Burial Registers Research Articles

The English Sweat in Lübeck and North Germany, 1529

Only two of the epidemics of the English sweating sickness have been the subject of modern demographic studies. Robert Gottfried analysed the mortality of the 1485 epidemic by studying probated wills, and John Wylie and Ian Linn, and more recently Alan Dyer, analysed the 1551 epidemic on the basis of parish burial registers.1 The epidemic of the sweat in England in 1528, which is of special interest in the present context since in all probability it caused the epidemic on the European continent in 1529, has not been studied demographically, possibly because burial records did not exist before 1538. Literary sources, however, seem to indicate that this epidemic was severe. In a letter of 30 June 1528, the French ambassador, Jean Du Bellay, wrote that 40,000 people had been affected by the disease in London, and 2,000 had died, and the descriptions in Raphael Holinshed’s chronicle and in Grafton’s chronicle leave no doubt that this epidemic took a heavy toll.2 Since no demographic analysis of the epidemic on the continent in 1529 has been carried out so far, this article focuses on the outbreak of the sweating sickness in north Germany and Schleswig-Holstein because the existence of testamentary records in Lubeck from the period makes such an analysis possible.

Death and Dying in New Mexico

The deathbed tells us a great deal about life. In Martina Will de Chaparro’s admirable study the deathbed reveals much about change in social relations and definitions of the public and the private. Will’s study begins in 1700, but the book’s core explores how ways of death changed in nineteenth-century New Mexico. Based upon the study of 469 wills (dated 1704 – 1899, one-third dictated by women), this book also utilizes burial registers, prescriptive literature, archeological findings, criminal records, and newspapers. Will offers thoughtful analysis of ideas, ritual actions, and material culture. Illustrations well exemplify the book’s central concepts.Dying women and men desired a “good death,” a mindful, orderly approach toward their final moments in this world. To help the soul win the struggle for salvation, New Mexicans prepared detailed wills, sought last rites, and planned for proper burial. Will stresses that a baroque sensibility shaped ideas and practices around death in eighteenth-and early nineteenth-century New Mexico. While New Mexican deathways shared much with Spain and Mexico, distinctive rituals were common in this imperial fringe, especially before 1820. Colonial New Mexicans focused most on the soul’s journey after death and, by modern standards, little on the body. The cadaver required little care before burial; no marker designated burial place. New Mexicans instead preferred unmarked interment beneath the church floor. In 1800 nearly 100 percent of recorded burials took place inside a church. In New Mexico “wealthy vecinos, the indigent, Indian servants, and foundlings shared the space beneath the church” (p. 92), in contrast to the exclusive, hierarchical patterns common in central Mexico. New Mexicans of all types demonstrated a penchant for burial in the habit of St. Francis. Deathbed requests for such pious burials declined as the colonial era ended and the numbers of Franciscan clergy dwindled.Will recounts the protracted battles between church officials, local clergy, and laity over the place of burial. Directives for “ventilated cemeteries” began in the late colonial era, but New Mexicans pushed for traditional burial within the church itself. The remaining Franciscans squarely ignored these reform decrees. In general, “New Mexicans resisted Bourbon reforms of local religious practices” (p. 7). Conflict between distant officials and New Mexicans continued into the Mexican national period. (Will argues that the festering issue of burial location partly explains the causes of the 1837 Chimayó Rebellion.) The Franciscans’ replacement by diocesan clergy hastened change, and authorities won out. Cemeteries were established outside of town centers, eventually “exiling the dead” and ending a centuries-old practice of church burial. Will’s statistics show a sharp decline in church burials by the 1840s. Yet evidence indicates that the practice continued in private chapels, rural parishes, and, for the wealthy, in some churches.Will finishes her study by examining the unmistakable impact that Anglo businessmen had on deathways. The newcomers promoted among Hispanics practices common in the U.S. Northeast: coffins, embalming, and memorial portraits. By the late nineteenth century, the urban Hispanic dead seldom wore the Franciscan habit but rather had themselves encased in a coffin prior to burial in a cemetery well beyond the church. This fascinating chapter, which makes good use of newspaper advertisements, demonstrates the rapidity of change in urban New Mexico as local people began to follow ways from the eastern United States. (Will does not discuss changing deathways in Porfirian Mexico, thus neglecting a chance to continue this otherwise thoroughly transnational story.) Yet even in this era, change was not unidirectional. Will considers contradictory patterns in the nineteenth century: “As some sectors of society gradually moved toward a more secular way of dying and living, others embraced a traditional, baroque religiosity” (p. 62). In the end, Will documents rapid transformation in deathways, but change began in the Spanish empire and in New Mexico itself, and should not be attributed solely to Anglo influence.This generally strong volume has a couple shortcomings. First, readers interested in Pueblo religiosity will find relatively little here. Will focuses mostly on the “Spaniards” who, she acknowledges, had a mixed ethnic heritage. Second, Will uses published literature as evidence of mentalities. I question the degree to which print culture from Spain and central Mexico filtered into everyday life in distant, impoverished, and largely illiterate New Mexico. Will mentions a “rich oral tradition of sermons, stories, morality plays, and songs” (p. 18), but utilizes little such material.This readable study will interest scholars and students of colonial Latin America, the Southwest, and popular religion. The final chapter should also be shared with colleagues in U.S. history. Will directly addresses scholarship on death in the United States, rightfully reminding readers that “no single ‘American’ way of death has ever existed” (p. xix).

