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General => The Common Room => Topic started by: Lemontree on Sunday 14 February 10 10:27 GMT (UK)
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what is decline?
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I suspect it just means the ageing process - increasing physical frailty, perhaps the onset of mental issues like dementia.
MarieC
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It may also be just that the person's health declined over a period of time for no reason that was understood, until they died.
In 1841 the death did not have to be certified by a doctor, so if the family were not well off (and could not pay a doctor), there may never have been a qualified medical opinion as to the person's condition.
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Decline; Any disease in which the bodily strength gradually fails; esp. tubercular phthisis, consumption. OED
Stan
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Hi
My 3xgreat grandfather died of decline in 1854 aged 39. At that young age he probably had phthisis or even cancer as cancer was harder to diagnose in those days or even a several mental illness which lead to other bodily illnesses.
Ben
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thank you all for your answers ;D
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as my last query was deleted, can I ask again about terms and conditions please?
(in relation to discussing potentially living people)
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This is not just a cause of death historically, I knew a lady who died in 2001, the cause of death given simply as old age. Amounts to the same thing as decline shown on historic death certificates.
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Hi Stone931
I didn't see your post that you say has been deleted, but this provides a useful guideline on RC about posting regarding potentially living people:
Please do not post requests asking for help to find (possibly) living relatives or friends.
RootsChat is a forum for searching for ancestors. Anything posted on the internet is in the public domain where anybody can see this information. To protect people and their identities we do not encourage the posting of information about people who are or maybe still living.
Even with permission from the subject of a post we would seriously advise against giving too much information as to betray their identity.
You can find some tips for searching for living people on these RootsChat topics:
RootsChat Topic: Searching for living relatives and Rootschat
RootsChat Topic: Tracing Living Relatives
www.rootschat.com/help/posting_guide.php
Monica
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General debility can also be another term for decline.
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My grandmother "declined".
Her daughter, who was a nurse thought her symptoms were similar to what we now call MS (multiple sclerosis).
It was not a known illness when my grandmother died - it became officially called MS about 20 years later.
I think a lot of illnesses would have been like that back then
>:(
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Hi
My ancestor Thomas Brain was an ag labourer in 1851. He was aged 36. He then died in December 1854 of decline. I do think it was some major disease such as MS, TB or cancer.
Ben
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I have several young people who died in their twenties of "decline". Have always thought it was a euphemisum for TB which was epidemic mid 1800s,
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TB was also termed as consumption, phthisis and pulmonary TB.
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TB was well known, the problem was it was incurable. I have this gem from a tombstone of an ancestor of my wife's: "A pale consumption struck the final blow, the disease was fatal but the end came slow!"
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My great, great grandfather Thomas Roberts second wife died in November 1863 of "Phthisis, years, certified".
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Update on my ancestor. Thomas Brain died of phthisis pulmonaris on the 10th December 1854 in Bletchingdon, Oxfordshire. The cert said he had it for 6 years. So he must have been suffering quite badly. The burial says decline so what it meant was he had phthisis. When he died at least he was finally at rest. His wife died in June 1848 of consumption and bronchitis. He must have caught it when she died.
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Thank goodness it is now treatable ! I had it when I was 13 ... and I'm still here ! But I can vouch for it being a nasty debilitating disease ... coughing all the time, weakness, exhausted, no energy, no will to do anything ...
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Imagine having it for 6 years? Thomas must have had a hard time. He is on the 1851 census as a labourer. Yet if he died in 1854 after 6 years would he have carried on working until he was not fit to work any more?
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My wife's great grandfather who unfortunately for researchers was called John Smith was born in 1837 at Penistone South Yorks. He owned and worked a cattle farm at Clayton nr Doncaster. He contracted bovine tuberculosis from his cattle, and declined and died between 1865 and 1872. His demise caused this memorial to be placed in Clayton churchyard: "A pale consumption struck the final blow, the disease was fatal, but the end came slow" To be that sounds somewhat in the Victorian Gothick tradition!
