Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-07T20:18:18.710Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

4 - Geographical rhythms of mortality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2009

Mary J. Dobson
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
Get access

Summary

In marshy and unwholesome situations … many of the offspring in such places die in their infancy and childhood, as we see from 40 to 54 per cent … Seldom any, though born here, continuing in it, have lived to the age of twenty-one years.

(Short, 1750, p.65; Hasted, 1797–1801, vol.vi, p.144)

AGE AT DEATH ACROSS THE PARISHES OF SOUTH-EAST ENGLAND

Burial:baptism ratios and crude death rates sketch the broad vistas of the contours of death and contours of health of our past. Many historical demographers, however, are no longer content to limit their analysis to such basic indices – there is now a demand for more penetrating statistics describing the structure of mortality and, in particular, its variation by age, sex and season. This chapter looks at mortality patterns across space and time using some of these measures of mortality. The findings reinforce those of the previous chapter and provide us with further clues for an understanding of the epidemiological landscapes of south-east England.

Age-specific mortality rates for the 600 or so parishes across a span of 200 years would be impossible to calculate. But towards the end of the eighteenth century, a number of parish burial registers began to contain some information on the age status of the deceased. For Essex, Kent and East Sussex about 100 parish registers have been found which systematically recorded age at death (in years or years and months) for a reasonable length of time prior to 1812. This material has been supplemented with a small sample of age at death data drawn from the Clergymen's Returns in the 1831 Census.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×