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PMarione Site Admin
Joined: 26 Mar 2007 Posts: 883
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Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 2:11 pm Post subject: The RN can keep you healthy |
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From the Gentleman's Magazine (1841):
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alexlitandem
Joined: 27 Mar 2007 Posts: 129
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Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 8:07 pm Post subject: |
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106.
How: 5 a day!
[That's an astonishing age in any era, but how statistically improbable must it have been in 1841? I will now `Google away' until I can find average male life-expectancy figures for 1840 and today. I could be away for some time ]
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alexlitandem
Joined: 27 Mar 2007 Posts: 129
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Posted: Thu Jun 05, 2008 7:12 am Post subject: |
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Haven't got back to 1840 yet, but these comparatives are interesting: average male life expectancy at birth in the UK:-
1870 41.3
1913 53.4
1950 69.2
1973 72.0
2001 78.1
[Sources: Crafts (1997) and GAD (2002) for 2001.]
So, 106..., well clearly extra-extra-ordinary, but what about all those recipients of Trafalgar, or Nile or 1st June NGS's?
Having, as men, been in such battles they had, in fact, to then survive for another `lifetime plus' - a period longer than the male life expectancy of the time - to finally get the medal! |
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Roy Adkins
Joined: 28 Mar 2007 Posts: 26 Location: Devon
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Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2008 6:55 am Post subject: More maths |
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If you subtract 1782, the year of the sinking of the Royal George, from 1841, the year of his death, then you get the figure of 59! So he cannot have resided at Greenwich for upwards of eighty years - we must (presumably) assume they were talking of him being a Greenwich pensioner, rather than living generally in Greenwich. When researching 'Jack Tar', we obtained a copy of one muster list of the Royal george, ADM 36/8515, for 28 August 1782, and no William Lucas is listed, though there is a Wm. Luckies, which could well be the same man. This muster list gives virtually no other information, so we ended up looking up other documentation in the National Archives, so I don't have any other information to hand at home. Does anyone know who William Lucas was, and whether or not he was a Greenwich pensioner? It would be interesting to know. |
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