Historical Demography, Life-cycle Reconstruction and Family Reconstitution: New Perspectives

International Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing

Volumn 8, Issue 2, 1996, Pages 62-77

  King, Steve ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL LANCASHIRE   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 85126864832     PISSN: 17538548     EISSN: 17551706     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.3366/hac.1996.8.2.62     Document Type: Article

References (26)

1. On the utility of life-cycle reconstruction, see E A Wrigley (ed.), An introduction to English historical demography from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century (Cambridge, 1969) and F A C Newell, 'Socio-economic influences in the demography of Aldenham: an exploration of the techniques and application of family reconstitution' (Unpublished PhD, University of Cambridge, 1985). For continental literature see A Janssens, Family and social change: the household as a process in an industrialising community (Cambridge, 1995) and J Langton and G Hoppe, Peasantry to capitalism: "Western Ostergotland in the nineteenth century (Cambridge, 1994).
2. C Phythian-Adams, Rethinking English local history (Leicester, 1987). The need to know more about the life-cycles of migrants is highlighted in recent disputes over the issue of migration censoring. See S Ruggles, 'Migration, marriage and mortality: correcting sources of bias in English family reconstitutions' Population Studies, 46 (1992), pp. 507-22 and E A Wrigley, 'The effects of migration on the estimation of marriage age in family reconstitution studies' Population Studies, 48 (1994), pp. 81-97.
3. G Bloothooft, 'Multi-source family reconstruction', History and Computing, 7 (1995), pp. 90-103, and S A King, 'Multiple-source record linkage in a rural industrial community, 1680-1820' History and Computing, 6 (1994), pp. 133-42.
4. For some initial ground rules, see W Newman-Brown, 'The receipt of poor relief and family situation: Aldenham, Hertfordshire 1630-1690' in R M Smith (ed.), Land, kinship and life cycle (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 405-22; J Robin, 'The relief of poverty in mid-nineteenth century Colyton', Rural History, 1 (1990), pp. 193-218 and P Sharpe, 'Total reconstitution: a tool for class specific study?', Local Population Studies, 16 (1991), pp. 41-77.
5. For more on technicalities, see S A King, 'The nature and causes of demographic change in a rural industrial community: Calverley 1680-1820', (Unpublished PhD, University of Liverpool, 1993).
6. G Morton, 'Presenting the self: record linkage and referring to ordinary historical persons', History and Computing, 6 (1994), pp. 12-9 and S A King, 'Power, representation and the self: problems with sources for record linkage', Local Historian, (forthcoming 1997). 7 See E A Wrigley (ed.), Identifying people in the past (London 1972).
7. The communities (Eskdale and Sowerby and Calverley in West Yorkshire) had a combined 1821 population of 13, 000 and generated upwards of 100, 000 records. For further details on the datasets and the methods employed see King, 'The nature and causes of demographic change'. See also S A King, 'Which way to welfare?. The old poor law reconsidered', Historical Journal (forthcoming 1998) and S A King, 'Coping with the crossroads of life: kinship, community and welfare in the rural industrial north', in A Miller (ed.), Community, culture and people in the north of England (forthcoming).
8. Such life histories may hide missing events or may incorporate incorrect linkage. See P Razzell, Essays in English population history (Chichester, 1994) and King, 'Multiple-source record linkage'.
9. J Langton, 'People from the pits: the origins of colliers in eighteenth century south-west Lancashire' in D Siddle (ed.), Migration, mobility and modernization in Europe (forthcoming, Liverpool, 1997) and C Pooley and S Da Cruz, 'Migration and urbanisation in north-west England 1760-1830', Social History, 19 (1994) pp. 339-54.
10. RS Schofield, 'Representativeness and family reconstitution', Annales De Demographie Historique, (1972), pp. 19-24.
11. The classic case in point is infant mortality. In most populations there is a distinct familial concentration of infant deaths, so that falling infant mortality over time could be explained not by a general fall among all families, but a marked fall on the part of just a few.
12. See also B Anderson, 'More or less success in pursuing new directions in village historical demography', Journal of Family History, (1979), pp. 316-9.
13. D Souden, 'Movers and stayers in family reconstitution populations', Local Population Studies, 33 (1984), pp. 11-28. Also S A King, Poverty and welfare in England 1700-1850 (Manchester, forthcoming, 1997).
14. Langton, 'People from the pits'. ' 6 M Yasumoto, Industrialisation, urbanisation and demographic change in England (Nagoya, 1994). Similar social status bias appears in the reconstitution of Birstall. See King, 'Multiple-source record linkage'.
15. See R Braun, Industrialisation and everyday life (Cambridge, 1981).
16. D Levine, Family formation in an age of nascent capitalism (New York, 1977).
17. See S A King, 'Sharing the urban graveyard: Mortality conditions in towns hinterlands 1650-1830' in J Voegle and W Woelk (eds), Cities and sickness: urban health conditions during the epidemiological transition (Dusseldorf, \996).
18. King, 'Multiple-source record Linkage'. 21 For this and other examples of life-cycles, see King, 'Coping with the crossroads of life'.
19. Ibid.
20. See J Robin, From childhood to middle age: cohort analysis in Colyton 1851-1891 (Cambridge, 1995). 24 King, 'Coping with the crossroads of life'.
21. Ibid.
22. For details of this and other detailed life-cycles see Public Record Office, RG4/3343 1-E 'The registers of the Moravian church of Fulneck' and King, Poverty and welfare. 27 King, 'Coping with the crossroads of life'.
23. J S Taylor, Poverty, migration and settlement in the Industrial Revolution: sojourners narratives (Palo Alto, 1989).
24. Langton, 'People from the pits'. Pooley and Da Cruz, 'Migration and urbanisation in north-west England'. B Hill, 'Ruralurban migration of women and their employment in towns', Rural History, 5 (1994), pp. 185-94.
25. For a discussion of scoring systems, see King, 'Multiplesource record linkage'. 31 See A Eccles, 'Vagrancy in later eighteenth-century Westmorland: a social profile', Transactions ofthe Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society, 89 (1989), pp. 249-62. Vagrants posed a serious problem in linkage where illegitimate births were not recorded or births to married women passing through were not so ascribed.
26. B Hill, 'The marriage age of women and the demographers', History Workshop Journal, 14 (1989), pp. 129-47 and A Mackinnon, 'Were women present at the demographic transition?. Questions from a feminist historian to historical demographers', Gender and History, 7 (1995), pp. 222^10.