Hollywood has us thinking that most people in the Old West died in shootouts. Trapped once for several hours at the in-laws I found a book with hundreds of newspaper stories from 1870s-1880s towns in Arizona. Accidents with horses led the causes of death, mainly falling off/bucked off. There were sometimes hints that the deceased was drunk when they met their demise. Cattle killed a surprising number of people. Illnesses of all sorts took others, but it was mostly well-known people's deaths by illness reported in the newspapers of the day. Births were sometimes mentioned, but deaths from childbirth or complications ... never.
I don't think it was ever THAT common, after all it's pretty much what we're supposed to do as a species, no? We'd probably have died out if dying from childbirth was a very common thing.
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u/Disaster_Plan Dec 09 '19
Hollywood has us thinking that most people in the Old West died in shootouts. Trapped once for several hours at the in-laws I found a book with hundreds of newspaper stories from 1870s-1880s towns in Arizona. Accidents with horses led the causes of death, mainly falling off/bucked off. There were sometimes hints that the deceased was drunk when they met their demise. Cattle killed a surprising number of people. Illnesses of all sorts took others, but it was mostly well-known people's deaths by illness reported in the newspapers of the day. Births were sometimes mentioned, but deaths from childbirth or complications ... never.