Viper Bite Fatalities
A couple of early readers queried my inclusion of a death by adder bite in the opening pages of Blood Among the Threads – and whether such things ever actually happened. Well, of course, we all know that this was exactly what killed Ragnar Lodbrok, wasn’t it?
Maybe more relevant, I was lucky to come across the review in 2018 by Steve Langham from the Surrey Amphibian and Reptile Group. Steve completed a detailed survey of fatalities attributed to adder (Vipera berus) bites across Britain. He mainly used old newspaper reports from the previous 300 years. In summary, there are apparently 100 incidents of adder bites in the UK every year – though only a tiny number prove fatal. Steve’s research showed that…
throughout the 18th Century, there were 14 such deaths (one male baby, 10 adult males and 3 male youngsters);
in the 19th Century, there were 20 fatalities (2 female babies, 7 adult males, 6 male children and 5 female children); and
in the 20th Century, there were another 20 adder-related deaths (11 adult males, 1 adult female, 3 male children and 4 female children).
Of course, many of these deaths occurred where the victims were “compromised” – young, old, intoxicated or infirm. In many other cases, death was due to secondary effects – anaphylactic shock, blood poisoning, or suffocation due to swelling. But in some cases, it was simple envenomation.
So I’m happy that the death of my fictional Rose Wimpole was well within the limits of historical veracity.
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