Fetal and Infant Deaths
Throughout the time period covered by case files, fetal and infant deaths make up a tragically sizeable percentage of victims. Specifically, two of the most common deaths are illegal abortions and instances of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), which is also known by other aliases such as Crib Death, Sudden Unexpected Death Syndrome, etc. As hospitals improved and the standard of living went up in Allegheny County and elsewhere however, instances of the latter were still quite common, and became an increasing source of frustration to doctors, and for that matter anyone in the medical field, including the coroner. Throughout his tenure as Allegheny County Coroner, Cyril Wecht appears to have been especially perplexed by this phenomenon, as he served on the board of the Pennsylvania Guild for Infant Survival, and made it a point to include a letter of sympathy to the parents of such victims.
Insofar as illegal abortions are concerned, the victims were typically found abandoned in parking lots or sewers after their mothers terminated their pregnancies. Over the years, incidences of this type appear to have gone down, presumably as a result of either stricter punishment for those who attempted this act, which was extremely dangerous for the mother. Alternatively, one could go abroad to have a doctor perform the abortion. Naturally, reports of this type of death were nonexistent after the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision of 1973.
Finally, a sizeable number of infant deaths have occurred as a result of either parental negligence or simply dangerous conditions, such as the ubiquitousness of trains, horse-drawn wagons, trolleys, etc. and the lack of unmarked crossings, pedestrian walkways, and the like. During the late-1800s through the 1950s at least, Pittsburgh and Allegheny County in general certainly had no shortage of such conditions.
1895
A three-month-old baby girl was listed as dying from convulsions. I am not sure what caused the convulsions because there was no other information, but it sounds like a disease I have never heard of. It could possibly be SIDS or maybe she was epileptic. 189511_174
NM 11 April 08
1896
A 1-year-old baby was listed as "found dead in bed." This could be one of the earliest reported cases of SIDS or "crib death," as described in the following entries. 189606_383
Another baby of the same age died of burns received to the head from a scalding hot coffee, which had been prepared by her intoxicated mother. The location of this incident was Skunk Hollow, in Oakland. Even though this death was quite obviously the result of extreme negligence on her mother's part, the death was ruled accidental and no charges appear to have been filed against the same. 189606_384
NOTE: It appears as though authorities around this time did not bother to state the exact age of victims. If an infant below the age of one, as in the above two deaths, the age of the victim was recorded as one. Likewise, it appears as though ages were rounded up or down to the nearest whole number.
** This is not always true, refer to file 189511_174, listed above, the child's age was listed as three months.
Both: MWB 09 Apr 2008
1900-1902
In the 1900s the average infant death is attributed to “spasms” or “heart trouble” in place of the “Crib Death” or “Sudden Unexpected Death Syndrome” description of the 1960s. While this is certainly just an evolution of linguistics and medical diagnoses, it still makes me wonder when physicians and parents became more knowledgeable of such occurrences. Of course, there have been several unfortunate and unrelated childhood deaths—such as the incident where a newborn was bathed mistakenly in lye and died several days later, or the many, many times when babies were abandoned as stillborns or were illegally self-aborted, or the several instances of babies suffocating on pillows in their sleep, or the infant who was smashed by her sleeping mother.
I had a few cases where children caught on fire, mostly when their mothers left them alone or were not paying attention to their children. One child was just one week old and was given carbolic acid instead of castor oil, and the doctor and midwife were held responsible for the child's death. Most of the deaths were children under the age of five; children choked on food and in some cases choked on their own vomit. The mothers generally did not know what was wrong with their children as they were dying, and doctors did not seem to do too much beyond making a few house calls and prescribing the same medicines I have been reading about in other cases.
One interesting aspect of records from this time involves criminal abortions and the resultant deaths that occurred. One case occurring in 1901 (190109_185) details the death of a 23-year-old woman who received a criminal abortion and died due to complications from the operation a week later. There are several records I have found involving criminal abortions and the finding of fetuses in places where they should not be, but unique to this case are the death of the mother and the letters contained within the file. Apparently the doctor that performed the abortions had blackmailed previous women patients to keep quiet, and an anonymous letter is contained in the file tipping off the coroner to these charges of blackmail and cover-up with the death of the 23-year-old woman. It appears the coroner conducted his own independent investigation as well, though no mention is made of what happened to the doctor himself.
