Tudor Minute October 24, 1537: Jane Seymour died

by hans  - October 24, 2022


Today in 1537 Queen Jane Seymour died after giving birth to her son Edward. Her pregnancy had been easy but she had a difficult labor.

It took three nights and two days to deliver him on October 12. She seemed to recover and was sitting up in bed receiving visitors after his christening. She even signed the birth announcements but she quickly took a turn for the worst on October 17.

Midwives theorized that her uterus would have been exhausted after all of that pushing of Edward who was likely not positioned well in the womb. That meant that she would have not expelled the placenta which would have eventually become infected. Having lost a lot of blood and being exhausted, her body would have been less able to fight the infection. Likely, there were also dirty hands making things worse.

In modern times, the doctor would perform a C-section or use forceps after such a long and difficult labour saving the mother’s life, but women still died in childbirth at an alarming rate. The World Health Organization estimates that over 1,500 women died from childbirth every day.

That’s your Tudor Minute for today and remember you can dive deeper into life in 16th-century England through the Renaissance English history podcast at Englandcast.com.

Suggested links:
Episode 105: Historian Alison Weir on Jane Seymour
Autumn 2017 Tudor Summit: Janet Wertman on the Seymours

From the shop:
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