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| European women living in what is now Queensland had a higher number of children than their sisters in the south, a phenomenon that was strongly supported by TLM-P and other politicians, 'spurred by fears of being engulfed, both numerically and culturally by foreign invaders'.((Kay Saunders and Katie Spearritt, 'Is there life after birth? Childbirth, death and danger for settler women in colonial Queensland', //Journal of Australian Studies//, 29, June 1991, pp.64-79.)) Matilda was exemplary in this regard, having 12 children during her 22 years of marriage. It is likely that her fecundity contributed to her early death aged 41. Additionally, each time she gave birth there was a real possibility of dying in the process: in 1878, for example, a pregnant woman in Queensland had 'one chance in 21 of dying in childbirth'.((Kay Saunders and Katie Spearritt, 'Is there life after birth? Childbirth, death and danger for settler women in colonial Queensland', //Journal of Australian Studies//, 29, June 1991, pp.64-79.)) Note that Aboriginal women were generally excluded from the statistics, though medical historian John Theale has argued that traditional Aboriginal maternal mortality was low. \\ | European women living in what is now Queensland had a higher number of children than their sisters in the south, a phenomenon that was strongly supported by TLM-P and other politicians, 'spurred by fears of being engulfed, both numerically and culturally by foreign invaders'.((Kay Saunders and Katie Spearritt, 'Is there life after birth? Childbirth, death and danger for settler women in colonial Queensland', //Journal of Australian Studies//, 29, June 1991, pp.64-79.)) Matilda was exemplary in this regard, having 12 children during her 22 years of marriage. It is likely that her fecundity contributed to her early death aged 41. Additionally, each time she gave birth there was a real possibility of dying in the process: in 1878, for example, a pregnant woman in Queensland had 'one chance in 21 of dying in childbirth'.((Kay Saunders and Katie Spearritt, 'Is there life after birth? Childbirth, death and danger for settler women in colonial Queensland', //Journal of Australian Studies//, 29, June 1991, pp.64-79.)) Note that Aboriginal women were generally excluded from the statistics, though medical historian John Theale has argued that traditional Aboriginal maternal mortality was low. \\ |
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| Matilda had her children when her husband was struggling to establish himself. They were not wealthy at this stage and, at least for her first six births, she endured the rough isolation that characterised the life of women settlers in rural Queensland at the time. These conditions contributed to Queensland's death rate being higher than that of other Australian colonies.((D. Waterson and M. French, //From the Frontier. A Pictorial History of Queensland to 1920//, St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1987, p.7.)) Repeated childbearing - in this age when abstinence was the only effective contraception - undermined her health. Matilda duly had 12 children during 1848-66, meaning she was pregnant for exactly half those 18 years, during which time she also raised eight and buried four of her children. It did not make it any easier that having four of her children die before her was statistically normal. Even in Victoria in the 1880s and 1890s, where health outcomes where better, by the time a married woman was 50 years old, typically 'about one-quarter of her children would have died'.((Peter McDonald and Patricia Quiggin, 'Lifecourse transitions in Victoria in the 1880s', //Families in Colonial Australia// ed. P. Grimshaw, C. McConville and Ellen McEwen, Sydney: George Allen & Unwin, 1985, p.77.)) It is also possible that she was pregnant at other times as we don't know if she had any miscarriages or stillbirths (stillbirths were not registered at the time).\\ | Matilda had her children when her husband was struggling to establish himself. They were not wealthy at this stage and, at least for her first six births, she endured the rough isolation that characterised the life of women settlers in rural Queensland at the time. These conditions contributed to Queensland's death rate being higher than that of other Australian colonies, including for inflants.((D. Waterson and M. French, //From the Frontier. A Pictorial History of Queensland to 1920//, St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1987, p.7.)) Repeated childbearing - in this age when abstinence was the only effective contraception - undermined her health. Matilda duly had 12 children during 1848-66, meaning she was pregnant for exactly half those 18 years, during which time she also raised eight and buried four of her children. It did not make it any easier that having four of her children die before her was statistically normal. Even in Victoria in the 1880s and 1890s, where health outcomes where better, by the time a married woman was 50 years old, typically 'about one-quarter of her children would have died'.((Peter McDonald and Patricia Quiggin, 'Lifecourse transitions in Victoria in the 1880s', //Families in Colonial Australia// ed. P. Grimshaw, C. McConville and Ellen McEwen, Sydney: George Allen & Unwin, 1985, p.77.)) It is also possible that she was pregnant at other times as we don't know if she had any miscarriages or stillbirths (stillbirths were not registered at the time).\\ |
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