Census records are one of many genealogical resources that I utilize to bring you full accounts of Berks County’s architectural history. They help me confirm who lived in any given residence, and also provide context into their age, familial makeup and employment. While browsing some of Reading’s 1900 census records recently I noticed two boxes for the first time.

They are labeled, “Mother of how many children” and “Number of these children living“. My initial reaction (as a woman) was to consider how personal and invasive of a question that was with the intention to be made public record. However as a historian living 125 years in the future, I am grateful for the insight, however morbid it may be, into bearing children and navigating childhood mortality at that time.

In 1900 there were 165 infant deaths for every 1000 live births. If you managed to get past infancy, there was a 20% chance you would die before your 5th birthday. There are many factors which contributed to this including unsanitary conditions; mainly water supply and nutrition, which were generally socioeconomic-based problems. However, easily the most prevalent cause of childhood deaths around the turn of the 20th century were infectious diseases, the leading being pneumonia, tuberculosis, diarrhea and diphtheria.

If you consider these overall childhood mortality rate statistics in the terms of my daughter’s modern K-4th grade elementary school with roughly 500 total children enrolled; that means 100 – about 20 students per grade, five students per classroom would have died before being old enough to start Kindergarten. Pneumonia alone would account for two of them per class. Public health advancements into the century helped tremendously, and the introduction of antibiotics and vaccines changed the outlook forever.

To further understand motherhood at the time I crunched numbers from Reading’s 9th ward in the 1900 census. This section of the 9th ward was bounded by 7th, Buttonwood, 10th and Walnut Streets. I chose this section because it seemed to be comprised of typical working class people. The records indicate resident employment compromised of careers like shoemakers, barbers, laborers and bakers. Over the course of the 24 pages included in this census, I found that there were 243 mothers (of all ages) in the data set who had given birth to 1045 children. Out of those birthed children 720 were living at the time of the recording of the census. This means, that 31% had died before that point. Not all of them were children, that includes adult children as well. Additionally, I calculated a sobering reality; out of the 243 Mothers, 122 or 50% had lost at least one child.

In September 1909 the Tuberculosis Aid Society of Berks County fundraised for “the establishment of a sanatorium in which to care for and cure victims of the scourge of the nation, the “White Plague“. Many wealthy and well known citizens took part in giving, including automobile manufacturer Charles Duryea, donated to the cause. These illnesses didn’t discriminate and took the lives of members of both wealthy and poor families alike. According to a 1909 Reading Times article, 1 in 40 people suffered from TB, with one death recorded every five minutes at that time. The organization raised $20,000 that day and was donated the former Centennial Springs hotel on Neversink Mountain. It opened officially as the Neversink Mountain Tuberculosis Sanatorium shortly after new year 1910 under the management of Dr. A. N. Rothrock.

The hospital operated until the early 1930s, and was abandoned for quite a few years before being demolished by the County in 1935. Like Pneumonia, Tuberculosis saw sharp decrease in cases by 1930, mainly due to advancements in treatment and improvement in socioeconomic conditions.

Diphtheria was one of the most dreaded childhood diseases at its peak in the mid-late 1800s. One out of every ten children infected would die of the disease by the way of suffocation as a false membrane would build around the child’s larynx and block their airway. In the 1880s Dr. Joseph O’Dwyer discovered he could manually intubate patients as a way of keeping their larynx from being engulfed by the membrane. Before that, the only method of treatment was a tracheotomy. Keep in mind that both of these treatment methods predated modern anesthesiology. The vaccine for Diphtheria was first developed in the 1890s, but was not widely used until the 1920s. Today it is considered to be virtually eliminated due to generations of widespread vaccination against it.

Scrolling through these endless census pages now I see the discrepancies between the numbers. I have heard theories that Victorian era women were somehow less attached to their children due to knowing the reality of childhood death rates. An absolutely ridiculous notion as anyone who has ever been a mother knows – we are biologically programmed to prioritize the wellbeing of our children. To lose any, let alone as many as some of these women did must have been excruciating.

Only in relatively recent times has childhood been viewed as a whimsical experience that many of us look back on with fondness and comfort. Let us not forget that for most of human existence childhood is something we have merely survived.