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Mortality on Immigrant Voyages to New York, 1836–1853

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Raymond L. Cohn
Raymond L. Cohn
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of Economics at Illinois State University, Normal, Illinois
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Abstract

The first systematic estimates of mortality on immigrant ships are presented in the paper. From passenger lists of immigrant arrivals, a sample of 1077 ships that arrived at New York between 1836 and 1853 was obtained and analyzed. Immigrants died at a rate of about 10 per thousand boarded per month with a significantly higher rate for 1849. Mortality was found to vary by sex, port of origin, and season of arrival. No significant variation was found between mortality and the following variables: crowding, nationality of the immigrant, and year of arrival.

Type
Papers Presented at the Forty-Third Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 44 , Issue 2 , June 1984 , pp. 289 - 300
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1984

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References

1 Klein, Herbert S., The Middle Passage: Comparative Studies in the Atlantic Slave Trade (Princeton, 1978);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Eds., Gemery, Henry A. and Hogendom, Jan S., The Uncommon Market (New York, 1979);Google ScholarMiller, Joseph C., “Mortality in the Atlantic Slave Trade: Statistical Evidence on Causality,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 11 (Winter 1981), 385–423;Google ScholarCohn, Raymond L. and Jensen, Richard A., “Discussion,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 12 (Autumn 1982), 321–29.Google Scholar

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3 See the discussions of immigrant mortality in the following standard works on immigration: Wittke, Carl, We Who Built America, revised ed. (Cleveland, 1967), pp. 110–16;Google ScholarHansen, Marcus L., The Atlantic Migration, 1607–1860 (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1940), p. 256;CrossRefGoogle ScholarDavie, Maurice R., World Immigration (New York, 1936), pp. 92–96;Google ScholarWabeke, Bertus H., Dutch Emigration to North America, 1624–1860 (Freeport, New York, 1970), pp. 108–09;Google ScholarWoodham–Smith, Cecil, The Great Hunger: Ireland, 1845–1849 (New York, 1962), pp. 213–17, 239–60.Google Scholar

4 Larger mortality on the voyage will also reduce the expected value of the gain from the movement to the immigrant. Thus, larger mortality, ceteris paribus, would reduce the amount of immigration. This analysis would not necessarily hold for the slave trade.Google Scholar

5 An additional matter of minor concern is that the published figures on the amount of U.S. immigration in this period may include those who died on the voyage. See U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States (Washington, D.C., 1976), p. 97. More accurate measures of mortality may therefore lead to more accurate measures of the amount of immigration.Google Scholar

6 U.S. Congress, Senate, Report of the Select Committee on the Sickness and Mortality on Board Emigrant Ships, 33rd Congress, 1st Session, Senate Reports (No. 386), 1854.Google Scholar

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8 See the sources listed in Footnote 7, plus U.S. Congress, Report of the Select Committee and the New York Tribune, November 19, 22, 26, and December 3, 1853. Immigrant mortality on ships to Canada in 1847 has been estimated at 6–9 percent.Google Scholar

9 Unfortunately, the records do not contain information on voyage length, so an analysis of the trend of mortality over the course of the voyage cannot be done. This type of analysis has provided some interesting results for the slave trade. See Miller, “Mortality” and Cohn and Jensen, “Discussion.”Google Scholar

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11 The sample contains 9.2 percent of all immigrants arriving from Europe during this period as listed in Historical Statistics, Series C90, p. 106. The sample would contain an even higher percentage of immigrants landing at New York.Google Scholar

12 Information is available in Historical Statistics, Series C90–C95, C138–139, pp. 106, 113, that allow a comparison of the sample to the entire population. The sample is approximately 73.8 percent from Great Britain, 25.7 percent from the Continent, and 0.5 percent from Scandinavia. The population is 63.0 percent from Great Britain, 36.2 percent from the Continent, and 0.8 percent from Scandinavia. The sample is about 59 percent male; the population was 60 percent male. No known biases are introduced as a result of these differences.Google Scholar

13 This procedure may impart an upward bias to the mortality figures found in this paper. As a result of the deaths column being used for numerous purposes other than listing deaths, however, it seems best to restrict the sample only to those ships where the mortality situation was clearly stated. As an additional check, the sampling procedure was used for 1854 and 1855 to determine mortality. The sampling procedure gave a percent loss of 1.39 percent for 1854 and 0.75 percent for 1855. The published figures for these years (given in the text in the introduction) are 0.63 percent for 1854 and 0.21 percent for 1855. The sample figures are higher, but it should be remembered that the published figures include a number of ships where the captains listed no information concerning the number of deaths.Google Scholar

14 U.S. Congress, Report of the Select Committee, p. 25. Taylor is reluctant to accept American records as being accurate because “no account of younger children's deaths” had to be made. See Taylor, Philip, The Distant Magnet (New York, 1971), p. 140. I can find no such loophole in the law of the period. Furthermore, every ship in the age-specific sample lists children's deaths.Google Scholar

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17 Wittke, We Who Built America, p. 115. Available estimates of voyage length are numerous. Taylor, The Distant Magnet, p. 139, gives a figure of 5 weeks, but implies that it was for the luckiest voyages. Wabeke, Dutch Emigration, p. 108, gives a figure of 6 to 8 weeks. Hansen, The Atlantic Migration, p. 194, says the voyage from Liverpool to New York took 35 to 40 days. Davie, World Immigration, p. 96, says 6 weeks. Wittke's figure was accepted because it apparently is an average for ships from all European ports, not just those from a particular country. In light of the other estimates, 44 days seems a reasonable figure.Google Scholar

18 Riley, “Mortality,” p. 655, gives a figure of 8.6 per thousand.Google Scholar

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29 The ten ports, with the number of ships from each in parentheses, are: Liverpool (512), Le Havre (136), Bremen (77), London (72), Hamburg (62), Antwerp (38), Rotterdam (27), Glasgow (26), Bristol (22), and Limerick (12).Google Scholar

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