So many deaths of young children in the late 1800s

So many deaths of young children in the late 1800s

When you walk through cemeteries as old as the ones in Forest Park, (most of which opened in the late 1800s), you will notice a sobering number of children’s graves. A baby born in Chicago in the 1870s had less than a 50% chance of making it to their fifth birthday.  More than half of all deaths in the city were children under five. Babies under a year old had a death rate of 74% while children between the ages of one and four had a death rate o…