Infant Mortality in Victorian Britain: The Mother as Medium

Abstract

Infant mortality in Victorian Britain: the mother as medium. An integrated framework is developed for analysing infant mortality. Mothers' health, fertility, sanitary and housing conditions, female employment levels, food supplies are quantified for a large sample of towns, c. 1860-1905. The relationship between family size, fertility, and infant mortality is analysed. The results suggest that the health of mothers, especially their resistance to disease, played a strong role in the differences in infant mortality across socio-economic groupings and in its decline. The framework developed can account for the large long term trend decline in (non-diarrhoea) infant mortality in textile towns and the modest decline in mining areas, with rural areas coming midway.

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