The population of a Wiltshire village in the nineteenth century: a reconstitution study of Berwick St James, 1841-71.

Abstract

This paper reports an exploratory reconstruction of the village of Berwick St James in Wiltshire using nominative information from nineteenth-century English censuses and ecclesiastical registers of baptisms, marriages and burials between 1841 and 1871. The data are first described, and a procedure for sorting and linking records from different censuses, and for linking census records to registration records, is outlined. A detailed analysis of population turnover in the village reveals that after 1851 there was a period of heavy net out-migration. Those who left the parish were overwhelmingly young people, and females were more likely to move out than males: almost all the females born in the parish between 1841 and 1851 had moved away by 1871. A consequence of this pattern of out-migration was that by 1871 there was a shortage of females in the marriageable age-groups (15-29 years). It is clear that this method of reconstructing English village populations promises new insights into the demography of rural England in the nineteenth-century, including, in addition to population turnover and migration patterns, such aspects as fertility levels and trends. A number of problems with the technique remain, however, notably our ignorance of the typical length of the period between birth and baptism.