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CAUSES OF DEATH
born 1886 in Catania, Sicily
died August 15, 1920, at the Italian Hospital in Manhattan - age 34 years.
Father: Feliciano DePasquale
Mother: Giuseppa Scacciannce
Spouse: Sebastiano Straniero (1886-1922)
Cause of death: Puerperal Infection
Puerperal infection refers to the condition when women develop bacterial infection after childbirth or during breastfeeding. During pregnancy and especially during and just after delivery, the immune system of the mother is very weak. Then she has a higher chance of getting the condition. What are the causes? Bacteria are the main cause of postpartum infections.
Sebastiano Straniero was born in Militello, Sicily around 1886. He arrived in America around 1909. On November 24, 1918, he married Maria DePasquale. Less than two years later, 34-year-old Maria, pregnant with their first child, contracted a bacterial infection of her uterus and died on July 22, 1920. As far as I have been able to determine, the child did not survive.
These infections were a very common cause of death around the time of childbirth starting in at least the 18th century until the 1930s when antibiotics were introduced. Elite status was no protection against postpartum infections, as the deaths of several English queens attest. Elizabeth of York, queen consort of Henry VII, died of puerperal fever one week after giving birth to a daughter, who also died. Her son Henry VIII had two wives who died this way, Jane Seymour and Catherine Parr. Mary Wollstonecraft, author of Vindication of the Rights of Woman, died ten days after giving birth to her second daughter, who grew up to write Frankenstein.