I have noticed that, in addition to month-old babies dying from spasms in the early 1900s, many infant deaths are also listed as "inanition," in particular when the infants at hand are weeks or days old. I had no idea what inanition was, and that it was probably some outdated childhood disease. I have found through my research that it is a death due to severe and prolonged insufficiency of food--in short, these are often day old babies dying of malnutrition. I find this to be incredibly interesting, because it implies that the mother was likely malnourished herself. What with the amount of inanition deaths I come across daily, it seems both shocking and telling that so many families in the industrial city were unable to even provide for a child to live for more than a few days or hours. This additionally speaks volumes about prenatal care and the nutrition of women.
I have come across a few infant deaths in which the mother carried the baby to term then delivered the baby but then disposed of the body. One case in particular a maid gave birth to a full term baby and then wrapped the baby up in a blanket and left it in a closet in the basement. No one in the house knew the girl was pregnant or even that she delivered a baby. The only reason the information came out is because the girl did not take into consideration that there would be an odor given off by the body of the baby. When the people in the house started to smell the odor they began investigating it and uncovered the body. It was then that things started to come together. Through the coroners inquest it was found out that the girl did not complain of anything and worked almost the entire time except for when she delivered the baby. According to the file she said she was ill and went to lie down for a few hours. She went into her room and locked the door, which people thought was odd but did not question it. Within a few hours she was back to work. It was not for a week until the family began to investigate what the smell was, and it was then that they uncovered the body. The file did not have any information about the mother nor was the mother interviewed for the inquest. The inquest did call for the mother to be tried for murder.
1905
I found an autopsy report (190508_361) with interesting and conflicting, reports inside it. The decedent at hand was an infant, one month old, who died from inanition. One witness interviewed was the infant's grandmother, who responded in her interview that the baby's mother (her daughter) was an "exemplary" mother and was most attentive and cared extraordinarily for her baby. The coroner's report, however, writes that the mother was a "religious maniac" and a "lunatic" (both words were underlined for emphasis). In his opinion, the mother only fed the baby when the father was around, and since he'd been out of town for a few days, the baby had been starved. Regardless of the varying opinions of the mother, the baby died from malnutrition nonetheless. It is unusual in these records that such detail is paid to an involved party who is not actually the deceased themselves.
In the summer months there was an extraordinary increase in children drowning while bathing in the rivers. This seemed to happen each year we have read reports on--but only in the summer. I am beginning to question, though, if the children were literally bathing, with soap, themselves, or if they were more swimming and having fun with their friends in the water. It seems questionable that this many children would actually be bathing in such a risky and dangerous manner in the river. I have to wonder if they were actually dunking each other and racing instead of "bathing," in the literal sense.
I have recently come across a few startling infant deaths. The most remarkable one is about a mother that slit the wrist and neck of her week-old baby girl. There was not a lot of detail or information about the case just that the mother should not be tried for the murder of the baby because her actions were done while temporarily insane. I can only assume that this was actually a case of post partum-depression, but the fact that nothing was done to the mother is astonishing to me. She took the time to not only cut the wrist of the baby but also the neck and she was not even remanded to a mental hospital of sorts.
1917
A 2-year-old boy died at the Ohio Valley Hospital from lobar pneumonia, following 2nd degree burns received from falling into a boiling pan of jelly his mother had just made and set on the floor to cool. This sort of accident regarding infants in the kitchen, whether it be with boiling pans of hot water or upset kettles of coffee, is one of the most common types of deaths I have seen in late 1917 and throughout 1918. Ultimately the cause of death is usually a type of pneumonia, after the child has been admitted to the hospital for scalds or burns.
RLM 08 Jun 08
1918
In lmost all of the cases I have looked at where the child was under 4 the cause of death have been burns due to clothing catching fire or scalds due to falling into a tub or bucked of hot water. I guess the kitchen was a very dangerous place for a child to play in, but you would think that a mother would be more careful.
AFS 2 June 2008
In the first reference I have seen to a "blue baby" a baby girl lived for only one hour and supposedly died from a Congenital malformation of the Heart. I dont know if that could make a baby be born blue. I would think it would be a problem with the lungs or perhaps the cord being wrapped around its neck as it was being born.
191803-217
AFS 11 June 2008
In one very sad case, the aunt of a 5 month old baby boy was carrying the infant down the steps when she tripped and fell. She was fine but the baby in her arms died from a fractured skull.
