Water, sanitation and health in the first industrial society: Britain 1780 – 1930

• Home
• Research questions
• Outputs and events

Why did mortality improve in rural areas?

Historians have tended to pay comparatively little attention to the history of public health in rural areas, and many contemporaries condemned these areas as being sanitarily backward by the end of the 19^th century. However, even though aggregate mortality rates were declining more rapidly in urban areas than rural areas, many of these areas also experienced improvements in faecal-oral death rates, often despite any clear changes in sanitary arrangements (Hinde & Harris 2019).

We will investigate whether improvements in water and faecal disposal have been underestimated in rural areas, or whether rural areas benefitted indirectly from improved sanitation in urban areas, for example as a consequence of upstream sewage treatment or reductions in the supply of nightsoil, or because falls in disease levels in towns reduced the circulation of those diseases in rural areas.

Specific sub-questions include:

• Were falls in typhoid death rates in rural areas associated with local improvements in water or sewerage?
• Were falls in typhoid death rates in rural areas associated with improving typhoid rates or WaSH investments in neighbouring towns or regions?
• Did levels and trends in typhoid death rates in rural areas display spatio-temporal patterns that would suggest other environmental, technological or socio-demographic drivers?

Outputs

Banner image credits: Girl at a well, by HJY King (1855-1924), Photo credit Harris Museum & Art Gallery, Preston; Old Pump, Prittlewell, by H.H. Emms (active 1904), photo credit Beecroft Art Gallery; Hard Times, by Hubert von Herkomer (1849 – 1914), photo credit Manchester Art Gallery.