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They probably escalated in the last 18 months or so before death, although it may depend. Some people may have been laid up for longer before dying. I await any further opinions of the process of TB as it is very interesting.
I did hear that medicines just smoothed the path to the grave.
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When I joined the railway industry in 1956 TB was still in the population, A mass X Ray unit came to the depot annually and X rayed the staff. There was usually at least one had TB out of a staff totalling 300 approx.
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TB was one of the biggest killers. It must have been hard for people who had it long term. I suppose the cold autumn of 1854 took its toll on Thomas and he died after 6 years suffering.
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My mother's father died of TB in his 40's in 1925. I have the letters he wrote, in pencil, from the sanitorium they sent him to, promising my grandmother that he would be a better man to her when he got home (he was one of those fellows who spent all his wages down the pub, I think)
He did come home. But died soon afterwards.
They are very poignant letters, as you will imagine
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My great grandmother died in 1953 and one of the causes was a tubercular kidney.
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Wasn't TB called the white death in the north of England in the mid 19th C?
charlotte
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The book "The White Death: A History of Tuberculosis" by Thomas Dormandy is available
Stan
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That books looks like it will be a very interesting read.
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This is not just a cause of death historically, I knew a lady who died in 2001, the cause of death given simply as old age. Amounts to the same thing as decline shown on historic death certificates.
You didn't have to be old to die of decline, my ancestor was 45.
I received my first "Old Age" death last week.
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In 1953 as a youngster of about 12, I started coughing up blood and was rushed to outpatients where I was tested for tuberculosis with a horrendous hyperdermic gadget which when depressed pushed about 6 - 8 needles (it felt like more than that) into my arm. I was given the all clear. But in 1957 a friend had been conscripted into the army to do his National Service and had only been there few weeks when he had his medical and was immediately hospitalised because what he thought was a bit of 'flu had been diagnosed as tuberculosis. He was sent to a sanitorium in southern England for 18 months. In those days the treatment was fresh air, and all the patients beds were wheeled out of the wards every day come rain or shine.
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The TB virus was discovered by Robert Koch in 1882 in which he won a Nobel prize.
Before then, I think people suspected it was contagious but didn't know for sure. I wonder what it was like for the spouse of someone suffering lingering TB? Must have been hard.
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A couple of things about TB -
it's not caused by a virus, it's cause by a bacterium. That may seem like splitting hairs but it isn't, not least because antibiotics don't work for viruses but there are now antobiotics against TB (of course those didn't exist for our 19th century ancestors!)
Coombs, your ancestor was unlikely to have picked up TB from his wife 6 years before he died. It was much more likely that they both had it from childhood. In many people, a primary infection of TB can die down and be dormant for a long time - even decades - before flaring up again. Some people do die during the primary infection, many never go on to develop the fatal form of the illness, but one important feature of TB is that it's a prolonged, indolent disease -- and that's probably why it's so widespread in the developing world now and in the overcrowded Victorian slums then. The TB bacterium is hugely successful in evolutionary terms - it kills its host very slowly, or not at all, which affords it ample opportunity to be passed on.
Nowadays, most TB sufferers in developed countries have the infection in the lung but it can spread to any part of the body. The bones, urinary system, gut, skin and brain are particularly likely to be affected, as well as the lymph nodes of course. "Pott's disease" was TB of the spine, for example. "Scrofula" described swollen TB lymph nodes int he neck. TB in the gut often came from drinking milk from cows which were infected. TB meningitis tended to affect young children and was often shown on Victorina death certs as "hydrocephalus" - it killed over the space of weeks or months rather than the hours that we associate with deadly meningitis these days.
TB is still a killer for huge parts of the world.
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ps an ancestor of mine died of "a gradual decay of nature" in 1840, but she was about 95 years old!
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Hi Ann
So Thomas may have had it since childhood but it lay dormant before flaring up again 6 years before he died? Sorry if I am a bit muffled on this subject anyway.
Ben
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So Thomas may have had it since childhood but it lay dormant before flaring up again 6 years before he died
Yes, that's quite likely :)
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ps an ancestor of mine died of "a gradual decay of nature" in 1840, but she was about 95 years old!