191803-253
AFS 11 June 2008
An infant only (about) 2 hours old was killed and left on a hillside near Washington Blvd. and Negley Run. The baby had been stangled to death with a peice of cord that was tied around its neck.
191805-186
AFS 18 June 2008
A stillborn child isn't really an uncommon case, but this one i found interesting. A woman (who was 8 1/2 months pregnant) was lighting turpentine and camphor on her gas range at home (I have no idea why) and her clothes caught on fire. When she was taken to the hospital she went into labor. Shortly after she gave birth to a stillborn baby girl, the mother died from her burns. Both the child and the mother have files.
Mother - 191806-004
child - 191806-005
AFS 18 June 2008
A 7-month-old baby girl died from peritonitis after swallowing an open safety pin. This incident occurred while the baby was left unattended on the bed while her mother was changing her diaper. She was taken to the hospital where the pin was eventually removed from her stomach, leaving a perforation in the bowel. 191809_021.
RLM 06 Jul 08
After giving birth, one mother died due to a Post-partum hemorrhage. Her baby girl only lived one hour and died from a congential malformation of the heart.
mother-191811-319
child-191811-320
AFS 15 July 2008
Two cases I have found show that Spanish Influenza could kill indirectly. A woman was pregnant with twins and after being ill with Influenza for a week, she gave birth prematurely (she was only five and a half months pregnant) to a boy and a girl. Both were stillborn.
191811-226 and 191811-227
AFS 15 July 2008
1919
One three month old baby girl suffocated in her sleep due to the blankets she was wrapped in being tucked in around her too tight.
191902-266
AFS 05 Aug 2008
1925
One nine-month-old died of "hydrocephalus" and was noted as having a "deformed head." Today hydrocephalus affects one child in every 500 live births; this rises to one in every 100 births in the developing world and that higher rate probably was the case in the United States in the 1920s. The fluid buildup in the skull causes unusually large heads in infants with the disease. The birth defect has been known for a long time, and was recorded by Hippocrates, but remained uniformly fatal until the cerebral shunt was developed in the 1950s. 192512_76
1927
Some of the worst cases that I come across are those that involve babies that fall into boiling pans of water. Many times, like in the case of 192703_2, the baby’s mother was boiling hot water to wash clothes with and set the pan of hot water on the floor. The mother got distracted long enough for the baby to toddle over and fall backwards into the pan.
JT 21 Sept 2007
1946
A newborn baby was found in the ladies room of the Joseph Horne store behind the toilet. A cleaning lady found the bag that contained the body and, without looking in the bag, took it to the lost and found. It was not until she went through the bag sometime later, however, that the baby was found. The umbilical cord was attached and the other end looked like it was ripped off. The cause of death was suffocation because cotton balls were found stuck in the back of the baby's throat. The baby must have been killed shortly after birth because blood was found inside the bag.
CL 16 Nov 2007
1948
A four-year-old boy was shot in the temple by an unknown person while playing in the backyard of a neighbor’s house. The father heard the shot and went running to the back of the house where he saw his son lying on the ground. Upon picking him up blood spurted from both of his temples. 194807_56
JT 04 Dec 2007
1953- 1955
A female fetus was found by some boys in a sewer wrapped in newspapers. It appeared to be in its sixth month of development. The newspapers it was wrapped in were dated from several days before the body was found, so it had been aborted recently. 195307_149
One four-year-old boy drowned while swimming in a lake with his family. 195307_101
In another case, a mother was bathing her one-month-old infant in a bathtub filled with three inches of water. She had the baby in one hand and was washing some "lady clothes" in another hand. According to the mother, she blacked out. Upon gaining consciousness she found her baby lying face-down in the water. 195307_103
