loved working in a research lab and being the first person to learn how something works, the best job I've had is taking care of my daughter and watching her discover the world.  And when I hear her say "that's really cool" while watching a National Geographic video about dolphins and whales I know I'm on the right track.

6.  What is your favorite holiday?

I've always enjoyed Thanksgiving, particularly in grad school when I invited friends who weren't going home to my apartment for dinner. I enjoyed preparing the food and since the group was varied every year we always had interesting conversations. One year someone even showed slides of his Alaska trip.

7.  Everyone has a hobby or two, what are your hobbies?

I love to read (something I wish I had more time for). I enjoy mysteries, history, science and Jane Austen. I also enjoy planting flowers in the beds around my home. It's a work in progress, but it's fun to see the fruits of my labors and watch the critters they attract.

8.  What is your favorite childhood vacation memory?

I would have to say going to visit the Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza when I was about twelve. It was amazing and an experience I have never forgotten.

9.  What is your favorite board game or card game that you like to play?

It's been a while since I've played it, but I look forward to introducing my daughter to Apples to Apples someday. It's great fun, easy to play and appropriate for everyone who can read.

10.  What is your all-time favorite movie and why?

That's hard to say. It depends on what mood I'm in, but I can say that a movie I enjoy again and again is Pride and Prejudice (with Colin Firth, of course). I recently bought it in Blue-Ray and now I really appreciate the details in the costumes.  I enjoy it because the story is excellent and it is interesting to see that while the times change, people (and how they act) don't.

11.  What is the fondest memory you have of your grandparents?

I loved going “Up North” (near Torch Lake) with my grandparents. I loved listening to the stream gurgling while we read in the evenings. I loved taking walks at night with them when we could really see the stars. We picked morels in the woods and searched for petoskey stones in the gravel pit nearby. It was a peaceful place and I was fortunate to share it with them.


Here are the five blogs I would like to nominate:
http://gensemi.blogspot.com/
http://www.spillingthefamilybeans.com/
http://discoveringyesterday.wordpress.com/
http://celebratingfamilystories.blogspot.com/
http://vanburendistrict.blogspot.com/


Here are my 11 questions for those who wish to participate:

1. How did you get started doing genealogy?
   
2. Do you live near where any of your ancestors lived? How close or far are you?
   
3. What is your least favorite genealogy task? Labeling photos? Sourcing in your genealogy software?
   
4. Who is your most interesting black sheep?
   
5. Have you done any DNA testing and have you found anything interesting?
   
6. Who is your earliest (verified by you) ancestor to cross the pond?
   
7. Who would you most like to break down the brick wall for?
   
8. What have you done to help out the future genealogists in your tree (besides blogging)?
   
9. Which one of your deceased relatives would you most like to have a conversation with and why?
   
10. If you could travel to another country from which your ancestors came, where would you most like to go?
    
11. If you've written family stories, have you shared them with your family? How have they been received?
    

Mapping the Past

Every time I find a new address for one of my people I click to an online mapping program to see where it is. Is the house still there? What did it look like? How far was it from the house they lived in the previous year? Was it across town or just around the corner? Where was it in relation to other relatives' homes or to the person's place of business? I want to be able to see all of these things at once. Now, I have a way to get the big picture. I asked my mom if she happened to have an old map of Kalamazoo. Luckily, she did. Now I have begun marking the map to indicate where my people lived and worked.

I started with the low hanging fruit. I copied the known addresses for my ancestors (and some of their kin in whom I am interested) into a spread sheet along with their years in residence. Borrowing my daughter's markers I selected a color for each person/family. Using an online mapping program I then began to mark my map. This is a work in progress, but here's a photograph of what I have so far.

For me this is a qualitative project. Sometimes I may not be able to easily identify the exact house (assuming houses still exist at the specified location) because house numbers changed at least once in Kalamazoo (for more on that and Kalamazoo street name changes see my post). If a house number changed by only a few numbers it won't change the big picture. If I want to know exactly which house my family lived in I'll need to do some more work in historic maps and/or city directories.

As with anything else, mapping the past requires a certain amount of common sense. When an address seems to be too far outside of downtown red flags start popping up in my head. This could indicate that the street name has changed. Opening a historical map of Kalamazoo can often solve that issue (a few are available at www.kalamazoogenealogy.org).

I have also run into another problem with online mapping. According to Google maps, 521 E. Main St. and 517 W. Main St. are in the same place. Clearly, that wasn't correct. The key was realizing that Main street changes to E. Michigan Ave, but at the turn of the last century it was still E. Main St. A quick check of the street index in the 1899 city directory confirmed the location. Problem solved.

In addition to street name changes, other features may have altered since our ancestor's time. For instance, I noticed that Dan Harrigan's property on Portage (just north of Harrigan court) used to back up to one of two mill ponds (apparently long since drained). The mill ponds were just north and south of Lake street east of Portage. I added those to my map as well.

More Newspapers Online at the KPL

Several additional Kalamazoo area newspapers have now been digitized and can be searched at the Kalamazoo Public Library website (click here to go directly to the search page). They are listed under Miscellaneous Kalamazoo Publications. While I cannot personally verify that all issues are in the database, given the limited run of these papers I would be surprised if they weren't. The following papers are now available for perusal.

Kalamazoo Advocate:               Dec. 30, 1921 to Jun. 30, 1922

Kalamazoo Evening News:        Apr. 1, 1898 to Mar. 20, 1900

Kalamazoo Evening Press:        Feb. 9, 1909 to May 13, 1911

Kalamazoo Star:                       Oct. 9, 1921 to Dec. 31, 1921

The People:                              Mar. 7, 1918 to Jun. 8, 1922

Trench & Camp (Fort Custer):   Oct. 22, 1917 to Nov. 14, 1918

Publication dates come from the KPL website.

I want to thank the Kalamazoo Public Library for all they do. In this age of belt-tightening the fact that they continue to devote staff and money to promoting Kalamazoo history (and making it available online) speaks to their commitment to the community.

*Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with the library. I'm just a fan.