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The Effects of Population Redistribution on the Level of Mortality in Nineteenth-Century England and Wales

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Robert Woods
Robert Woods
Affiliation:
Senior lecturer in the Department of Geography, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, S10 2TN, United Kingdom.
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Abstract

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Type
Notes and Discussion
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 45 , Issue 3 , September 1985 , pp. 645 - 651
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1985

References

Helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper were received from David Grigg, Andy Hinde, Dick Lawton, Tony Wrigley and John Woodward. Financial assistance was received from the Nuffield Foundation and the University of Sheffield Research Fund.Google Scholar

1 Wrigley, E. A. and Schofield, R. S., The Population History of England, 1541–1871: A Reconstruction (London and Cambridge, 1981). See especially Tables 7.15 and A3.6.Google Scholar

2 Background issues and sources are considered in Woods, Robert and Woodward, John, eds., Urban Disease and Mortality in Nineteenth-Century England (London and New York, 1984).Google Scholar See also de Vries, Jan, European Urbanization, 1500–1800 (Cambridge and London, 1984) on the causes and consequences of urbanization in the early modern period.Google Scholar

3 The First and Second English Life Tables relate to 1841 and 1838–1844. Both employ the age-structure data from the 1841 census, which many contemporaries and modern demographers have found unreliable. See, for example, Lee, R. D. and Lam, D., “Age Distribution Adjustments for English Censuses, 1821 to 1931,” Population Studies, 37 (11 1983), pp. 445–64.Google ScholarPubMed Dr. William Farr's work on the Third English Life Table for 1838–1854 marks a significant advance because it also utilizes the more reliable 1851 census age structures and age-at-death data for a longer period. See Farr, William, English Life Table. Tables of Lifetimes, Annuities, and Premiums (London, 1864);Google Scholar also Wrigley and Schofield, Population History, pp. 708–14, on their derivation of “English,” model life tables and use of English Life Table 3.Google Scholar

4 Although The Population History of England has attracted considerable crititcal interest, the life expectation estimates, especially for the nineteenth century, remain relatively unscathed.Google Scholar See, for example, Lindert, Peter H., “English Living Standards. Population Growth, and WrigleySchofield,” Explorations in Economic History, 20 (04 1983), pp. 131–55;CrossRefGoogle ScholarWeir, David R., “Life Under Pressure: France and England, 1670–1870,” this JOURNAL, 44 (03 1984), pp. 27–47;Google Scholar and especially Williamson, Jeffrey G., “British Mortality and the Value of Life, 1781–1931,” Population Studies, 38 (03 1984), pp. 157–72.Google ScholarPubMed

5 Particularly Law, C. M., “The Growth of Urban Population in England and Wales, 1801–1911”, Transactions, Institute of British Geographers, 41 (1967), pp. 125–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Law's estimates have also been used in Robson, Brian T., Urban Growth: An Approach (London, 1973); andGoogle ScholarLawton, Richard, “Urbanization and Population Change in Nineteenth-Century England,” in Patten, John, ed., The Expanding City (London, 1983), pp. 179–224.Google Scholar

6 See Lee and Lam “Age Distribution Adjustments,” but also the assumptions made in Glass, D. V., “A Note on the Under-Registration of Births in Britain in the Nineteenth Century,” Population Studies, 5 (07 1951), pp. 70–88; andCrossRefGoogle ScholarTeitelbaum, Michael S., The British Fertility Decline (Princeton, 1984), regarding the quality of censuses in order to check the extent of vital under-registration.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Laeton, Richard, “An Age of Great Cities,” Town Planning Review, 43 (1972), pp. 199–224.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 These are to be found in Parliamentary Papers, 1914, xiv and apply to 1911–1912.Google Scholar

9 That is, (0.1254 × 52) + (0.3130 × 51) + (0.2627 × 53) + (0.2989 × 55).Google Scholar

10 See Woods and Woodward, Urban Disease, pp. 37–64,Google Scholar but also Glass, D. V., “Some Indications of Differences Between Urban and Rural Mortality,” Population Studies, 17 (03 1964), pp. 263–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Woods and Woodward, Urban Disease, Figure 2.14, p. 54. The relationships between life expectations for both sexes combined (Y) and the population density of registration districts in persons per square kilometer (X) is Y = 56.45 – 5.54 log X (r 2 is 0.466, significant at 99 percent level). Log X for the large towns is greater than 3 and for the rural areas less than 2. Farr himself made equivalent calculations with death rates for 841–1850 and 1851–1860. See Supplement to the Twenty-Fifth Annual Report of the Registrar General (Parliamentary Papers 1865, xiii)Google Scholar and Farr, William, Vital Statistics (London, 1885), pp. 172–76.Google Scholar

12 Since there were no “large towns,” in England and Wales in 1801 apart from London, the series were estimated from 1811.Google Scholar

13 This observation adds substantial weight to the points raised in the following: Lindert, Peter H. and Williamson, Jeffrey G., “English Workers' Living Standards During the Industrial Revolution: A new look,” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 36 (02 1983), pp. 1–25, especially section 7;Google ScholarWilliamson, Jeffrey G., “Was the Industrial Revolution worth it? Disamenities and Death in 19th Century British Towns,” Explorations in Economic History, 19 (07 1982), pp. 221–45;CrossRefGoogle ScholarWilliamson, Jeffrey G., Did British Capitalism Breed Inequality? (Boston, 1985), pp. 24–28; and Williamson, “British Mortality,” regarding the significance of urbanization as opposed to deteriorating urban conditions, but case studies of individual towns (especially as they move between categories) may tell a different story.Google Scholar See, for example, Armstrong, W. A., “The Trend of Mortality in Carlisle Between the 1780s and the 1840s: A Demographic Contribution to the Standard of Living Debate,” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 34 (02 1981), pp. 94–114;CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed but also Loschky, D. J., “Urbanization and England's Eighteenth Century Crude Birth and Death Rates,” Journal of European Economic History, 1 (Winter 1972), pp. 697–712.Google Scholar

14 The importance of this “spatial” or “environmental” perspective is emphasized in Woods and Woodward, Urban Disease, but it is underplayed in McKeown, Thomas and Record, R. O., “Reasons for the Decline of Mortality in England and Wales during the Nineteenth Century,” Population Studies, 16 (07 1962), pp. 94–122;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and McKeown, Thomas, The Modern Rise of Population (London, 1976). The importance of that set of administrative and public health advances usually labeled the “Sanitary Revolution” appears to be reemphasized by these estimates of rural and urban life expectations.Google Scholar

15 The main candidates in the explanation of infant mortality decline from the turn of the century are the following: the influence of the medical profession (doctors, midwives, and hospitals); maternal health and education, particularly changes in child-rearing practices; improvements in diet for mothers and infants, the practice of breast feeding, the pasteurization of milk, the purification of water; changes in living conditions and standards, especially housing and hygiene; and the use of family limitation to reduce family size and space pregnancies. Some of these possibilities have been considered: for example, see Dyhouse, Carole, “Working Class Mothers and Infant Mortality in England, 1895–1914,” Journal of Social History, 12 (Winter 1978), pp. 248–67;CrossRefGoogle ScholarDonnison, Jean, Midwives and Medical Men (London and New York, 1977);Google ScholarHardyment, Christine, Dream Babies (London, 1983);Google Scholar and Beaver, M. W., “Population, Infant Mortality and Milk,” Population Studies, 27 (07 1973), pp. 243.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed