While doing family tree research, I ran across a file that listed the cause of death and other details for 15,339 burials in the Wilkes-Barre, PA city cemetery . They date from the mid-1800s up to about 1960, when they slow down and stop, probably because of computers. Causes include such as “dropsy”, “fits”, “powder mill explosion” and “suicide by whisky”.

Here is what people were dying of back then, with the count for each cause. Many of these 2,300+ causes are duplicates, except for small spelling or stylistic differences. I didn’t try to fix anything. When there was only a single instance of a particular cause, the count was left blank.

Trigger warning: some of these will make you very very sad.

[table id=1 /]

Original file from
https://www.wilkes-barre.city/sites/wilkes-barrepa/files/uploads/wbcemeteryrecordscomplete.pdf