Strand organiser: Eilidh Garrett, University of Cambridge
Through the regional magnifying glass. Infant mortality in the Lincolnshire Fens, 1870-1900 - The "Fen Penalty"
Sam Sneddon
University of Nottingham.
High levels of infant mortality in the nineteenth century have long-perplexed researchers, producing many attempts to explain why some areas were more hazardous to infants than others. In general, urban and industrial regions of England and Wales were found to be more perilous to the survival of infants, and research has consequently focused more heavily upon these regions.
Nevertheless, in 1864 Dr. H. Hunter commented upon the abnormally high infant mortality levels found within the Fens of Lincolnshire. Despite the essentially rural and agricultural character of the Fens, this distinctive region displayed levels of infant mortality that were more comparable with heavily industrialised towns like Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester.
Previous research has confirmed the existence of this rural fenland phenomenon, and this paper takes the research a step forward, by examining quinquennial infant mortality rates for each Registration Sub-District within the county of Lincolnshire. These rates are mapped and the changing spatial patterns of infant mortality are analysed from 1870-1900.
The analysis helps both to illustrate the more commonly noted 'urban penalty' and identify the concept of a 'fen penalty', certainly in the 1870s and early 1880s.
Sam Sneddon, Geography Dept., University of Nottingham, University Park,
Nottingham, NG7 2RD
Email: sam_sneddon@hotmail.com
Vulnerability among illegitimate children in nineteenth century Scotland
Alice Reid and Ros Davies
University of Cambridge
It is well known that children born out of wedlock are a particularly vulnerable group: historically they were around twice as likely to have died before the age of one year than legitimate children, and the penalty remains substantial today, despite changes in marriage and cohabitation. It is less clear exactly why illegitimate infants were at higher risk. Longitudinal historical demographic records, which allow an individual's circumstances at different times to be linked to their survival, tend to concentrate on more stable families as mobility, changing residential patterns and variable naming practices render illegitimate births more difficult to follow. Thus although it is known that such children are more likely to have lived in poverty and their mothers to have had relatively weak social support networks, exactly how such circumstances translate, through nutritional standards, housing conditions, exposure to disease, or maternal absence, into life chances has been little studied. Previous work on illegitimacy in Scotland has identified practices of leaving illegitimate children with grandparents, and this paper seeks to investigate the impact of residential arrangements, kin support and other support mechanisms such as public relief on the mortality of illegitimate infants. Using hazards analysis of linked censuses and civil registrations in rural Scottish communities, it will compare these with other influences on their mortality, and with the influences on the mortality of legitimate children, seeking to identify factors which lead to the higher vulnerability of illegitimate infants.
Alice Reid, Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure
Geography Department, Sir William Hardy Building, Downing Place, Cambridge, CB2 3EN
Email: amr1001@cam.ac.uk
Work patterns, conception patterns and the registration of demographic events in selected localities in late nineteenth century Britain.
Eilidh Garrett & Ros Davies
University of Cambridge
Seasonality in demographic behaviour has long been noted, particularly amongst populations in agricultural communities where marriages, conceptions and thus births, seem to have been closely tied to the rhythms of the farming calendar. With the rise of industrialisation these patterns became far more muted.
In baptismal registers little information over and above the names and occupation of the newborns parents is usually given. However, with the advent of civil registers an additional item of information is given on each certificate; the name of the person registering the event and, in the case of births, their relationship to the child or, in the case of deaths, to the deceased.
This paper will explore the social, economic and seasonal patterns of registration found in the last four decades of the nineteenth century in 3 Scottish communities: the Isle of Skye, the parish of Rothiemay and the town of Kilmarnock and compare and contrast these with those found in the English town of Ipswich.
Eilidh Garrett, c/o Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure, Geography Department, Sir William Hardy Building, Downing Place
Cambridge, CB2 3EN
Email: eilidh.garrett@btinternet.com
Christine Jones, Kevin Schurer & Alasdair Crockett
University of Essex
The VPS takes as its base the individuals and households recorded in the computerised national two per cent sample of the 1851 British census and plans to trace these through subsequent registration and census information to 1901. The result would be a linked database with each census year between 1851 and 1901 in essence acting as a surrogate 'wave'.
