Historical cause of death 1800s-1900s
What did inanition mean on a death certificate?
On a death record, inanition meant emptiness: death from want of nourishment, a term certifiers used chiefly for infants who failed to feed. In modern terms it usually pointed to starvation or feeding failure. On an adult record it can flag the end stage of another disease, or plain destitution; the workhouse registers may say which. Expect it on records mostly 1800s-1900s.
Also written on records as: want of nourishment, atrophy and inanition.
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Related terms
Browse the full genealogy records glossary for more occupations, causes of death, and legal terms.
FAQs
What is inanition called today?+
Starvation or feeding failure, broadly speaking. Doctors of the period diagnosed without laboratory tests, so one label often covered several conditions we would now separate. This page explains historical record language and is not medical advice.
How was inanition written on death records?+
Clerks and doctors also wrote want of nourishment and atrophy and inanition. Spelling wandered from register to register, so check every variant before you decide a record is missing or wrong.
Where do these definitions come from?+
They are drawn from period dictionaries, government archive glossaries, and standard genealogy references, cross-checked against each other; provenance is documented with the dataset. Inside AncestorIQ, Deep Research reads the record itself and explains terms like this in context, against your ancestor's own document.
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