Abstract
ABSTRACT Nineteenth-century London was notorious for overcrowding, poor housing, and heavy air pollution. With a large proportion of its population living in conditions of poverty, diseases flourished as people were increasingly drawn to the industrialising centres of England in search of employment opportunities. Utilising historical documentary and skeletal evidence, this paper explores the impact of increasing urbanisation on non-adult (those aged 0–17 years) health, particularly in relation to exposure to a multitude of infectious diseases in circulation during this time. Focusing on the community of St Bride’s Church, London, it highlights the greater susceptibility of infants and children to risk of severe morbidity and mortality from infectious diseases, particularly amongst the lower classes. When considered against the socio-political, cultural and economic milieu of nineteenth-century London, this reveals how the multi-faceted process of urbanisation exacerbated ill-health, increased susceptibility to deadly infectious pathogens, and ultimately further marginalised its poorest inhabitants.
Highlights
Urban environments have long been entities of disparity, with lived experiences of such landscapes often dependent on social and cultural positioning, as well as access to resources and amenities
Utilising historical documentary and skeletal evidence, this paper explores the impact of increasing urbanisation on non-adult health, in relation to exposure to a multitude of infectious diseases in circulation during this time
London residents were subject to numerous epidemic and endemic outbreaks of infectious disease throughout the century, causing contemporary burial grounds to rapidly become overcrowded, as both the general population and mortality rates expanded. Utilising both historical documentary and skeletal evidence from the burial grounds for St Bride’s Church, Fleet Street, London, this paper explores how increasing urbanisation impacted on non-adult health and survival in nineteenth-century London, addressing how life in the city exacerbated their exposure to infectious diseases
Summary
Urban environments have long been entities of disparity, with lived experiences of such landscapes often dependent on social and cultural positioning, as well as access to resources and amenities. Assemblages from London, it is impossible to suggest whether the non-specific lesions had any association with infectious diseases in the absence of specific skeletal evidence in these cases Their high prevalence can by proxy identify populations that may have increased susceptibility to severe morbidity or mortality from infectious diseases due to a weakening of the immune system and under nutrition. Children growing up in nineteenth-century urban centres were at an extremely high risk of mortality from infectious diseases, whooping cough, tuberculosis, measles, smallpox, and scarlet fever for those interred in the burial grounds of St Bride’s Church. The most predominant factor regulating morbidity and mortality today (Feinstein 1993) For those of nineteenth-century London, infectious diseases perhaps posed the greatest urban health risk, yet the interplay of this high pathogen burden with overcrowding, poor sanitation, and compromised or limited nutrition led to further unmanageable hardship, poverty and ill-health. While the risk of endemic and epidemic diseases may have been ubiquitous in nineteenthcentury London, the data from the St Bride’s Church burial records and Lower Ground skeletal collection serve as a reminder that the burden of child morbidity and mortality was not felt by all
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