A 2-year-old girl also died while taking a bath, but not from drowning. Her mother was bathing her in the kitchen sink and left the girl in there while she hung some clothes up to dry. In the time the mother was gone the baby unplugged the drain and the sink emptied. So the baby turned on one of the faucets- the hot water one- and received second and third degree burns from the scalding hot water. 195507_85
One two-year-old boy was riding in the backseat of his parents' car when he bumped the door handle and fell from the moving car onto the road. He died of a fractured skull. Either child safety seats had not been invented yet or, if they did exist, they were not seen as necessities to all parents. 195307_149
The strangest infant death I found was a 23-month-old boy who ate paint from the walls and window sills of his parents' home and died of lead poisoning. I could not find how he was able to eat this paint- it must have been chipped or peeled. 195507_117
LB 17 Jan 2008
1956
A 4-month-old baby girl was sleeping in her crib on the first floor of her house when rats chewed off her ears, nose, and part of her face, resulting in her death. Investigators found that the basement of the house was "heavily infested," to say the least. 195604_16
BF 18 Jan 2008
1958
A dead baby boy was found in a shoebox placed against a tree with tape over its mouth, termed by the local paper the "Shoe Box Baby." The police believed the tape was intended to keep the baby from crying and the placement of the shoebox under the tree was deliberate. In addition to the baby, the box contained three unique clues: a snapshot of a man holding up a sign for a soft drink company, two expensive towels and a woman's nylon slip. As of the closing of this case file the mother was not found, but would be charged with murder if found. 195805_87
AP 29 Jan 2008
A mother had a four-month-old baby that would not stop crying, so she beat it with her fist until it did. It died of a crushed skull. She then took the baby to a hospital and pretended to not know what was wrong with the baby. The mother then agreed that an autopsy should be performed. The autopsy revealed the baby was beaten to death and the mother was arrested. Interestingly, on the verdict page, it says that the jury will acquit the mother of any wrongdoing. 195803_44
BF 30 Jan 2008
1959
A number of fetuses were found in March 1959, either thrown in garbage piles or, in one case, left at an entrance to a cemetery. 195903_118; 195903_138; 1959_230
One case involved a baby girl who had reached full term, and was found in a rubbish pile with a stab wound to the chest and abdomen. There is no indication that the perpetrators were ever found. 1959_231
In case 1959_130, a mother called the police because her 9-month-old baby boy had just died. Upon examination, the cause of death was found to be malnutrition, fecal impaction and loss of the skin. The mother was arrested; she later admitted to neglecting the baby for two weeks. She had another son, 4-years-old.
LB 01 Feb 2008
A 3-month-old baby died in a "fiery crib." The baby had been sick and the parents rigged a homemade vaporizer from a pitcher of water, a hot plate, and an aluminum spout. The mother had been watching the baby all night, but went down to get a cup of coffee and fell asleep downstairs. While asleep, the crib caught fire and the baby could not be saved. 195905_178
AP 08 Feb 2008
A 10-month-old baby suffocated under a plastic bag. While he mother was asleep, the baby got out of his crib and into a plastic bag that had been up on the dresser. A newspaper article included in the file showed a picture of two people demonstrating how this form of suffocation can occur. This baby was the twenty-third child to die this way in 1959. It resulted in the passage of the Reuss bill, which mandates a child suffocation warning be placed on all plastic bags. 195905_184
AP 08 Feb 2008
1960
A 6-month-old baby boy was brought to the hospital dead. When an autopsy was performed, the coroner discovered that the baby had second degree burns on the anterior of his thighs, his scrotum, and his penis. The baby's parents were questioned, but they could not explain the burn. They said that the baby had had a severe diaper rash, and that was what might have caused the burns. The house was searched, but no evidence of a fire was found in any of the baby's things or elsewhere.
