I ask because I happened upon the website of the old west ghost town (Rhyolite, Nevada). Rhyolite’s cemetary contains the grave of people who died before the town was abadoned (ca. 1912), and provides some insights. If you look, I’d say that most people died before age 50-there were only a handful of people that lived into their 70’s or 80’s.
Being a mining town, probably there were a lot of accidental deaths-still, anybody know how long you could expect to live in that era?
If these are “life expectancy at birth” figures, they’ll be misleading. The high infant mortality figures in those days skewed the average downwards. If you survived your first two years you had an excellent chance of making it to 50-plus.
People could live to be old, but the odds were against it, not even counting infant mortality. The biggest factor may have been the lack of antibiotics; people routinely died from infections like pneumonia that could easily be knocked out today. Tuberculosis was common. There was virtually zero effective treatment for short-term crisis like shock, renal failure or heart arrythmia. As a figure pulled out of m* a**, I’d say about two-thirds as many people lived from 60 to 65 as do today, and the curve dropped off even more steeply thereafter.
One thing that stikes up modern people as odd is that in the Good Old Days, women had shorter lives than men. Childbirth and all that. Those who got to 40 or so could look forward to a long life, but comparatively few made it that far.
I’ve just been looking into industrian revolution England and found that in 1840, the wealthy lived to 44, artisans and tradespersons 27, and the labourers, 19!
Yup this was very much down to filthy water, and poor air quality along with inadequate heating all exacerbated by slum housing, as this spread disease right out to even the wealthiest individuals.
It makes sense to me that US survival rates would tend to be better without these cramped conditions.
I think this is borne out by those old fairy tales that featured a “wicked stepmother”. Why no “wicked stepfathers”? Because it was much more common for the wife to die young, leaving the husband with the kids and the need/desire to remarry.
Ditto old stories that include a king and his children, with no queen in sight.
Nowadays we may read these stories and ask, “Where’s mom?”, but at the time they were written it was par for the course.
About 20 years ago a distant cousin published an exhaustive genealogy of the family, and there are numerous examples of mothers who died in childbirth after already having several kids. What did the fathers do? Almost invariably, remarry and have several more children. It’s what you did back then, especially if you were a farmer, it seems.
If it was an old mining town, it seems you’d get people moving in, working for a time and then moving away. After a certain age, you’d leave anyway. My wife’s great grandmother for example, rode a wagon train west and then, after her husband died, rode a wagon train back east again. The graveyard only records the people who died in town.
I’ve always been more curious what the life expectancy at 14 (to pick an age) was rather than the life expectancy at birth. The huge amount of infant mortality and early childhood death is going to skew the life expectancy otherwise. How long could a wealthy man in his 20’s expect to live for example?
Territory of Nevada, Age Distribution, 1900 U.S. Census
Age — Number of residents
100 — 6
99 — 2
98 — 3
97 — 1
96 — 3
95 — 11
94 — 3
93 — 0
92 — 2
91 — 2
90 — 31
89 — 4
88 — 5
87 — 8
86 — 4
85 — 18
84 — 10
83 — 13
82 — 11
81 — 15
80 — 87
79 — 26
78 — 40
77 — 39
76 — 60
75 — 119
74 — 83
73 — 98
72 — 107
71 — 121
70 — 270
69 — 167
68 — 174
67 — 209
66 — 223
65 — 313
66 — 215
63 — 270
62 — 277
61 — 249
60 — 553
59 — 294
58 — 274
57 — 264
56 — 351
55 — 488
54 — 356
53 — 396
52 — 435
51 — 376
50 — 751
49 — 418
48 — 499
47 — 439
46 — 474
45 — 711
44 — 457
43 — 437
42 — 563
41 — 465
40 — 876
39 — 519
38 — 637
37 — 500
36 — 605
35 — 882
Total population: 47,322
The clusters around ages that are multiples of 5 (35, 40, 45, etc.) suggest that there was a significant amount of guessing or rounding of ages.
6 100 year olds seemed awful high, but according to Wikipedia there are 55000 centenarians alive today in a nation of 300 million. I think that works out to 8 in a population of 47000. Interesting.
Thanks for posting this!
As I said, there appears to have been a lot of rounding around ages that are multiples of 5, including 100. The actual number of centenarians in Nevada in 1900 was probably between 1 and 3.
That would be 2 then, right? 
I wonder how the mortality in Rhyolite was affected by thistwo factors:
-Rhyolite was a mining town-mining was VERY dangerous. There were no EMTs, and a mining accident could result in many early deaths.
-Rhyolite had a huge number of bars/saloons (relative to its population), drinking was a major pastime for off-duty miners. The drnking may have lead to violence as well.
All in all, Rhyolite was not a very healthy place-as was Nevada as a whole.
Ah yes, those white haired, arthritic 19-year olds, with cataracts and hardening of the arteries. Shows what a hard life can do. :rolleyes: