History stuffs

[chocolatepot]

While I was looking through files about wedding dresses yesterday I came across a good number of names and dates - wedding dresses generally have good provenances, sometimes with family trees. And the ones with dates showed people of the same age at marriage, which I find interesting as there's the whole trope of young women marrying older men. Exaggerated into bad/desperate parents trying to get an 18yo girl to marry a 40yo man, but represented normally with a six or seven year difference. And I find the same similar ages (or older women) on my Ancestry tree. (Examples are birth years of couples, shown m/f.)

1928/1930. 1891/1884. 1902/1902. 1904/1903. 1875/1875. 1876/1872. 1873/1877. 1872/1873. 1848/1849. 1850/1844. 1849/1851. 1808/1808. 1797/1794. 1790/1794. 1771/1771. 1771/1773. 1786/1788. 1754/1758. 1746/1745. 1720/1722. 1715/1717. 1709/1710. 1709/1708. 1703/1703. 1696/1700. 1682/1685. 1681/1680. 1673/1673. 1668/1667. 1645/1648. 1632/1636. 1600/1580. 1600/1564.

I mean, my point's not that everything is a lie!!! because there are plenty of examples of five-to-ten year age differences, and even a handful of "whoa, seriously, he was HOW MUCH older than her?" (1845/1863, 1824/1845, 1617/1636.) It probably does average out to the stereotypical 6-7 year age difference. What I'm saying is, it's worth a thought. ETA: I'm also noting how old many of the women were when they died - I'm not noticing many deaths in childbirth. I mean, my grandmother is 82 this year. Her mother lived to be 93. Going back maternally, the ages run: unknown, 84, 80, 64. (The next one has no given death date and I can't find her parents.) The ages do tend to go down as you go further back in time, but there are still plenty living into their 70s and 80s in the 18th and 17th centuries. (Supposedly even a 119yo - Elizabeth Tyrer, 1571-1690 - but who knows if the death record is right.) I'm not sure what to make of it, but I think "if you survived your first child you were likely to survive the others as well" is probably a good rule of thumb.

Completely unrelated, but I've had a strange fascination with early 20th century burlesque for the past few weeks, probably since I caught the 1960s Gypsy at Melissa's. I think I find it interesting because it was so much more like vaudeville than modern strip clubs. Right now I'm watching Lady of Burlesque and it seems like quite a good look at what they were like and what sort of acts were common/popular (though I do wonder how much was cleaned up for the film). Some of the comics' things seem to have influenced cartoons as well.

Comments

[lliira]

Stuff you probably already know:

So long as you avoided giving birth in a special hospital set up for giving birth in the 19th century, you had about a 1 in 100 chance of dying in childbirth. It was more like 1 out of 2 in those hospitals, because the doctors would go from dissecting a cadaver straight to delivering a baby without washing their hands. I would not be surprised if women from the highest social class had a greater chance of dying in childbirth than those lower down in the 19th century, because the "experts" (i.e. men taking over to show women the Right Way To Do Things) were incredibly deadly.

In my family tree, going way way back, women have married men of about their own ages for hundreds of years. One thing I find funny is that we seem to nearly always marry men a little bit younger than ourselves. My mom broke the mold with her first marriage: my dad is 5 years older than her. Didn't work so well. I'm going back to our familial pattern by marrying a guy a couple months younger than me. I think women who married very very young, to men much older than themselves, were mostly in the upper caste, though there are a lot of stories of 14-year old farm girls marrying 45-year old widowers, of course. In the 19th century women's history course I took, I learned that the average age for women to marry in England at the time was their mid to late 20s, and for men it was only two or three years later.

I am totally blanking on her name, but you probably know who I'm talking about: an aristocratic woman at the top of the tree who stumped for Charles Fox, did scientific research, was the fashion plate of the day, and had a terrible gambling problem. She married at 18. The biography I read of her had letters from people who were appalled at her being married so young, and scandalized that her mother would want such a thing, though iirc the man she married was in his mid-20s. The fact that he was a known scoundrel probably had something to do with that though.

I tend to think that we project greater tendencies toward sameness on the past than were usually there. They didn't have as much pressure from the state and a larger society telling them this was the one way to live, like in the 20th and 21st centuries. I bet customs varied from village to village a whole lot, and that there was more flexibility than we're typically taught.

[chocolatepot]

Oh, interesting that it's 1:100! I had always heard 1:3, but I was trying to figure out how to find out when/where that statistic came from and had no idea how to do so. 1:100 makes a lot more sense. I think that's about the proportion of deaths Martha Ballard had.

Even in the upper classes/royalty there seems to have been a lot of "I've got a kid, they can marry your kid, sweet,", but I suspect it has to do with who was available - if a king/nobleman was aging and had an unmarried heir, that was probably the best situation, but if he doesn't have a son the next best thing is himself. Now I'm trying to remember where I heard the statistic that marriages were usually 25yo/18yo. Hm.

I tend to think that we project greater tendencies toward sameness on the past than were usually there.

Very true!

[chocolatepot]

Although I would add that I (finally) refound the Anglo-Irish aristocracy branch on the family tree - it's reeeeally far back so it took me a while to realize I should just come down through the Beauforts rather than try to work my way back, esp. as I couldn't remember which branch it was in - and I'm noticing that there are a whole lot more spouses of very similar ages than ones with large age differences.

[chocolatepot]

I wish DW had the edit reply function and I wish I could remember to say everything I meant to say at one time! Yes, Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire! She was 17, actually. Yeah, that was a bit scandalous.