LB 18 Feb 2008
A 10-minute-old baby died immature. Evidence of a catheter found in afterbirth indicated the mother had attempted an abortion. She later admitted to it. 196008_138
AP 22 Feb 2008
Illiterate parents supported by public assistance had three children and did not know how to handle one who was sickly and required extra attention. Their middle child, a son, was 1 year and 8 months old. He cried constantly and often threw himself out of his crib, which was four feet off the ground. The neighbors reported witnessing gross acts of abuse against the child whenever the family left their apartment door open. One neighbor stated that she witnessed the mother gag the child's bloody mouth with a sock to muffle his wails. Another neighbor reported witnessing the mother beating the child in its crib with a belt or a shoe. This infant had already been to the hospital four times for previous serious injuries, including severe burns. This time the child went into convulsions and the mother, not knowing what to do, handed the baby over to the upstairs neighbor who (temporarily) saved the infant. Later the same day the baby had another seizure while in the care of his mother, and subsequently died. The father stated that the previous day he might have accidentally caused injury to the infant by giving him an enema in an attempt to make him defecate. Thinking that he could help the small child make a bowel movement, he pressed the child's abdomen, possibly causing internal injuries. This case is deeply disturbing to me. If the neighbors were aware of the abuse and incompetence of the parents, why were the child protective services never notified? 196008_166
RB 11 Mar 2008
1961
A 15-month-old baby boy died from overdosing on aspirin tablets. The mother found the boy eating the aspirin tablets, but did not call a doctor until the next day when he got sick. 196104_60
AP 29 Feb 2008
A 2-month-old baby girl suffocated in her bedclothes. 196104_88
AP 29 Feb 2008
This was a stillborn black baby boy, no reason as to why. He was delivered at home prematurely; the mother was only five months pregnant. 196104_120
AP 29 Feb 2008
A 39-year-old mother died of cardiac arrest during childbirth. She was also being treated for a ruptured navel. She was six months pregnant with a baby girl, who was stillborn, 196104_127-196104_128
AP 29 Feb 2008
A 6-month-old baby girl died from bronchopneumonia. 196104_149
AP 29 Feb 2008
A 1-year-old black baby girl died from bronchopneumonia. She had been sick about two weeks and was being treated at Children's Hospital. 196104_195
AP 29 Feb 2008
A 2-month-old white baby boy was suffocated/smothered by his bedclothes. 196104_199
AP 29 Feb 2008
In September, a 3-year-old girl died of "a congenital malformation of the central nervous system." The child was not growing or maturing properly, maintaining the physical appearance of a 1-year-old. The girl had spent some time in the hospital to treat her condition, but was released with doctors being unable to help her any further. 19610_33
TG 26 Feb 2008
1962
In May of this year, a boy just under the age of two died of strangulation when he became wedged in the window of a car door. The boy and his brother were accompanying their father as he was working in the yard. The boy's father stated in his affidavit his belief that his son went into the car and tried to climb out the window when the door closed him inside. 196205_143
TG 29 Feb 2008
A husband and wife decided to throw a drinking/card party at their home. The husband became very intoxicated and belligerent as the night progressed, and started arguments with all of his guests until they became annoyed and left. After all the guests were gone, the man's wife scolded him for his embarrassing behavior. Infuriated and drunken, he struck his wife on the head with a blunt object, knocking her to the floor. All the noise set their 3-month-old son wailing. To remedy this, the drunken father picked up the infant, carried him to the back balcony, and threw him down the hillside. When the baby's body was found, it has been mangled from rolling downhill through rocks and debris for a distance greater than 70 yards. 196208_68
A young boy who was not quite 2 years old received third degree burns on his hands, rump, and feet, by pulling a pail of hot water onto himself. The child got septicemia from his parents' inattention to his wounds, and he was not taken to the hospital for treatment until six days have passed. By this time, the infection has spread throughout the child's body and, in order to give him a chance at survival, both his hands and feet were amputated. Even this drastic measure did not work, and the infant died shortly afterwards. The autopsy reveals that the infant also was suffering from intestinal worms, which indicates that these parents were very negligent toward the basic needs of their child. 196208_118
RB 13 Mar 2008
In December of this year, the body of a 16-week-old white male infant was found by a furnace man in a filter trap at the 28th Avenue Sewage Pumping Station in McKeesport. The cause of death was undetermined, but police were able to determine the area in which the child was likely put in the sewer system. With the help of the pumping station employees, police were able to deduce that the child entered the sewer no more than a block in either direction of where his body was found. If it were a greater distance, his body would have been disfigured because of other filters or machinery in the sewer. 196212_201
TG 03 Mar 2008
An infant girl was pronounced dead on arrival at St. Francis Hospital in Pittsburgh. The cause of death was listed as Waterhouse-Friderichsen (misspelled Friderischen) Syndrome due to menigococcus septicemia, of which W-S Syndrome is the most severe form. More specifically, W-S Syndrome causes massive bilateral hemorrhage and extensive bleeding underneath the skin. If not treated in time, which appears to be the case here, it will send a victim into shock and naturally results in death. 196308_189
MWB 07 Mar 2008
1963
A 2-year-old girl was strangled to death when the hood of her jacket caught at the top of a playground slide. She was playing in the neighbor's yard with her two brothers, ages 3 and 4 years, when she climbed to the top of the slide, accidentally fell off the side, and hanged herself. Not fully comprehending the situation, the boys ran to their mother back at home and told her "Peggy's sleeping." Knowing something was wrong, the mother rushed to the scene, but it was already too late. 196305_39
RB 13 Mar 2008
Police received a call from a woman saying that her son had died one hour after she gave birth to it alone in her house. When the police got there, the woman told them that she was separated from her husband, and went into labor from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. the day of the birth. One of her young sons helped her by getting her a pair of scissors to cut the umbilical cord. The woman said that the baby was breathing and seemed healthy, so she laid it down and went to feed her two sons. When she came back an hour later the baby was dead. The coroner found the cause of death to be hemorrhage from unligated umbilical cord and non-resuscitation.