Ghostly Hands and Ghostly Agency: The Changing Figure of the Nineteenth-Century Specter

among them. marley’s ghost may appear and speak, but it cannot un-sign the burial register, erase the funeral and its solitary mourner, nor change the lifetime of detached cruelty that preceded it. Scrooge’s revelation is not that the dead can walk, but that they cannot atone for their previous sins. The reprehensible actions of marley’s life are embodied as heavy, restrictive objects after his death—a chain made of “ash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel” (15)—and he is left with Scrooge’s agency as a substitute for his own, explaining that it is only by persuading the living to change their ways that his eternal soul can be freed. In presenting ghosts as essentially restricted figures—catalysts to another’s action rather than the agents of their own—Dickens places marley’s ghost in a long tradition of the limited dead. marley’s chains represent not merely the consequences of his actions but the negation of action itself, a fate shared with the procession of other specters Scrooge views from his window: “The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever” (22). In this, the ghosts echo specters as distant as the ineffectually vengeful Old Hamlet, or the mournful Achilles, explaining to Odysseus that he “would rather work the soil as a serf on

Geophysical Surveys at the West End Cemetery, Townsville: An Application of Three Techniques

Geophysical surveys were undertaken at Townsville’s West End Cemetery to examine the cultural and/or ethnic association of graves and to test the potential use of different forms of geophysical prospection on archaeological sites in north Queensland environments. Surveys focused on an area of the cemetery known as ‘E Block’, which contained little physical or historical evidence for burials but was believed to have been used for the interment of ‘non-Christian’ individuals. While results from the resistivity and ground penetrating radar surveys were inconclusive, the magnetometry surveys located the graves of 65 individuals. Details on each individual’s cultural attributes derived from the cemetery’s burial register indicated that they were from a diverse range of ethnic and cultural backgrounds, many of which were previously unrepresented amongst extant grave markers. Results provided information that could not be gained from any other source, and enabled the critical examination of aspects of the cemetery including the past management regime, the spatial patterning of graves and whether or not an individual’s ethnic, social or economic characteristics contributed to their spatial placement.

Malaria and deaths in the English marshes

There is convincing evidence that between the 16th and 19th centuries, individuals living in the coastal marshes of southern England were less healthy than those in inland areas. 1 Farr W Report on the mortality of cholera in England. W. Clownes, London1852 Google Scholar , 2 Dobson MJ Contours of death and disease in early modern England. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge1997 Crossref Google Scholar , 3 Dobson M “Marsh Fever”—the geography of malaria in England. J Histor Geog. 1980; 6: 357-389 Crossref PubMed Scopus (35) Google Scholar , 4 Dobson M Malaria in England: a geographical and historical perspective. Parassitologia. 1994; 36: 35-60 PubMed Google Scholar , 5 Dobson MJ History of malaria in England. J R Soc Med. 1989; 82: 3-7 PubMed Google Scholar This evidence comes from two main sources. Historical records such as diaries, surveys, and travellers' accounts, provide anecdotal information about conditions in the marshes, 6 Hasted E The history and topographical survey of the County of Kent. W. Bristow, Canterbury1797–1801 Google Scholar , 7 Defoe D. A tour through the whole island of Great Britain. London: Penguin Classics, 1742–46. Google Scholar and Anglican parish registers of burials and baptisms provide data from which demographic trends can be identified. 8 Wrigley E Schofield R The population history of England, 1541–1871: a reconstruction. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge1981 Google Scholar The insalubrious marshes were associated with a regularly occurring fever, known as ague, marsh fever, tertian fever, and intermittent fever. 9 Bruce-Chwatt LJ Ague as malaria, an essay on the history of two medical terms. J Trop Med Hyg. 1976; 79: 168-176 PubMed Google Scholar This ague is most likely to have been malaria because it was often characterised by typical symptoms of this infection, including splenomegaly and fevers every 48 h. 10 Boyd MF Malariology. A comprehensive survey of all aspects of this group of diseases from a global standpoint. Saunders WB, Philadelphia and London1949 Google Scholar , 11 Hunter M Gregory A An astrological diary of the seventeenth century. Samuel Jeake of Rye 1652–1699. Clarendon Press, Oxford1988 Google Scholar Most importantly, this fever of the marshes responded to treatment with quinine, 12 Sydenham T. The works of Thomas Sydenham. The Classics of Medicine Library: Adams Jr LB, 1848–50. Google Scholar , 13 Talbor R Pyretologia; a rational account of the cause and cure of agues, with a successful method for the cure of quartans. Robinson R, London1672 Google Scholar which is an effective antimalarial. The malaria parasite was probably Plasmodium vivax, rather than P falciparum, since vivax malaria always dominates in temperate climates 10 Boyd MF Malariology. A comprehensive survey of all aspects of this group of diseases from a global standpoint. Saunders WB, Philadelphia and London1949 Google Scholar and the UK climate is theoretically capable of supporting vivax transmission. 14 Lindsay SW Thomas CJ Global warming and risk of vivax malaria in Great Britain. Glob Change Hum Health. 2001; 2: 80-84 Crossref Google Scholar More compelling evidence comes from the identification of P vivax in bloodfilms obtained in 1917 from patients with the same symptoms as those described more than a century earlier. 15 James SP Malaria at home and abroad. Jonn Bale, Sons & Danielsson, London1920 Google Scholar We also know from feeding experiments with the mosquito Anopheles atroparvus—the only common vector species in the saltmarshes—that these mosquitoes could transmit vivax, but not falciparum malaria. 16 Ramsdale CD Coluzzi M Studies on the infectivity of tropical African strains of Plasmodium falciparum to some southern European vectors of malaria. Parassitologia. 1975; 17: 39-48 PubMed Google Scholar , 17 Shute PG Failure to infect English specimens of Anopheles maculipennis var. atroparvus with certain strains of Plasmodium falciparum of tropical origin. J Trop Med Hyg. 1940; 43: 175-178 Google Scholar

