Abstract
When William IV’s 7-year reign ended in 1837, he had fathered 11 children in an era when death was a frequent occurrence. William left no legitimate heir, his surviving offspring had been born to the Dublin-born actress, Mrs. Dorothea Jordan, with whom he lived in domestic tranquility for two decades. William IV experienced the death of a son, and of two little girls born to his legal spouse, the Princess Adelaide. In that era the death of children was all too familiar to families, but society’s emerging modernism had not yet grasped that mortality was a topic related to the formation of public policy, except in a general way when governments reacted to health crises or needed to raise armies.
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Jordan, T.E. (2012). Children’s Mortality in England and Wales: 1838–1902. In: Quality of Life and Mortality Among Children. SpringerBriefs in Well-Being and Quality of Life Research. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4390-8_4
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