Infant mortality in Rural North Shropshire, 1561–1810

Summary

The problem of the level of infant mortality in pre-nineteenth century England and the degree to which it was underrecorded in the ecclesiastical registration system has been relatively neglected by historical demographers. The registers of 60 rural parishes in north Shropshire are used to calculate recorded infant burial rates between 1561 and 1810. These are found to be fairly constant around 110 infant burials per 1,000 baptisms before 1740, falling to 50 per 1,000 by 1801–1810. These levels are considered in the light of other nineteenth-century data, particularly the infant mortality rates recorded in the first full decade of civil registration, 1841–1850, and also in the light of the much higher rates recorded by a minority of well-kept parish registers. A true infant mortality rate of about 200 per 1,000 is suggested for the period before 1710, with a fall to 130 per 1,000 by 1801–1810, indicating a recording loss of at least 35 per cent of all infant deaths from the parochial registration system. A loss on this scale would result in an overall failure to record ten per cent of all births and deaths in the average parish register. A consideration of the effects of the interval between birth and baptism leads to the conclusion that this loss can be largely explained by the failure to record infants dying before baptism.