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Social History of Medicine 1992 5(1):71-94; doi:10.1093/shm/5.1.71
© 1992 by Society for the Social History of Medicine
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Death in its Season: Class, Environment and the Mortality of Infants in Nineteenth-century Sheffield

NAOMI WILLIAMS*

* Department of Geography, Roxby Building, The University P. O. Box 147, Liverpool L69 3BX

SUMMARY Until the early twentieth century urban living carried with it a cost on health. For infants these risks were heightened considerably. Overcrowding and high population densities, insufficient water supplies and inadequate systems of excrement removal, all increased the vulnerability of infants to infection within the urban environment. But these risks of death were not shared equally by the urban population. Drawing on the results of a nominative record-linkage study for Sheffield, this paper examines the geographical and social inequalities in infant mortality within the urban environment. It compares the seasonal pattern of infant deaths on a class-specific basis across a broad range of differing sanitary areas within the town. Although the summer months posed the greatest threat for all infants, these risks varied considerably according to socio-economic background and also according to the part of the town where the infant lived. And although both factors exerted an independent contribution to the pattern of infant mortality, the effects were cumulative. These results are discussed in relation to historical interpretations and also the nineteenth-century debates about the causes of infant mortality.

Keywords: class; environment; inequality; infant mortality; nominative record-linkage; overcrowding; population density; seasonality; summer mortality; water-supplies


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