Posted by Peter Hyland on August 01, 2013 at 01:11:06 user Peter_H.
In Reply to: Re: Thoughts After Another Re-Reading posted by Mike Jones on July 31, 2013 at 15:36:58:
The losses in the 1914-18 War were certainly one of the causes of the absence of parents as reflected in AR's stories, but it would be a mistake to regard that War as responsible for so many premature deaths (including the Amazons' father). Statistics show that the great majority of the men who fought in the War returned alive (I think the figure is something like four fifths, although some of these were wounded). And this would not account for the missing mothers.
We tend to forget that anti-biotics and anti-bacterial agents were only just being developed around 1930. Before then, if you contracted pneumonia, say, you probably died from it. There were also industrial and farming accidents. Average life expectation was much shorter than it is now.