Life And Death in the 19th Century

Kathy B. Lauder          

As you explore the Nashville City Cemetery website*, you will come across a link to 19th century City Cemetery burial records that have been made available through the Nashville Public Library.  Not only do the records list the name, age, gender, race, and date of death of most individuals buried in the cemetery, but they may also include the cause of death -- data that can prove both startling and informative.

A careful reader will notice how profoundly medical terminology has changed since the 19^th century, largely because of improved diagnostic procedures. Many older terms (some of which were sublimely imprecise!) have simply fallen out of fashion. For example, among the more frequently listed causes of death in the mid-1800s are apoplexy, or softening of the brain (cerebral hemorrhage or stroke); dropsy (edema or congestive heart failure); catarrh (influenza, the croup, or even a common cold); consumption (tuberculosis); marasmus (a general term for diseases of infants and children, including malnutrition, rickets, and tuberculosis); flux or dysentery (intestinal inflammation); scrofula, or the King’s evil (tuberculosis of the lymphatic glands, particularly those in the neck); la grippe (influenza); mortification (gangrene, which killed an alarming number of small boys); and erysipelas, or St. Anthony’s Fire (a streptococcal infection typified by severe inflammation of the skin or mucous membranes).

A few illnesses appeared so frequently at certain times of the year, they were named for the associated seasons: winter fever was simply pneumonia.  The summer complaint (Cholera infantum) was food poisoning caused by improperly stored food, especially milk and meats.

Many once-fatal diseases have largely been eliminated.  Today’s children are routinely vaccinated against the childhood diseases of their parents and grandparents: measles, mumps, and chicken pox.  Other deadly diseases swept through 19^th century communities in frightening epidemics.  Five thousand Memphis residents died of yellow fever in 1878, but vaccination has proved greatly effective against it in recent times.  Cholera, spread by contaminated water and poor hygiene, killed nearly 1,500 people a year in New Orleans alone in the early 1850s but can now be successfully treated if diagnosed early.  (Hundreds of people in the Nashville City Cemetery died of cholera.) As many as 17,000 American children died of diphtheria each year before a vaccine was developed in the early 1900s; today, however, diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough), and tetanus (lockjaw) are seldom found anywhere in the industrialized world, thanks to infant vaccination programs. Smallpox, which killed up to 500 million people during the 20^th century, is now considered to be completely eradicated.  Polio, which peaked in the 1940s and 1950s, paralyzing and killing over half a million people throughout the world each year, has now been virtually eliminated from the Western Hemisphere.           

Some of the “diseases” named in the burial registers tell their own sad tales: childbed; smothered (tragically common among infants, who often slept in beds with family members); found dead in a well (11-year-old); hung himself (12-year-old slave boy); kicked by a horse (young woman, 18); burned by accident (6-year-old girl); and found dead at wash landing (infant).  Spelling can often be a challenge: dispepsey, feever, numonia, stabed, appoleptick, and dearhaera are all found in these records.

High on the list of common causes of infant death in the mid-19^th century were teething and hives, where the diagnosis mistook a symptom for the illness. Other entries leave us wishing for just a little bit more information: complicated, died in Virginia, intemperance, cramp, and the blithely simplistic “died suddenly.” And, of course, there are always a few items on the list that simply mystify us: worms, insanity, gravel in blades, found dead on Tower Island, and shot by Judson.  Anyone who takes a look at the City Cemetery burial records will discover a compelling chronicle of life and death in earlier times.   

*   http://www.thenashvillecitycemetery.org/

Photograph of the Robertson family graves at Nashville City Cemetery by Kathy Lauder.

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