FAITH STREET, SOUTH KIRKBY -‘THAT TROUBLESOME PLACE’: INFANT MORTALITY IN A YORKSHIRE COAL-MINING COMMUNITY, 1894-1911

This paper is a case study of infant mortality in one street in South Kirkby between I894 and I9II: a street almost entirely occupied by coal-miners. The generally very high infant mortality rate amongst coal-miners was something of a paradox. They were comparatively well paid, their wives rarely went out to work and they often lived in rural surroundings-all of which were normally associated with relatively low infant mortality. Coal-miners, however, experienced high rates of migration, overcrowding brought about by large families (coal-miners also had one of the highest rates of fertility) and the presence of boarders. Such factors, it is suggested here, may have been critical for their mortality experience. The main source for this research is the vaccination register of births. Other sources include the I90I census enumerators’ books, South Kirkby parish registers of baptisms and burials, Moorthorpe Cemetery records and the minutes of the Sanitary Committee of Hemsworth Rural District Council.

Mortality from asthma and cancer among sulfite mill workers.

The aims of the present case-referent study were to investigate whether sulfite workers show increased mortality from asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or certain malignancies of interest in relation to sulfite mill work. The main exposure from the pulping processes is from sulfur dioxide, wood dust and terpenes. The subjects of the study were all the men who died between 1960 and 1989 and who were aged 40 to 75 years at death (N = 780) in the parishes surrounding 3 sulfite mills. The men who died from asthma (N = 13), COPD (N = 20), lung cancer (N = 33), stomach cancer (N = 35), or brain tumor (N = 10) formed the case group. All the subjects, except the cases in question, were used as referents. As a proxy variable of exposure, job titles from the registers of deaths and burials were used, and 24% of the subjects were classified as exposed. There was an increased mortality from asthma [odds ratio(OR) 2.8, 90% confidence interval (90% CI) 1.1-6.8] and brain tumors (OR 3.3, 90% CI 1.2-8.9) among the sulfite workers. The mortality due to lung cancer was not significantly increased (OR 1.4, 90% CI 0.7-2.6), and there was a reduced mortality from stomach cancer (OR 0.4, 90% CI 0.2-0.9). The increased asthma mortality may be due to accidental exposure to irritating gases, such as sulfur dioxide. The increased risk for brain tumors has no obvious explanation.

Infant mortality and famine: a study in historical epidemiology in northern England.

