Study title

This data collection of monthly and annual counts of burials from English parishes was created to investigate historical mortality regimes in England as part of a research project on Mortality, Migration and Medicalisation led by Richard Smith and Romola Davenport and its precursor pilot project led by Richard Smith on Short-term and spatial variations in infectious disease mortality. It comprises burial counts per month and year for 621 English parishes, for varying periods between 1528 and 1873. It also includes burial counts per month and year subdivided into adult or child (derived from family relationships eg son, daughter) for urban parishes in Leeds, Liverpool and also Birstall in Yorkshire West Riding and surrounding hinterland. There are separate annual burial counts by age group for all London (as one entity), derived from London Bills of Mortality. Data for 404 of the 621 parishes are from R S Schofield's English population history database distributed with a special 1998 issue of the journal Local Population Studies, also available as UKDA SN 4491, Parish Register Aggregate Analyses.

These counts of burials from English parishes were compiled as part of a research programme exploring long-run changes in England's mortality regime. Today, life expectancy is higher in urban rather than rural areas, but early modern towns and cities were demographic sinks with extraordinarily high mortality, especially among the young and migrants who were essential for city growth. The project investigated how and when cities transformed from urban graveyards into promoters of health between 1600 and 1945. The process of endemicisation and exogenous disease variation is key to the evolution of both urban and non-urban mortality regimes, especially with respect to: infectious diseases among the young, maternal health and adult migrants and their health/immunological status.