| > Such a rate of childhood death would be high even for sibling parents. Really? In the mid-19th century? https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality/ says "in 18th century Sweden every third child died, and in 19th century Germany every second child died" (that's before the age of 5; the usual definition of child mortality). The "England and Wales" chart on that site shows that in the mid-1800s child mortality was about 250-300 per 1000. So out of 10 children you would expect 2-3 to die before reaching age 5 at the time. If you look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin#Children there were 10 children. Their ages at death are: 74, 10, 1 month, 84, 67, 78, 77, 93, 77, 18 months. So two deaths before age 5, one death at 10, the rest living to perfectly reasonable ages. Doesn't seem at all unreasonable for the time period. |