Of medicine fuelled death toll

least 30 children.

Figures from the National Records of Scotland reveal the highest mortality rate among children aged between one and 14 was in 1901, when 10.4 deaths per 1000 were recorded.

Professor Dame Sue Black, a leading forensic anthropologist, whose previous work includes identifying the victims of conflict in Kosovo, Sierra Leone

deaths

per

1,000 and Iraq, said: “I don’t detect any suspicious patterns either in numbers, relationship to the Sisters becoming informants, or the nature of the death as certified.

“At times, in such conditions, I suspect it is difficult to know what is bronchitis and what is TB and apart from a few classic ones that I have seen many times before, for example, fainting, teething etc there is nothing obviously out of order.”

She added that modern standards of medicine were far more exact than in the past, which should be taken into account when reviewing historic medical documents.

“Older death certificates often throw up one or two cause of deaths that we wouldn’t see in modern times where we are more specific and less speculative.”