Hay and district
Victorian school days
  The deaths of two children  
 

Reading the official Log Books or diaries of Victorian schools Sickly childmakes you realise how harsh life could be in those years. Nowadays the death of a child is thankfully very rare, but it was almost a routine event for many early schools.
The most common cause was illness, when poor food, lack of money, and cold and unhealthy homes meant that young children were always at risk from infectious diseases.

 
4th September
1885
School diary entry
"The average attendance for the week 30.7. There were only 35 children present out of the 61 that have their names on the registers. Two of the 1st Class boys have died of the measles since the re-opening of the school".
 

The above entry comes from the Log Book of the Hay British Infants School from September 1885.
The names of the little boys who died from the measles are not even mentioned in the book, and this gives some idea of how common this sort of tragedy was in these times.
There are two more examples of the loss of children's lives on the next page...

Time off for an infant's funeral...

 

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