A Slight Exaggeration Methinks.

[mawnansmiff]

One of my current reads is 'A Restitution of Decayed Intelligence in Antiquities' by Richard Verstegan 1655 (though first published in 1634) which is a history of Britain from the earliest times.

Now oftentimes when reading such books one has to be aware that the author might have an agenda or be otherwise skewed in his opinions and so I have a huge bucket of salt at hand but hey ho, these tomes make great reading.

However, last night I came upon a real screamer and I shall transcribe it as it appears in the book.

"There dyed in the city of Paris, in the year of our Lord 1514, a woman named Toland Baillie, at the age of 88 years, and in the eighth year of her widowhood, who there lieth in the Church-yard of St. Innocents, by whose epitaph it appeareth, that there were two hundred fourscore and fifteen children issued from herself, while herself yet lived".

And in the margin we have...

"Three hundred Children lacking five, issued from one Woman, and all lived in her life time".

Of all the tall stories I have ever read, this one really takes the biscuit and this is only page 3 of a total of 264 so I wonder what other pearls of wisdom I might stumble upon before I reach the end

Regards,

Jay.

 

[WVOldFart]

Man, talk about stretch marks!!

 

[jpmcwjr]

If she had quintuplets every pregnancy, it cuts down on how many decades she was pregnant. So, quite possible, eh?

 

[mawnansmiff]

"Man, talk about stretch marks!!"

A bill poster's bucket after a general election springs to my mind!

Regards,

Jay.

 

[WVOldFart]

The record for most births by one woman is 69 children. She was a Russian lady who had 27 births from 1725 to 1765. Of those 27 births she had 16 pairs of twins, 7 sets of triplets and 4 sets of quadruplets. Obviously she and her husband knew what to do on those cold Russian nights.

 

[mortonbriar]

Years ago my wife took a paper on the 'Practises and Philosophy of History', I enjoyed hearing about it too when she came home from lectures, and one thing that stood out to me is the general idea that you can learn more history about the time that a piece was written than the time being wrote about...

 

[kcghost]

It seems the bill poster had a lot of brass about him. He would have made a fine politician.

 

[HawkeyeLinus]

One of my current reads is 'A Restitution of Decayed Intelligence in Antiquities' by Richard Verstegan 1655 (though first published in 1634) which is a history of Britain from the earliest times.

Now oftentimes when reading such books one has to be aware that the author might have an agenda or be otherwise skewed in his opinions and so I have a huge bucket of salt at hand but hey ho, these tomes make great reading.

However, last night I came upon a real screamer and I shall transcribe it as it appears in the book.

"There dyed in the city of Paris, in the year of our Lord 1514, a woman named Toland Baillie, at the age of 88 years, and in the eighth year of her widowhood, who there lieth in the Church-yard of St. Innocents, by whose epitaph it appeareth, that there were two hundred fourscore and fifteen children issued from herself, while herself yet lived".

And in the margin we have...

"Three hundred Children lacking five, issued from one Woman, and all lived in her life time".

Of all the tall stories I have ever read, this one really takes the biscuit and this is only page 3 of a total of 264 so I wonder what other pearls of wisdom I might stumble upon before I reach the end

Regards,

Jay.

She was a dog.

 

[bullet08]

Maybe they are totaling her children and their children and so on? Even with Catholics not allowing protection can't have that many! Even with half world population, China and India do not hold such record. Biologically impossible. Unless she was god's concubine and was popping it out every other months.

 

[magicpiper]

Can you imagine being the fella that went in at #150 or higher? Can’t imagine it being much of an experience. Probably had a fairly noticeable echo.

 

[elpfeife]

Whata gal!!

 

[alaskanpiper]

That would happen to my wife if we weren’t careful. She gets pregnant if we wash our underwear in the same load.

 

[mingc]

By my calculations, she was pregnant a total of 216 years. And she had to take care of the kids while she was expecting, although some were clearly already adults. She was an extremely busy woman.

 

[elessar]

Norm: Carla, do you suppose?
Carla: Oh, no, no. No, Norm. Don't look at me. I got four kids and I sure ain't looking for anymore.
Norm: I'm not asking you to have sex with the guy.
Carla: Doesn't matter. I'm what you call a fast breeder. A man winks at me and I'm three months along.

 

[mso489]

Fertility has always been a human fetish in writings and in art. Spewing children is a reassurance that the species goes on, all the more so when you had to have five or six kids to enjoy the probability that a few would reach adulthood and have children of their own. Most couples lost a child or more in infancy or early childhood. Infectious diseases were the main culprit. This was true to the turn of the Nineteenth Century.

elessar, funny dialogue; I've been in crowds so packed I feared a potential paternity suit.

 

[mawnansmiff]

I can't but help wonder if they were all born to the same father.

If so then he certainly had some stamina not to mention balls

Regards,

Jay.

 

[Infantry23]

I'm inclined to agree with @bullet08. I have a large family and we're catholic and there's no possibility of this from one woman. But it seems to me that maybe they are totaling her children and their children's children, etc. I suppose if you have 15 kids by the time you're 40, they each have 5-7 kids, etc it could be possible to have 295 issued from her. (I don't know what the math on that is, it's too early in the morning for me, but you get the idea)

 

[mawnansmiff]

I'm inclined to agree with @bullet08. I have a large family and we're catholic and there's no possibility of this from one woman. But it seems to me that maybe they are totaling her children and their children's children, etc. I suppose if you have 15 kids by the time you're 40, they each have 5-7 kids, etc it could be possible to have 295 issued from her. (I don't know what the math on that is, it's too early in the morning for me, but you get the idea)

I get what you're saying chum but the text clearly states "issued from herself" so no ambiguity there, they were her offspring.

When all is said and done, it is obvious that it's an absolute impossibility for one woman to produce that many children.

Regards,

Jay.

 

[frozenchurchwarden]

With a short generational cycle through most of history a woman that age should have at least five generations of children underneath her.
Remember that's 300 living descendents, the other half of the children would have died at infancy.

 

[SBC]

Certainly the surface reading of the phrase "issued from herself" seems obvious, and nobody could be blamed for taking it in that sense (the most brilliant fellows might take it in that sense); but, for whatever it's worth, traditional conceptions (get it? conceptions?) of "offspring" were multi-generational ad infinitum. So for instance the Jews to whom Jesus speaks in John 8:33-39 state that Abraham is their father and that they are his children; or again, Hebrews 7:10 states that Levi paid tithes to Melchizedek, being in the loins of his ancestor Abraham.

And assuming traditional marrying ages (we moderns delay things insanely long, by historical standards), five generations being alive at once can be common.
(I myself have a photo with my kids, myself, my father, his mother, and her mother, all together.)

Studies have indicated that the average number children that a couple will have if they neither attempt to have children nor attempt not to have children is 8. Some couples are far less fertile than that, and some couples are far more fertile than that, but that is the average if couples do not try to time things one way or the other.

Exponents are powerful. If we assume that every individual will have 8 children, then a person would have 8 children, 64 grandchildren, 512 great-grandchildren, and 4,096 great-great grandchildren.

Even allowing for lower fertility and higher mortality, it turns out that a few hundred descendants within your lifetime is not inconceivable (there I go again! "inconceivable"!).