Reading the Regency

The Regency Way of Death

"...you are to know that your rich relation, Sir George Penruddock, is deceas'd"
"Dead!"
"Defunct; gone to his ancestors; whipp'd away by the sudden stroke of an apoplexy; this moment here, Heaven knows where the next: Death will do it when he likes, and how he likes; I need not remind you, Sir, who are so learned a philosopher, how frail the tenure of mortality"
[The Wheel of Fortune, a Comedy, by Richard Cumberland Esq., pub 1795]

Whether by age, accident or illness, death was as familiar two hundred years ago as it is to us today. However, people's experience of death in the Regency period was slightly different.

Infant mortality was far higher than in the present time, and it was not uncommon for a man to lose a wife following childbirth. Illnesses that are now controlled with vaccines, like measles, claimed thousands of lives a year. Riding or carriage accidents were frequent occurrences, and a lack of health and safety regulations made industrial occupations, like mining and building, particularly hazardous.

Between 1600 and 1820, the cause of each death in London was recorded and collated yearly into documents known as the Bills of Mortality. This provided statistics that could alert the government to any sudden changes or worrying trends. It began life as an early warning system for the plague.

According to the Bills of Mortality for the year December 1811 to December 1812, there were 18,295 burials. The most common age to die in that period was under 2 years, with 5,636 deaths. The next age group was children aged 2-5 years, with 1,907 deaths, closely followed by the 30-40 year age range, which recorded 1,847 deaths. The oldest person to die that year lived to 102 years.

The most common cause of death was consumption (4,942) followed by convulsions (3,530) and old age. (1,550) Among the other causes was smallpox, (1,287) asthma, (639) and measles, (427) while one hundred and fifty-two women died during childbirth.

Surprisingly, considering the violent image of the London rookeries of the Regency period, there were only eleven murders, twenty-three drownings, twenty-eight suicides and six executions in that year. One person died of a broken heart.

If the death was as a result of a crime or accident, or if the reason was unknown, there was usually an investigation and an Inquest to decide on the exact cause of death and whether anyone else was responsible.

During an inquest, usually held at a local inn, a Coroner would hear evidence from those who witnessed the events surrounding the event. After hearing all the evidence he would give his verdict, as this example shows:

"On Wednesday night last, an Inquest was held at the General Hill Tavern, Wellington Street, Chelsea, before Thos. Sterling, Esq., on the body of Captain George Hudson, of the East India Company's service, who put a period to his own existence, in a fit of love despondency. - Verdict - Insanity."
[Morning Post, Monday 8th June 1818]

The most common place to die was at home, surrounded by your friends and family.

Jane Austen died at 8 College Street, Winchester, on 18th July 1817. The Austen family had rented the house so she could be close to a more experienced medical practitioner during her final illness. She passed away in the presence of her sister Cassandra, who recorded the melancholy events in a letter to her niece a few days later:

"I cannot say how soon afterwards she was seized again with the same faintness, which was followed by the sufferings she could not describe; but Mr. Lyford had been sent for, had applied something to give her ease, and she was in a state of quiet insensibility by seven o'clock at the latest. From that time till half-past four, when she ceased to breathe, she scarcely moved a limb, so that we have every reason to think, with gratitude to the Almighty, that her sufferings were over. A slight motion of the head with every breath remained till almost the last. I sat close to her with a pillow in my lap to assist in supporting her head, which was almost off the bed, for six hours; fatigue made me then resign my place to Mrs. J. A. for two hours and a half, when I took it again, and in about an hour more she breathed her last.