“'Tis a Misfortune to Be a Great Ladie”: Maternal Mortality in the British Aristocracy, 1558–1959

Abstract

As long ago as 1981, the distinguished demographers E. A. Wrigley and R. S. Schofield threw out a challenge to historians. “A fully satisfactory interpretation of population history,” they offered, “must embrace a wide spectrum of related topics and techniques.” Such a history would “require an alertness for opportunities to quantify historical evidence and to make effective use of statistical techniques,” they continued, but it would be “equally alive to the importance of studying the attitudes of individuals and groups wherever possible. The family,” they concluded, “is the prime institutional form in population history, and the births, marriages and deaths of its members were affected by their behavioral conventions and beliefs as well as by their social and economic circumstances.” The British aristocracy is an ideal subject for such a multifaceted, family-oriented view of population history. Thanks to T. H. Hollingsworth and other demographers, the statistical record of their population history is probably better established than that of any other social group, while thanks to their own historical importance and privileged status, their domestic experiences are richly documented. Consequently, their social mores and personal attitudes can be identified along with their demographics.While we normally assume that privileged social groups are healthier and generally live longer than those more humble in station, commonplace expectations have for centuries been reversed when it comes to one component of population history—maternal mortality. Popular culture has insisted, at least since the time of Rousseau, that ladies of fashion paid for their pleasures by being feeble and overly delicate, too weak to withstand the rigors of childbirth.