When asked why she had not gone to a hospital or gotten help from a neighbor, she said that she did not know anyone who could help her. One of her neighbors who knew her well, though, said that she did not even know the woman was pregnant and had seen her around 5 p.m. the day of the delivery, talked to her and was told that the woman was going grocery shopping. Despite the conflicting stories, the police appear to have not taken any further action with her. 196309_62
LB 07 Mar 2008
1964
A mentally unstable mother neglected a 4-month-old girl. When the baby was examined, she was found to have suffered from a number of causes; she has an extensive and aggravated diaper rash, advanced bronchopneumonia, and is severely malnourished. When the mother is questioned, she admits that she was not inclined to care for this infant. The woman had been hoping for a son, and was angry that the child was a girl. 196403_91
RB 15 April 2008
A 3-month-old infant girl died of a respiratory obstruction while receiving anesthesia in December of this year. The surgery which she was about to have was for a pulmonary aneurism. 196412_104
An infant girl went into cardiac arrest during heart surgery in December of this year. 196412_129
In the same month, another infant girl went into cardiac arrest during surgery for dextrocardia, which is a condition where the heart is located on the right side of the body. According to Wikipedia, this condition is not normally life threatening, but in this instance the doctors must have judged the situation to be so, hence the decision to operate on the girl at such a young age. Mention is also made of heart disease in a form titled "To the Coroner." 196412_180
All: MWB 13 Mar 2008
1965
In my 50 sample files from the year 1965, there was only one infant death. A 4 month old girl died of Acute Bronchopneumonia in Shady Side Hospital. 196501-133
AFS 2 June 2008
1970
A mother gave birth to two twins, only one of which survived. The deceased baby was listed as being a breech baby, which according to Wikipedia is a baby that exits the womb either feet or buttocks first, depending on the situation (not elaborated on by the case file). This is an uncommon case, and it is even less common for an infant to die, especially if a Cesarean section was utilized in the event of any problems involving say, the umbilical cord. 197009_236
MWB 20 Mar 2008
A baby knocked a cup of hot coffee off of a table and was burned to death when it fell on her. I would say that this is more irresponsible parenting than an accident. 197008_128
BF 27 Mar 2008
1971
A 2-month-old infant girl died of "sudden, unexpected, unexplained infant death" in Braddock Towers. While the causes of what is now known as Sudden Infant Death (no longer classified as a syndrome) are many and varied, the socioeconomic status of the parents and family and its ancillary effects are cited as a possible factor on Wikipedia. Since the girl was black, and her family was clearly residing in project housing at the time, she appears to have been at greater risk than her middle- and upper-class peers. 197102_80
In another case of what Allegheny County Coroner Cyril Wecht called "sudden infant death" or "crib death", a 13-day-old McKeesport boy passed away. What makes this case stand out is the recognition by the coroner himself of what a serious and frustrating problem Sudden Infant Death was and still is, though it has become much less of an issue in the present day. The file contained an unopened envelope addressed to the parents of the child but returned due to the parents having moved but failed to provide a forwarding address, which I opened (hopefully I won't get in trouble with the US Post Office for this). The envelope contains a letter written personally by the coroner, expressing his sympathy for the parents as well, stating, "there have been hundred of similar cases in the past years in our community." Additionally, he informs the parents that there is a support group that can help them (and which he was an honorary chairman of at the time). Finally, this letter was interesting to me in that it shows a more sensitive side of a man who has been a source of much controversy in both the local and national scene for many years now. 197102_104
It appears that above letter that I described is not as personal as I thought. In April of the same year, Coroner Wecht sent a copy of the same exact letter to the parents of other infants who died due to the same causes; the only aspect of the letter that is changed are the names of the parents and the date. Still, it would appear that this cause of death is a personal source of frustration and/or interest for Dr. Wecht, since I have not seen any type of non-official correspondence from his of this nature with any other cause of death; this includes correspondence to families of say, fire or auto accident victims, of which I have found none. His status as an honorary chairman of the Pittsburgh Chapter of the Pennsylvania Guild for Infant Survival also suggests that he has a special interest in this particular aspect of his career and that he is actively interested in its prevention. 197105_96-197105_104
