An interesting find...

[Tom Tom]

I am teaching my Year Five class about the Victorians and linking to maths.

We have to create a bar chart with the ages at death of a community from 1889 - 1899.

I have just gone through and collected the data myself (they will collect it themselves though, based on the burial records I give them).

Burials in Packington, Leicestershire 1889 - 1899

Under 5 years - 16 burials
Aged 6 - 20 years - 6 burials
Aged 21 - 40 years - 13 burials
Aged 41 - 60 years - 20 burials
Aged 60 - 80 years - 25 burials
Aged 80+ years - 18 burials

Total - 98 burials

Obviously the fact that it was fairly remote and mostly a farming community has an impact on the results.

Does anyone have the burial records for a city centre during this time period?

[Phoenix]

Ooh, what fun!

The problem with an urban community is that the numbers will be so much bigger.

What you could do is chose a name like Smith and do an Ancestry/Freebmd etc search in the death records for an urban RD.

I recently did parish reconstruction work: where we had to count numbers in just the same way, but annual totals. It showed pretty starkly the epidemics and rises or falls in the success of communities.

[Merry]

Will you be teaching them to add up etc in old money? That's very good for their times tables!!

[Phoenix]

Will you be teaching them to add up etc in old money? That's very good for their times tables!!

Actually, I think our ancestors liked decimals too: think of all those 3s 4d or 6s 8d left in wills.

[Tom Tom]

We need to do a lot of work on times tables so think I shall leave the old money for the time being.

That's a good idea about the Smiths on ancestry Phoenix. I need them to understand that the data you get out is only as good as that which you put into it, as well as being able to draw and read the graph.

Hmm, certainly some things to think about.

[Phoenix]

If you succeed in teaching GIGO to year fives that will be a useful life skill for them to remember.

It will be interesting to see if there are differences shown between town and country. Logically, there are likely to be more deaths associated with crowded conditions, industrial conditions etc, but in a village you could have under-recording, town girls coming back to Mum for the first birth & all sorts of factors which might skew the results.

[Tom Tom]

I typed in WEST for deaths 1889-1899 in Hackney and got about 50 results.

When I changed it to WEST* for 1889 - 1899 in Hackney I got 98 results which matched the number from the other sample. :)

These results -

Under 5 years - 45 deaths
Aged 6 - 20 years - 5 deaths
Aged 21 - 40 years - 8 deaths
Aged 41 - 60 years - 19 deaths
Aged 60 - 80 years - 14 deaths
Aged 80+ years - 7 deaths

Total - 98 deaths

It's great as it shows the clear difference between rural and urban communities. Much higher infant and young child mortality rate and fewer people living to 80+

Going to have to change my Monday lesson plan now. Before I just had them drawing a graph but now I think we will collect all the data on Monday morning and draw the graphs in the afternoon.

Total - 98 burials

[Shona]

That's really intersting. A great-great grandfather died in a Glasgow fever hospital and I'm fascinated by mortality statistics.

Here are some bits and pieces to add to the mix.

In 1871, 24% of deaths in Glasgow went unregistered. The figure had fallen to about 4% by 1893, but in Inverness, 42% of deaths still went unregistered.

One study I read considered the death rate from 1835-1845 in 331 rural Scottish parishes - a population of 751,061 - and compared the rate with a similar size population in 14 principle urban areas. The rate was 20 per 1,000 in rural areas and 27 per 1,000 in urban areas.

Another study showed that in Edinburgh the highest death rates were in the most densely populated areas, while the lowest rates were in less crowded neighourhoods. The area of Tron had the highest rate and a population density of 353 people per acre. Whereas Morningside with a density of 8 per acre had the lowest rate in Edinburgh.

[kiterunner]

I'm just wondering whether it is valid to compare burial data with death data at that date - would everyone from Packington who died in that decade have been buried in Packington? Was there a workhouse in Packington, and if not, were many people from Packington sent to a workhouse elsewhere? And if they died in that workhouse, were they sent back to Packington for burial? I'm just wondering whether there could be a correlation between social class / income and burial place which would skew the results.

[Merry]

Lies, damn lies and statistics :D

[Tom Tom]

They would have gone to Ashby Workhouse.

I think for the purposes of generalisation it is OK. We can discuss later on how things may have been different - people moving away to a workhouse etc.

The primary objective for this particular task is to collect data, draw the graph and compare graphs.

[Asa]

I always find this sort of thing fascinating - probably like most people I have very defined rural lines and very defined city lines and I do notice the contrast.

[Olde Crone]

Am I missing something? Surely you also need to know what the population was of each area before you can draw any conclusions?

I agree though - fascinating stuff and a wonderful opportunity for introducing a bit of social history as well.

OC

[Tom Tom]

If you were doing it as a proper full on statistical analysis then yes you would need to know more details OC, but for ten year olds it is a simple comparison of two data sets to get to the conclusion that life and death was very different in the country to in the cities.
It is for that reason the number of each is the same, but a sample has been done from the city as it would be difficult for 9 year olds to sort and analyse data from over 4000 people.

[Mary from Italy]

It might also be interesting to look at a sample from 100 years earlier - my impression from rural villages relating to my tree is that there were more infant deaths, but about the same number of over-80s.