Socially selective mortality during the population crisis of 1727-1730: evidence from Lancashire.

In the late years of the 1720s, parts of England were hit by one of the worst demographic crises in the early modern period. According to Wrigley and Schofield, mortality was extremely high across the Midlands, much of northern England, and parts of East Anglia.1 In fact, their aggregate sample of parish registers suggests that, in terms of deviation from background levels of mortality, the years from 1727 to 1730 rank as the second worst crisis between 1541 and 1871, outdone only by the terrible epidemics of the 1550s.2 Unfortunately, however, despite their coming at a time of increasing record availability, our knowledge of this very long-lasting and violent crisis is extremely patchy.3 The purpose of this article is to improve on this knowledge by offering both new regional detail to the existing picture, and fresh data on the social impact of the crisis. In particular, it tests the validity of three assertions made by contemporaries about the social selectivity of mortality, namely, that the relatively old were more likely to die, that the crisis was more severe in the countryside than the towns, and that its impact fell disproportionately on the poor.