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| Find out how parish records can be used to help explain the causes of a mortality crisis that overtook the rural community of Deane in the early 18th century. |  Deane parish churchyard as it is today
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In the late 1720s, a disaster overtook Deane, a rural parish near Bolton in Lancashire. A period of apparent population growth was suddenly brought to a halt by a dramatic rise in the death rate. Why?
'The local parish register contains a record of every baptism, marriage and burial in Deane parish.'
The usual suspects in such instances are war, disease, migration or famine, but which of these helped cause this catastrophe? As far as we know, no one has left an account of life in Deane in the mid-18th century, so looking for an answer will require some historical detective work.
The local parish register contains a record of every baptism, marriage and burial in Deane parish. What can it tell us about the people buried in Deane churchyard in the 1720s and 1730s?
You can see that in most years the number of baptisms was greater than the number of burials. However, during the late 1720s and early 1730s, the position was reversed. At this time, burials greatly exceeded baptisms, with the burial graph rising to a very high peak indeed.
In fact, in the six years from 1727 to 1732, 430 people were baptised at Deane, but more than twice as many - 904 in total - were buried. Plainly we are looking at what population historians call a 'mortality crisis'.
Comparing the numbers of baptism at Deane with those of burials gives a very good indication of how the parish's total population was changing over time. In the years when baptisms exceeded burials it's likely the population was rising, though account should be taken of possible losses through emigration or gains through immigration.
There are no figures available on these, but Deane was become a centre of the handloom industry at this time, with new jobs being created. It seems probable that more people moved into the parish than moved out.
In the years when burials exceeded baptisms, on the other hand, the population of Deane parish probably fell considerably, the more so because the number of baptisms (and therefore, presumably, of births) also dipped sharply. But what were the factors behind these sudden changes?
Epidemics of certain diseases, such as bubonic plague and cholera, can cause very sudden and steep rises in mortality levels, but neither of these can explain the catastrophe at Deane, since bubonic plague disappeared in England during the 17th century, and cholera did not reach British shores until the 19th century.
'The scale of disaster that harvest failure can bring is only too evident in developing countries today ...'
Other common killer diseases at this time were influenza, dysentery and smallpox. The problem here is that the mortality crisis at Deane persisted for several years, whereas outbreaks of such illnesses almost never last as long as this.
Another possibility is famine. The scale of disaster that harvest failure can bring is only too evident in developing countries today, and the position was no different in 18th-century Britain. Such a hypothesis would help to explain the simultaneous fall in the number of births that the Deane parish records indicate, since women who are starving are less likely to conceive and less likely to give birth to healthy babies. Could it be that the people of Deane were simply dying of hunger?
Indeed, we know from a detailed analysis of 404 sets of parish records in England that there was a nationwide mortality crisis during the late 1720s - one of the biggest mortality crises known to have occurred since the 16th century, with death rates up to 100 per cent above normal for three consecutive years.
We also know that across England the harvest of 1728 was a poor one, which may well have caused food shortages in the Bolton locality.
Finally we have contemporary reports from several parts of the country of unusual levels of various infections, with doctors in 1729 noting outbreaks of 'suffocating cough', catarrh, 'inflammatory fevers' (any of which might be the result of 'flu), whooping cough, chicken pox and smallpox.
And there's one further bit of evidence from the Deane parish register. Alongside some of the monthly lists of burials in these years there are marginal notes written by the vicar, James Rothwell. Against June 1729 he wrote:
'Most of these dyed of agues, pluraisy, etc, tho a fever came ye first.'
Agues meant chills and sweats, 'pluraisy' an inflammation of the lungs. Could this be influenza? In another note the vicar wrote that:
' ... in some respects ye disorder resembled ye Plague and continued amongst us above two years.'
'The upward trend in deaths may have begun with an outbreak of infectious disease - perhaps influenza - in 1727 ...'
Putting together all these pieces of evidence, it seems most likely that what happened in Deane was the result of a combination of factors. The upward trend in deaths may have begun with an outbreak of infectious disease - perhaps influenza - in 1727, but this was then compounded by widespread famine after the bad harvest of 1728, boosting the number of deaths and cutting the number of births.
Finally, a by now severely weakened population easily succumbed to another round of infections, perhaps including a virulent strain of 'flu, the following year. It is this combination of factors that best explains both the severity and the unusual duration of the crisis.
This is how historians work, whatever aspect of history they're studying. They take a piece of historical evidence, and ask what it might mean, what could explain it, why it is there. Then they put it into the context of whatever other evidence there is - comparing, contrasting, seeing how it fits in. And finally they arrive, however tentatively, at a conclusion which best explains all the evidence as he or she sees it.
Published on 91福利社 History: 2005-01-31
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