Here’s a sobering statistic: The Institute of Medicine estimates that up to 98,000 Americans die each year as a result of preventable medical errors — the equivalent of a daily catastrophic jumbo jet crash.
Here’re some of the ways people were dying in 1886 up in Canada, exclusive of disease. Many were “burnt to death”, “Killed by falling tree”, “Shoots himself”, “Drowned”, “Stabbed”, and a lot of railway accidents. Here are some of the more thought provoking:
Arthur Bye: Poisoned by taking liniment by mistake
George Anning: Nervous shock
George Murickson (8 years old): Swallows a snake
August Langlois: Killed by a game cock
Roger Gilleghan (16 years old): Scratches his foot with rusty nail and dies with lockjaw
John Savage: Crushed by falling box
Elie Lalonde (55 years old) Tarred and feathered
Capt. Wm. Stalker: Crushed on a propeller
Alf. Lavoie (45 years old): Devoured by bears
Robert Dufort (17 years old): Falls through a trap door
George Middleton (25 years old): Rupture of the bladder through over work
Robert Cox: Run over by a load of hay
Albert Tobin: Falls into a gutter
A.H. Sisson: Killed while loading a circus wagon
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~wjmartin/1886.htm
Comments
Where are you getting this fascinating information?
I was doing internet searches on “accidental death” which led me to an ancestry site with this list. Paper records are now being scanned or re-typed onto the internet. I wanted to include the link to the remainder of the list but it was not working. I will try to send you the list, I was kind of mesmerized by it. Wondering about these people.
If you still have the link, would you mind sending it to me?
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~wjmartin/1886.htm