Essays in English Population Historyorder this book
Peter Razzell
Price £45.00

This book will re-open the debate about the nature and origins of the eighteenth century population and industrual revolutions. The increase of population in eighteenth century England has long been a matter of controversy, with dispute about whether emonomic development preceded and prompted population growth, or vice versa. In the last few years, the Cambridge Group has concluded that population grew as a result of a rise in fertility due to a reduction in the age at marriage, itself a consequence of rising real incomes. This neo-Malthusian view has become something of an orthodoxy, reflected widely in economic and social historical texts.

Dr Razzell challenges this orthodoxy, and argues that a fall in mortality rather than an increase in fertility was responsible for eighteenth century population growth. He presents detailed evidence to show that the decrease in mortality began at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and affected all socio-economic groups. A range of explanations for this fall of mortality are considered, including improvements in hygiene, the practice of smallpox inoculation and vaccination, and the gradual elimination of malaria resulting from land drainage associated with agricultural improvemetns. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in the economic, demographis and medical history of early modern England.

From Chapter 6, "A Critique of 'An Interpretation of the Modern Rise in Population'":

"There remains one empirical discovery made in the eighteenth century which I shall argue in this paper could have had a very marked effect on health and made a substantial contribution to reducing mortality _ although it is likely that improvement in health came about not so much through the deliberate application of the discovery but rather through its utilization on social and economic grounds. From about the middle of the eighteenth century onwards, a number of medical pioneers began to teach, through their writings and practice, the importance of hygiene and general cleanliness: Sir John Pringle discovered the importance of hygiene for preventing dysentery in army camps, James Lind demonstrated how it was possible to prevent typhus in navy hospitals and ships through rules of hygiene, and Sir Gilbert Blane reduced the incidence of hospital fever through an insistence on scrupulous cleanliness. All these innovations were limited to institutions where some degree of centralized authority made it possible to impose rules of hygiene from above, and so necessarily only influenced a small proportion of the total population. However, the emergence of the dispensary and Lying-In movements at the end of the eighteenth century led to a wider diffusion of this principle of hygiene. Lettsom for example claimed that the influence of the General Dispensary in London had brought about improvements in the way many ordinary people treated their sick relatives, by encouraging cleanliness and better personal hygiene. Lettsom also believed in that 'in the nurture and management of infants, as well as in the treatment of lying-in women, the reformation hath equalled that of the smallpox [through inoculation]'. A part of this reformation had consisted of an insistence on cleanliness, which undoubtedly would have helped to reduce mortality.