Mortality and health

Current and recent projects

	Airs, waters and agues: the history of endemic malaria in England and Denmark Was malaria a major driver of mortality patterns in wetland areas of northern Europe before 1800? Did contemporary observers agree?
	Water, sanitation and health in the first industrial society: Britain 1780 – 1930 Britain led the world in early public investments in water and sanitation, collectively known as 'The Sanitary Revolution'. Why were the outcomes of these investments so uneven?
	Migration, Mortality and Medicalisation: investigating the long-run epidemiological consequences of urbanisation How and when did towns and cities transform from urban graveyards into promoters of health between 1600 and 1945?
	Infant mortality by social status in Georgian London Were richer children born between 1752 and 1812 in the populous Westminster parish of St Martin-in-the-Fields more likely to die at young ages than poorer children?
	Housing, mobility and the measurement of child health from the 1911 Irish census Did Belfast families who moved house most often suffer an infant and child mortality penalty, during the first decade of the twentieth century?
	Long-run cause of death series for national populations What changes occurred in the level and age structure of cause-specific mortality in the late nineteenth century? An annual cause of death data series for England and Wales 1848-1900 has been compiled to answer this question.
	An empirical base for understanding the early phase of the epidemiological transition: Short-term and spatial variations in infectious disease mortality in England 1600-1837 As new industrial towns and transport networks developed, did short-term fluctuations in mortality converge across different locations? How were settlements of different sizes affected by infectious diseases?
	Doctors, deaths, diagnoses and data: a comparative study of the medical certification of cause of death in nineteenth century Scotland Did certain doctors working in Victorian Scotland favour particular diagnoses over others, and how did their diagnoses differ from those of lay persons? What are the implications for existing interpretations of changes in causes of death over time, in urban and rural areas?
	Mortality and epidemiological change in Manchester, 1750-1850 In the new northern industrial conurbation of Manchester, did a fifteen-fold population growth over the century before 1850 impact on survival chances steadily across the period, or only after 1820? What were the underlying causes of the stagnation in life expectancy that England is thought to have experienced during early industrialisation?
	Birth attendants and birth outcomes in the Victorian and Edwardian eras Did doctors or midwives achieve the best health outcomes for mothers at the turn of the twentieth century, and can regional differences in the number of trained midwives explain striking variations in the geography of maternal mortality?
	Infant and early childhood mortality decline in London, 1870-1929: a spatial and temporal analysis of its patterns, inequalities and policy impacts What can official sources and the archives tell us about infant and child mortality inequalities in early twentieth century London? And why did some individuals and areas fare better than others?

Completed projects and PhDs

• Reconstructing fertility and child mortality in Tanzania 1883-1961 (PhD project)
• Measuring infant and maternal health in late-Georgian Northern England (ESRC funded PhD project)
• The transformation of the urban epidemiological regime, 1750-1850
• Bridging the gap: new evidence for mortality and life expectancy spanning late medieval and early modern England (BA postdoctoral research project)
• Mortality and life expectancy: King's College, Cambridge c.1441 - c.1540
• The contribution of the National Health Service to gains in quality adjusted life expectancy: lessons from the past and implications for the future (BA postdoctoral research project)