Study title

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

This study comprises a complete transcription of all the district-level tables which are the main contents of each of the Registrar-General for England and Wales Decennial Supplements from 1851-60 to 1901-10; these are supplements to the 25th, 35th, 45th, 55th, 65th and 75th Annual Reports.

The reports for 1851-1900 were computerised by a project led by Professor Robert Woods of Liverpool University, creating a large set of spreadsheets, one for each district in each decade. These were assembled into a single large file by the Great Britain Historical GIS, working in collaboration with Hamish James of the UK Data Archive. The GBHGIS team computerised the 1901-10 report, checked all data against the original reports, and added identifiers linking the districts to the digital boundary data they had created.

For each district in each decade, the reports cross-tabulate causes of death against age. In some decades, there are separate tables for each district for males and females, and the causes of death vary between decades. There were c. 630 districts, the exact number varying by decade.

Decennial cause of death data for Registration Districts in England and Wales cross-classified by age and sometimes by sex. The study also includes a separate table, mainly derived, containing age- and gender-specific counts of deaths, without cause information and organised to simplify calculation of standardised mortality rates.