All: MWB 24 Mar 2008
A 2-year-old girl died after she was struck on the head by a swing. The official causes of death are listed as "acute cerebral edema with heniation of the cerebellum and brain stem to compound depressed fracture of both frontal bones and lacerations of the brain." As a child I remember being scolded on more than a couple of occasions for wandering into the path of other children on swings, but I guess I never thought that someone could outright killed in such a manner. 197106_257
MWB 26 Mar 2008
In October of this year an 11 month-old boy died of cardiac arrest with contributing first and second degree burns of 30% of his body. The infant was being bathed in the kitchen sink. According to his parents, the child somehow turned on the hot water faucet and burned himself. He died in the hospital. There is no mention in the file of the potential negligence on the part of the child's parents. It is possible that the situation was purely accidental. 197110_165
TG 26 Mar 2008
A two year old died from eating lead paint chips. The coroner's office knew what the cause was right away, indicating that lead paint was known as a dangerous substance back in 1971. However, I found that lead paint was only banned in the United States in 1978. 197101_287
BF 27 Mar 2008
1972
A 7-week-old male baby died of "sudden unexpected unexplained infant death." According to http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/dyi088v1.pdf, "sudden unexpected unexplained infant death" is what we now know as Sudden Infant Death (SID). Although I have come across many different cases of this cause of death in babies, this was the first file to include a letter of condolence from the coroner to the parents of the decedent. The first three paragraphs of his letter read as follows:
"...Unfortunately, there have been hundreds of similar cases in the past years in our community.
I think you should know that your loss, as personal as it is, is not unique or uncommon. The medical profession, medical examiners, pathologists, and enlightened public health officials throughout the world recognize these sudden, unexpected losses of young lives as one of the most distressing and puzzling health problems in the entire field of medical practice. We refer to this as sudden, unexplained death in infancy, or sudden infant death, or "crib death". Very little is actually known about this mystery which some estimate strikes down as many as 25,000 healthy, normal babies each year in the United States alone. Today, there is still no known cause, no prevention, no warning, no treatment, and no cure.
This has been a matter of great concern to many people, both lay and professional, and has stimulated much research, both here and abroad. Although none of the theories thus far proposed have withstood the test of scientific scrutiny, we are quite certain that suffocation is not the cause of death in these cases, and that the infant's death is not contributed to by the action, or lack of action, of those attending the baby at the time..."
It is interesting to note that SID was first brought up in the 1970 files, albeit under a slightly different name. I wonder if it may have been the explanation for many infant deaths from earlier files that were listed as suffocation or natural causes.
According to http://www.kidshealth.org/parent/general/sleep/sids.html, SID causes the deaths of 2,500 young infants every year. It seems that the death rate has gone down since the 1970s. There is still no real explanation for why SID occurs, but it is now believed that infants who sleep on their backs are less likely to die from SID.
LB 28 Mar 2008
An 18-month old Canonsburg boy died of pulmonary edema, due to pulmonary hypertension during surgery at Children's Hospital. According to the official report to the coroner, the boy had a ventricular septal defect, pulmonary hypertension, and myocardiopathy. Also, the boy had had several episodes of cyanosis in the past, requiring mouth to mouth resuscitation. According to Wikipedia, cyanosis is "a blue coloration of the skin and mucous membranes due to the presence of deoxygenated hemoglobin in blood vessels near the skin surface. It occurs when the oxygen saturation of arterial blood falls below 85-90%." 197209_04
MWB 31 Mar 2008
1973
A woman filled her bathtub with ten inches of water and put her two-year-old daughter into the tub. She then realized the recipe she was making required cheese, so she ran to the Shop'n Save around the corner to get some. When she came back, the faucet was on and the tub was overflowing. The child, not surprisingly, was dead. This was the only file from the 1970's that I found that had an inquest report included. It was clear that the investigators were trying to show that the mother was neglectful. 197312_29
BF 10 Apr 2008
Comments (0)
You don't have permission to comment on this page.