The Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure
Water, sanitation and health in the first industrial society: Britain 1780 – 1930
Did sanitary conditions worsen, in long-established cities and towns, in the first half of the 19th century?
The angel of death (a winged skeletal creature) drops some deadly substances into a river near a town; representing typhoid. Watercolour, 1912, after R. Cooper. Credit: Wellcome Collection, CC-BY.
A key assumption in most accounts of the 'sanitary revolution' in Britain is that rapid urbanisation led to an absolute deterioration in urban mortality rates during the first half of the 19th century (Szreter & Mooney, 1998). However mortality data are sparse and difficult to interpret before the introduction of civil registration in 1837 in England and Wales and 1855 in Scotland.
One claim that is testable is that rapid urbanisation was accompanied by a worsening of sanitary conditions which resulted in rising levels of both endemic and epidemic faecal-oral diseases, such as typhoid, cholera and summer infant diarrhoeal epidemics, in many of Britain's fastest-growing cities.
Faecal-oral disease outbreaks tend to be concentrated in the warmest months and late summer epidemics of infant diarrhoeal mortality were a key component of the urban mortality penalty in Victorian towns. Using a sample of towns for which it is possible to knit together high-quality individual-level or weekly data on burials and deaths across the period c.1780–1870 (including London, Manchester, Glasgow and smaller towns) we will address the following questions:
- Did pre-registration burials show particular seasonal or cause-specific patterns which would be consistent with the assumption that a growing number of deaths were associated with the spread of faecal-oral diseases?
- When did this pattern emerge, and how much did it contribute to overall mortality?
Outputs
Information to follow.
Banner image credits: College Wynd, Edinburgh (photographer unknown), National Galleries Scotland, CC BY NC; Ginny pumphandle at the Conigre pump in Upper Broadstreet, Trowbridge, Wiltshire, c.1900 (copied from a photograph or postcard) by B. Rodway (1901-1996), © artist's estate, photo credit Trowbridge Museum; A disgruntled portly man standing next to a town water pump holding a ladle and rubbing his stomach as if in pain. Coloured etching by W. Heath, 1831. Wellcome Collection. Public Domain Mark.