• No infant deaths or childhood epidemics
• All KEARVELLs had lived into older age
• The average age for the name KEARVELL during this period was 81 years

Where in England had they lived the longest?

 

Durham                       average age at death                

West Sussex                                                                  

Surrey                                                                       

Somerset                                                                      

Devon                                                                         

Norfolk                                                                           

Oxfordshire                                                                    

Tyne & Wear                                                              

London                                                                         

Lancashire                                                                   

Hampshire                                                                    

Merseyside                                                                    

How would we, the present-day KEARVELLs, have lived with the 1866-1920 statistics if they applied today. The limitations of medical interventions, the losses of mother and/or child during childbirth, the sweeping epidemics  and a Middle and Old Age often lived as a widow or widower.

Perhaps it is one of the most remarkable characteristics of Victorian working class - the uncomplaining acceptance of the conditions of life and work which to us seem brutal, degrading and almost unimaginable. Of near poverty and, in some cases, extreme poverty, of overcrowded and inadequate housing, of bad working conditions, periodic unemployment, generally restricted opportunities and of the high incidence of disease, disablement and death.

There seems a sense of patient resignation to the facts of life, the feeling that human existence is a struggle and that survival is an end in itself. Especially so in the relation to early death of wives and children - a fatalist attitude that ‘God gives and God takes away’. Although one may mourn one does not inveigh against the Fates, which to us, seem to have treated some so cruelly.

From what came their strengths? They were materially poor, socially not mobile, leading lives of hard work but sustained by the family, interpersonal relationships and relationship with God that were centrally important. Their aspirations are modest, to be respected by their fellows, to see their families growing up and making their way in the world, to die without debt and without sin. Such happiness and satisfactions as life had to offer were found in social contacts within groups - the family, the work-group, the church or chapel and, no doubt, for a few, the public house; here meaningful relationships can be made, experiences exchanged, joy and sorrow shared.

 

 

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The following thoughts owe much to the work of John Burnett, Professor of Social History, Brunel University

Working-Class Attitudes: Stoicism and Acceptance