Religion and Public Doctrine in Modern England, Vol. 3: Accommodations

Kobcrt Woods’s magistcrial Demography of Viclorian England und Wules is in many respects a synthesis of recent research of English population history in the nineteenth century, but much of the research has been undertaken by Woods himself and in collaboration. Woods, the John Rankin Professor of Geography at the University of Liverpool, brings an interdisciplinary approach to this difficult topic, emphasizing the geographic variations in kcy demographic indicators. Hetween 1801 and 1901 the population of England and Wales rose from just under nine million to over thirty-two million. During the same period, the total fertility rate, the number of children a woman might expect to have in her reproductive lifetime, fell from around 5.5 children to around 3.5, and life expectancy at birth increased from around forty to about fifty. In this impressive volume, Woods comes close to answering the questions created hy those facts. After discussing the main theorics informing demographic research of that transitional period, he critically evaluates his main statistical sources, which are cautiously accepted. The main demographic research follows. Firs1 up, the Malthusian preventive check, where population growth was slowed by later marriage and a consequent decrease in births. Next, Woods considers family limitation. What caused the secular decline in marital fertility? Woods presents evidence to assist in disposing ofa number of old theories and suggests that there are still no firm conclusions, though it was not influenced by economic development, not a class-led phenomenon, and not related to the “contraceptive revolution. ” However, changes in public opinion, the education revolution, a decline in childhood mortality and the secularization of late Victorian society were all potential causes. The following four chapters concentrate on mortality. Among adults mortality was affected by occupation, but environmental factors also played a discernible role at the occupational level. In the next chapter Woods considcrs the decline of childhood mortality. The final mortality chapter covers “places and causes” of death. With conviction, Woods argues that although public health measures designed to combat infectious diseases contributed to the fall in mortality, the decline in deaths from those diseases was not as significant as earlier writers on the subject have suggested. Woods presents new conclusions about the consequences of urbanization on the demographic regime in England. The timing and extent of the mid-century increase in urban mortality was, Woods concludes, later and less significant than has previously been calculated, and only from the 1870s did the mortality gap between urban and rural areas contract. Before reaching his conclusions, Woods spends some pages on comparisons with other countries and provides a useful list of elements encountered in demographic regimes. The concluding chapter, Woods says, is devoted to ignorance-because there remain so many unanswered questions in our understanding of the historical demography of Britain. We know that a short-term increase in fertility in the late eighteenth century instigated the population growth, and we know that this was caused by changes in nuptiality, but we don’t know why the changes in nuptiality occurred, why they occurred when they did, or why it was only a short-term occurrence. We do not know why, or with certainty how, marital fertility decreased from mid century, and so on. Woods re-presents many of his earlier conclusions with honorable caution. Woods’s writing is not for the demographic neophyte; his earlier and shorter work, Population of Britain in the Nineteenth Century (1995) will prove easier but less-challenging fare; however, Demography qf Victorian England und Wules will repay careful reading. One can only regret the unfortunate misuse of the word “erogenous” on page 12.