This project is timely because great advances have been made in the creation of computerised and searchable indices to major collections of historical sources. Of particular importance are the national databases that exist for the censuses of 1881 and 1901. Following the success of creating the 1901 internet-based resource, The National Archives (TNA) is committed to a programme of computerising the remaining nineteenth-century censuses for England and Wales. Likewise for Scotland, plans are well advanced to digitise and index all remaining un-indexed censuses. In addition the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has announced its intention to produce a searchable database of the 'historic' civil registers of births, marriages and deaths.
These resources potentially offer significant opportunities to the academic research community, particularly in facilitating the possibility and potential for tracing individuals over the course of the second half of the nineteenth century.
This paper will discuss the pilot project, the purpose of which is to test differing sampling and methodological issues, examine the linking problems involved, investigate the relationship between the VPS and other longitudinal data projects, explore the strategic partnerships which will support the VPS, and recommend a framework and strategy for creating a full VPS.
Christine Jones, Research Assistant, Victorian Panel Survey, UK Data Archive,
University of Essex, Colchester. CO4 3SQ
Tel: +44 1206 873528 Fax: +44 1206 872003
Email: cejone@essex.ac.uk
Migration in a rural area: a comparative study of East Yorkshire from the nineteenth century to 2003, with special reference to the Yorkshire Wolds.
Andrea Armstrong
University of Newcastle
This paper advances a multi-method qualitative approach to compare migrant characteristics, the migration decision making process and the impact of that decision on people and places. The research involved a small-scale study, conducted in the East Riding of Yorkshire. The 1881 census, family histories, questionnaires and interviews were used to compile case studies of representative individuals and parishes. This revealed that although every individual migration life history has unique elements, there are certain aspects that have remained unchanged over time. Even though the broader structural aspects have changed, at the individual and family level the migration decision making process has remained remarkably similar. By placing the migration event within the lifecourse, it emphasizes that migration is not an unusual event and that life events influence migration as much as or more than broader structural and societal changes.
Andrea Armstrong, Geography Department, Daysh Building, University of Newcastle
Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU
Email: andrea.armstrong@ncl.ac.uk
Geographical perspectives on the epidemic emergence of poliomyelitis in Europe: England and Wales, 1900 - 55.
Sam Sneddon1, Matthew Smallman-Raynor1 and Andrew Cliff2
1University of Nottingham, 2University of Cambridge.
Poliomyelitis is a disease that is rapidly disappearing from our consciousness as the World Health Organization's initiative to globally eradicate the disease marches on with increasing success.
For most of its history, poliomyelitis was a background disease that had little demographic impact. However, from the early nineteenth century, it began to evolve into a nascent epidemic state in Europe, with the earliest description of a small and highly localised outbreak of infantile paralysis appearing in the English town of Worksop (1835). Other similar small scale, localised outbreaks emerged with increasing frequency in Europe from the 1880s, with the world's first major epidemics of poliomyelitis erupting in Norway and Sweden in 1905. Thereafter, epidemics spread, wave after wave, in Europe, North America, Australasia and, subsequently, in other parts of the world.
In this paper, we track the geographical process of poliomyelitis' epidemic emergence in Europe, with special reference to the experience of England and Wales. Drawing on the Registrar General's poliomyelitis notification figures for England and Wales (1919-55), this paper analyses the geographical patterns of the disease through a series of graphs and maps at various geographical scales - county, county borough, town and village. It is shown that the main phase of epidemic activity was marked by an abrupt onset in the early post-war period, with the first national epidemic in England and Wales occurring in 1947. Epidemics of similar magnitude and geographical extent followed in subsequent years.
Sam Sneddon, Geography Dept., University of Nottingham, University Park,
Nottingham, NG7 2RD.
Email: sam_sneddon@hotmail.com