Clearly not TB I would have thought. My wife's mother died in 2001, just 9 years ago as now. The cause of death shown on the certificate was "Old age" She was 94.
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I agree, I doubt the 95 year old would have died of TB - I was simply offering it as an anecdote to add to the "decline" sories.
It's only quite recently, ie over the last few years, whereby it's been legally acceptable to put "old age" as a cause of death on certificates again. For a long time, it seemed that everydeath certificate had to specify a pin-pointable disease as the cause of death, and I'm sure that we all know elderly folk for whom the end wasn't like that - they just quietly faded away.
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I recall a news story a few years ago where a pathologist c arried out pm examinations on 2 90 year old men. He had problems with both, in one case it was which of several conditions had actually been fatal, in the other, why the person had died. I would suggest the cause "old age" originates from this type of situation. Common sense being shown here.
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I have just recieved the death cert of an ancestor. He must have been in pain as he died of rheumatism, heart disease and dropsy. :o
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Coombs, don't get too caught up in imagining what your ancestors may have gone through! Yes, he may have been in pain - but sadly, that's how life was back in the days when the only decent painkillers were laudanum and/or alcohol.
I suspect that people had a much higher pain threshold in those days simply because they had to put up with so much.
BTW, "dropsy" is a symptom of heart disease - still around today but under a different name - it simply means that he was retaining fluid because of the heart disease (think swollen ankles!) One of the commoner causes of this in the "good old days" was rheumatic fever. How old was your ancestor when he died?
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Annie talks about TB of the spine. That was most interesting and thanks :)
I've just reread " The Spire" by William Golding and in it the protagonist suffers warmth and pain- presumably infection- in his spine over decades. He finally succumbs to TB and dies.By then his spine is raw and supporating. A dreadful picture.. The book is set in late 13th C
charlotte
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Most interesting - thanks Annie for the information you provided! I've an ancestor whose death was supposedly due to dropsy - much clearer now what it was!
According to my elderly aunt, one of my ggrandmothers was told before she left England for Australia that wearing red flannel underwear would protect her against TB. She religiously wore it through all the heat of Australian summers, all her life! (ugh!) It seems as though the family had a fear of TB but I unfortunately haven't discovered which of my ancestors may have had it. If only I could find my disappearing gggrandfather (this lady's father), maybe I would find it was he who had TB!
Annie, I have another ancestor, a waterman from the East End of London, whose death cert (he died in 1847 aged only 41) gave the cause of death as "disease of the brain". I know there is no definitive answer to this, but have you any idea what might have been classified as "disease of the brain" in 1847??
MarieC
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Marie, I wish I did because I've got more than one ancestor who apparently suffered from the same thing at arond the same time. It must have been another of those catch-all phrases.
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Two possibilities spring to mind 1) Some type of brain tumour. 2) Some type of mental illness, but unless there is further evidence of some type impossible to say.
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Annie my ancestor was 73 when he died. Yes they did have a higher threshold but it was still probably hard for relatives.
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Marie, I wish I did because I've got more than one ancestor who apparently suffered from the same thing at arond the same time. It must have been another of those catch-all phrases.
Thought you might say something like that, Annie! It was just a question asked in desperate hope. There are many possibilities that I can think of, and I'll never know. I haven't seen any cases of "disease of the brain" in his descendants - of course I don't want to, but if there HAD been something it might have been a clue... ::) :-\
MarieC
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On 'disease of the brain'...
Two possibilities spring to mind 1) Some type of brain tumour. 2) Some type of mental illness, but unless there is further evidence of some type impossible to say.
Meningitis might be another candidate, especially if the final illness is listed as acute on the certificate (i.e. days rather than weeks/months/years).
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Don't forget the nowadays v rare causes of "diseases of the brain" which were much commoner in those days -- TB meningitis, as previously mentioned; or brain abscess, spreading from untreated ear or lung infections.
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My great, great, great grandmother died in 1886 of pericarditis, bronchitis and erysipelas.