RURAL CHILDHOOD

Troubled Times

 

Accidents and disease were also common amongst children when they were allowed to run free.  Small injuries included knife cuts, stone bruises, blood blisters, and scrapes.  Children often had to treat themselves for their injuries as their parents had more important jobs to tend to.  Sometimes accidents were more serious such as when Mildred’s brother slashed open his leg with a glancing blow of his ax or when Clifford Miller, only twenty-two months old, died after he ate bread crumbs off the floor laced with lye to kill rats. Mildred suffered herself, as she and her sister almost died from the red measles which were far more deadly than German measles.

     

Sometimes illnesses did result in death. The Robinson family of Maryville lost four children, one of them being seventeen-year-old Theo who died from an “enlargement of the heart.” An eight-year-old named Jesse also passed away from an “enlargement of the heart” as well as dropsy, commonly known as edema today. A young girl the age of five passed away of diphtheria south of Pickering.