John Stuart Mill's Death

The philosopher John Stuart Mill died at the age of 66. Here is all you want to know and more!

Biography - A Short Wiki

This important nineteenth-century philosopher contributed to economic, social, and political theory, publishing an 1859 work, On Liberty, that laid out his theory of personal freedom and placed a limit, “the harm principle,” on the scope of individual autonomy.

He could read Greek by the age of three and Latin by the age of eight. After working for the East India Company, he studied at University College, London.

His 1869 work, The Subjection of Women, was one of the first women’s rights treatises to be penned by a male writer.

Personal Life

He grew up in London, England, as the son of Harriet Burrow and philosopher and economist James Mill. In his fifties, he married his longtime friend Harriet Taylor.

He was an advocate of philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s theory of ethical utilitarianism.

How did John Stuart Mill die?

In truth, the cause of Mill’s death was more prosaic: on 5 May 1873 he suffered ‘a virulent form of erysipelas’. The inflammation of the skin, accompanied by fever, proved too much. His death, on 8 May, twelve days short of his sixty-seventh birthday, was not, by Victorian standards, a ‘good death’.