Cause of death query

[Just Gillian]

The deceased, a nine year old boy, died in the workhouse in Scotland in 1875.
I read the cause of death as General Paralysis, 6 months.

The only disease I can think of which would cause paralysis in children is polio. Can anyone please tell me if there are other possibilities?

[Lyn A]

Syphillis, Menigitis, Spinal cord injury, brain injury, brain tumour?

[Guest]

isnt that sad??? poor little boy

[Just Gillian]

Hi Lyn!

Thanks for those ideas. I was surprised the surgeon didn't enlarge on the cause of death.

[Just Gillian]

Val - it is sad. He was born in the Cape of Good Hope but his mother was back in Scotland, widowed, by 1871. She herself died before 1877 in her thirties.

What was even sadder was that the other two entries on the page were for a 40 year old woman and her three month old daughter - both drowned in the River Forth at 2.00 a.m. The poor widower/father was the informant. I wondered if it was postnatal depression.

[Lyn A]

Gillian do you have his mothers cause of death? I would strongly suspect Syphilis for all of them.
If it was syphilis, the Dr may have felt sorry for the poor mite and refrained from adding the telling "of the Insane".

[Just Gillian]

Lyn - I haven't been able to find the mother's or father's death on Scotland's People at all. They were married in Stirling in 1853 but she is in Glasgow in 1871. The eldest son married in Glasgow in 1877, by which time she was deceased. The second son later married in Stirling. So, I don't even know whether she'd be more likely to have died in Lanark or Stirlingshire.

The father was variously described as a joiner, ship's carpenter and soldier on various certs. He doesn't appear on any census and I'm guessing he may have died in S. Africa where the second and third children were born.

The youngest child - the one who died of paralysis above - was not listed as imbecile in 1871 but I have no idea when symptoms of syphilis would first manifest themselves in a child.

[Lyn A]

Lyn - I haven't been able to find the mother's or father's death on Scotland's People at all. They were married in Stirling in 1853 but she is in Glasgow in 1871. The eldest son married in Glasgow in 1877, by which time she was deceased. The second son later married in Stirling. So, I don't even know whether she'd be more likely to have died in Lanark or Stirlingshire.

The father was variously described as a joiner, ship's carpenter and soldier on various certs. He doesn't appear on any census and I'm guessing he may have died in S. Africa where the second and third children were born.

The youngest child - the one who died of paralysis above - was not listed as imbecile in 1871 but I have no idea when symptoms of syphilis would first manifest themselves in a child.

I didn't realize that there were more children...she must have married quite young...but assumed that all 3 deaths were relatively close...1870-1877ish. Sorry, I shouldn't assume!!

I do not know how long it takes for the insanity to manifest, but I know that my gran's 2nd husband died of it and they married in May 1910, had children in 1911, 1913 & 1915 and he died in the Asylum in Oct 1915. I am sure that he wouldn't have been showing those type of symptoms for too long.

[Just Gillian]

How tragic Lyn! I had thought that syphilis was relatively easy to treat by WW1. Did the children of the second marriage survive?

Yes, there were 3 sons I know of from the 1871 - but I don't know if there might have been other births and deaths in S. Africa before or after the youngest one.

There are too many possible variations of the mother's surname to narrow down a death for her. I may have to look out for someone going to Edinburgh House who could do a look-up as the time-frame is quite narrow.

[Lyn A]

How tragic Lyn! I had thought that syphilis was relatively easy to treat by WW1. Did the children of the second marriage survive?

Yes 2 of the 3 did. I always wondered how gran survived it.........she was 90 when she died. ;)

[Just Gillian]

Amazing that she did - especially as his illness must have been quite advanced by the time she had the third child of that marriage. Obviously hardy stock!

[Olde Crone Holden]

There was no effective treatment, and certainly no cure, for syphilis until just before WW2, with the advent of penicllin and M & B.

The problem with syphilis is that the symptoms go away for many years and the sufferer thinks they have been cured by some quack potion. By the time it manifests in the tertiary stage it is untreatable and incurable.

That is, of course, if they knew they had it. Many wives were supremely unaware of the very existence of syphilis.

However, a child born with congenital syphilis would be very easy to spot even to the uninitiated, and a doctor would certainly know. Sufferers of congenital syphilis do not die of general paralysis and are not normally afflicted by it.

Since the advent of the national health service, all pregnant women have been routinely tested for syphilis. Servicemen and women also used to be routinely and repeatedly tested but I don't know if that still applies today.

OC

[Just Gillian]

Thanks OC.

I had mistakenly assumed that syphilis was treatable on the basis of a WW1 soldier's medical record which stated that he had syphilis. I know he died in the 1960s of cancer so presumably he must have had treatment for the syphilis some time after the late 30s. (But I will now go and check the medical records again in case I have been maligning him and misinterpreted the script!)

[Olde Crone Holden]

JG

I think they used to treat soldiers with mercury compounds, but these were completely ineffective.

The duration of syphilis can be anything upto 50 years, from first infection to death and has many years of symptomless dormancy.

In 2001, the fifth commonest cause of death in this country was from syphilis, far higher than AIDS has ever been, or will be.

OC