English burial counts 1538-1873

Smith, Richard and Davenport, Romola and Newton, Gill and Kitson, Peter (2020). English burial counts 1538-1873. [Data Collection]. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Service. 10.5255/UKDA-SN-854344

These counts of burials from English parishes were compiled as part of a research programme exploring long-run changes in England's mortality regime. Today, life expectancy is higher in urban rather than rural areas, but early modern towns and cities were demographic sinks with extraordinarily high mortality, especially among the young and migrants who were essential for city growth. The project investigated how and when cities transformed from urban graveyards into promoters of health between 1600 and 1945. The process of endemicisation and exogenous disease variation is key to the evolution of both urban and non-urban mortality regimes, especially with respect to: infectious diseases among the young, maternal health and adult migrants and their health/immunological status.

Data description (abstract)

This data collection of monthly and annual counts of burials from English parishes was created to investigate historical mortality regimes in England as part of a research project on Mortality, Migration and Medicalisation led by Richard Smith and Romola Davenport and its precursor pilot project led by Richard Smith on Short-term and spatial variations in infectious disease mortality.
It comprises burial counts per month and year for 621 English parishes, for varying periods between 1528 and 1873. It also includes burial counts per month and year subdivided into adult or child (derived from family relationships eg son, daughter) for urban parishes in Leeds, Liverpool and also Birstall in Yorkshire West Riding and surrounding hinterland. There are separate annual burial counts by age group for all London (as one entity), derived from London Bills of Mortality.
Data for 404 of the 621 parishes are from R S Schofield's English population history database distributed with a special 1998 issue of the journal Local Population Studies, also available as UKDA SN 4491, Parish Register Aggregate Analyses.

Data creators:

Creator Name	Affiliation	ORCID (as URL)
Smith Richard	University of Cambridge	https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5905-0051
Davenport Romola	University of Cambridge	https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6828-9846
Newton Gill	University of Cambridge	https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0386-8166
Kitson Peter	University of Cambridge

Contributors:

Name	Affiliation	ORCID (as URL)
Schofield R S	University of Cambridge
Wrigley E A	University of Cambridge	https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9338-2164

Sponsors:

Wellcome Trust

Grant reference:

360G-Wellcome-103322_Z_13_Z and 360G-Wellcome-096504_Z_11_Z

Topic classification:

History
Health
Demography (population, vital statistics and censuses)

Keywords:

BURIALS, MORTALITY, PARISH RECORDS, HISTORY, LOCAL HISTORY, PARISHES, ADULTS, CHILDREN

Project title:

English Burial Counts 1528 to 1873

Grant holders:

Professor Richard Smith

Project dates:

From	To
1 January 2012	31 March 2020

Date published:

25 Jun 2020 12:18

Last modified:

25 Jun 2020 12:18

Coverage and Methodology

Access and Administration

Data sourcing, processing and preparation:

Some of these data represent a restructuring of digitised data compiled long ago by or on behalf of CAMPOP, including those previously released as UKDA SN 4491, Parish Register Aggregate Analyses. Others, mainly the populous parishes of Liverpool and Leeds and environs, were newly abstracted and digitised by Gill Newton and Peter Kitson for this project, using family relationships information to subdivide the counts into adults and children. New counts of burials were abstracted into Excel spreadsheets and harmonised together with the older, restructured data into an Access relational database by Gill Newton. The present data collection consists of text files exported in delimited text format from this database. Geospatial references were established by matching parishes in this data collection by name and location to other CAMPOP GIS resources.

Rights owners: