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3 For instance, Nolan, C. M., ‘Infant mortality as an indicator of social and environmental change, 1880–1930: with special reference to Derby’ (unpublished Ph.D thesis, University of Cambridge, 1982)Google Scholar; Buchanan, I. H., ‘Infant mortality in British coal-mining communities, 1880–1911’ (unpublished Ph.D thesis, London School of Economics, 1983)Google Scholar; Thompson, B., ‘Infant mortality in nineteenth-century Bradford’, in Woods, R. I. and Woodward, J. H. eds., Urban disease and mortality in nineteenth-century England (London, 1984), 120–47Google Scholar; and for London, Birmingham and Liverpool see Woods, , Watterson, and Woodward, , ‘The causes of rapid infant mortality decline. Part I’, 359–60.Google Scholar

4 The Municipal Borough of Blackburn, for instance, constituted only 51 per cent of the total RD population in 1851; in Bolton this figure was 53 per cent, whereas in Preston and Oldham the proportions were 72 per cent and 83 per cent respectively.

5 This makes the comparison of individual RDs over tirne problematic. For example, the population of Sheffield RD was only part of the total municipal population. To compare IMRs for Sheffield RD in the 1850s with those of the 1890s would be misleading because of class-specific mobility and the movement of middle-class inhabitants out of the RD area, into the neighbouring RD of Ecclesall Bierlow (which was also included within the municipal limits of the town). A full list of RDs which make up individual towns, together with a list of the boundary changes, can be found in Williams, N. J., ‘Infant and child mortality in urban areas of nineteenth-century England and Wales: a record-linkage study’ (unpublished Ph.D thesis, University of Liverpool, 1989), 192–8.Google Scholar

6 Examples of the way comparability is enhanced by combining RDs may be found in Laxton, P. and Williams, N. J., ‘Urbanization and infant mortality in England: a long term perspective and review’, in Nelson, M. C. and Rogers, J. eds., Urbanisation and the epidemiologic transition (Reports from the Family History Group, No. 9, Uppsala University, Sweden, 1989), 109–35.Google Scholar

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9 In these three RDs institutional deaths accounted for over 50 per cent of all deaths in 1901. It is clear that IMRs in the remaining districts may be slightly under-stated, because they supplied ‘deaths’ to these three districts. We shall return to this issue shortly.

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12 In the 1860s some rural RDs in eastern England had rather high levels of infant mortality in spite of their low population densities. It has been suggested that this was partly linked to the rather higher levels of illegitimate fertility in these places. See Woods, , Watterson, and Woodward, , ‘The causes of rapid infant mortality decline. Part I’, 356.Google Scholar

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14 While the possibility cannot be discounted that some of these low rates were due to the ‘export’ of institutional deaths, Woods, Watterson and Woodward have also noted that by 1900 IMRs in suburban districts were as low as those in rural parts of southern England, whereas the IMRs for districts situated to the immediate west and east of the City equalled the worst northern towns.

15 In Table 4 Weber gives two estimates for the total number of cities in Germany and England. He does not account for this; however, it is likely that the number of cities in these urban categories increased during the period under observation and the two figures may reflect this.

16 The issue of London's lower mortality is discussed further in Woods, R. I., Williams, N. J. and Galley, C., ‘Infant mortality in England, 1550–1950: Problems in the identification of long-term trends, geographical and social variations’, in Corsini, Carlo A. and Viazzo, Pier Paulo eds., The decline of infant mortality in Europe, 1800–1950 (Florence: International Child Development Centre and Istituto degli Innocenti, 1993), 35–50.Google Scholar

17 As Weber noted in 1899 (Weber, A. F., The growth of cities in the nineteenth century: a study in statistics (first published 1899; reprinted by Cornell University Press, New York, 1963), 360–5).Google Scholar More recently, Francine van de Walle has suggested that in many European countries, ‘the larger the city, the higher the infant mortality rate’ (van de Walle, F., ‘Infant mortality and the European demographic transition’, in Coale, A. J. and Watkins, S. C. eds., The decline of fertility in Europe (Princeton, 1986), 216).Google Scholar

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