Infant Mortality Variations, Feeding Practices and Social Status in London between 1550 and 1750

Abstract

Summary. London experienced a city-wide rise in infant mortality in the second half of the seven-teenth century and the first part of the eighteenth century. This was a period of rapid population growth at the suburban margins but little change in the city centre. The fates of London infants, between approximately 1550 and 1750, in a sample of the city centre, and Clerkenwell in the poorer northern suburbs, are examined. Levels of infant mortality are considered in the context of infant feeding practices and the disease environment. High levels of endemic infection during the first half of the seventeenth century, particularly in the suburbs, are suggested by an examination of the timing and duration of epidemic mortality. A shift in customary infant feeding practices among middle-class Londoners in the city centre is suggested by changes in the timing of infant burials in the home parish in the first year of life.

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