To examine whether periodic variations in annual infant mortality were associated with malnutrition and the poor quality of the food supply available to the community. Retrospective study of historical epidemiology of infant mortality by time series analysis and family reconstitution of parish registers of burials and baptisms. Penrith, Cumbria, England, 1557-1812. A total of 17,500 births during 1557-1812. This community in the Eden Valley, Cumbria, close to the Scottish borders, was living under marginal conditions with high mortality and low fertility. Clear oscillations in infant mortality synchronise with the oscillations in the wheat price index which is regarded as a measure of the availability of food to the community, and to pregnant and nursing mothers in particular. Input-output analysis showed that the relationship between the wheat price index (input) and infant mortality (output) was highly significant (p < 0.001). Events during the famine of 1623 have been analysed in detail: high wheat prices during pregnancy caused subsequent severe infant mortality but did not have indirect effects on the subsequent mortality of the surviving children over the age of 1 year. Non-stationary oscillations in neonatal and post neonatal mortality were strongly coherent (p < 0.001) with the wheat price index throughout the period. Infant mortality is particularly sensitive to famine and also to the quality of the food supply available to pregnant and nursing mothers. The lags between neonatal and post-neonatal mortalities and wheat prices, together with the analysis of the famine of 1623, support the hypothesis that neonatal mortality was related to malnutrition in pregnancy whereas post-neonatal mortality was primarily directly dependent on exogenous causes in the first year of life.

Infant mortality in nine industrial parishes in northern England, 1813-1836.

Evidence about infant mortality in a number of industrial towns was derived from baptismal and burial registers of the Anglican Church. The level of infant mortality during the period 1813–1836, after correction for underregistration, was comparable to that of British towns during the second half of the century. Infant mortality increased during this period, perhaps as a reflection of rapid population growth. In each of the parishes a winter peak and a summer trough was found in the seasonal index of infant deaths during this period. This pattern is very different from the high summer mortality that prevailed in British towns during the late nineteenth century. However, mortality in the summer increased over time, thus reducing the depth of the summer trough in infant deaths, and perhaps represents a movement towards the summer peak so apparent later in the century.

Mortality transition among the wends of Serbin, Texas, 1854–1884: Changes in pattern of death from parochial records

Investigating cause of death is important in the study of mortality. Most studies, however, deal with aggregate national samples and rely on civil death certificates filled out by physicians. Little or no research has been done using parochial burial registers for individual-level cause of death. This article investigates causes of death between 1854 and 1884 among the Wends of Serbin, Texas, a nineteenth-century European immigrant community. The goal is: (1) to show that data pertaining to individual cause of death extracted from parochial records can contribute to knowledge about historical mortality patterns at the community level, (2) to determine if an epidemiological transition occurred in this population, and (3) to identify changes in disease patterns over time. Changes in the pattern of disease for the entire population as well as for the subpopulation under one year of age are analyzed.

Bones and Burial Registers: Infant Mortality in a 19th-Century Cemetery from Upper Canada

Bones and Burial Registers: Infant Mortality in a 19th-Century Cemetery from Upper Canada

Marriage in Pre-Industrial Warsaw in the Light of Demographic Studies

The study describes the marriages contracted in the Holy Cross parish, one of the largest parishes in pre-industrial Warsaw. On the basis of the eighteenth-century parish registers of marriages, baptism and burials, taxation documents and population censuses, an attempt is made to establish the proportion of full celibaterians, the social and territorial origin of the newlyweds, their age, the duration of marriage and widowhood, the time when the marriages were contracted and their frequency in the largest urban agglomeration of pre-industrial Poland. The data are examined on the basis of reconstituted marriages in two subperiods: the late Saxon (1740–1769) and the Enlightenment (1770–1799).

Death In Victorian Toronto, 1850-1899

Abstract A study of the 24,124 deaths recorded in the burial registers of the Putter's Field Cemetery and the Necropolis from 1850 to 1899, indicates that Toronto, like other nineteenth-century cities, experienced very high mortality. The average age at death rose gradually over the fifty-year period, but infants under the age of one year constituted over 40 percent of all burials. Tuberculosis was the leading cause of death among adults, while poor water produced substantial mortality from typhoid.

Marriage in Pre-Industrial Warsaw in the Light of Demographic Studies

The study describes the marriages contracted in the Holy Cross parish, one of the largest parishes in pre-industrial Warsaw. On the basis of the eighteenth-century parish registers of marriages, baptism and burials, taxation documents and population censuses, an attempt is made to establish the proportion of full celibaterians, the social and territorial origin of the newlyweds, their age, the duration of marriage and widowhood, the time when the marriages were contracted and their frequency in the largest urban agglomeration of pre industrial Poland. The data are examined on the basis of reconstituted marriages in two subperiods: the late Saxon (1740-1769) and the Enlightenment (1770-1799).

Mortality from asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease among workers in a soft paper mill: a case-referent study.

In a case-referent study encompassing 33 cases and 228 referents the potential risk for asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and respiratory cancer among workers in a soft paper mill was evaluated. The cases were selected from registers of deaths and burials in the parishes around the paper mill. Information on exposure was obtained from the personnel register of the mill but because of shortage of information the cases could only be classified as "exposed" or "non-exposed." At some places in the mill the concentrations of paper dust had previously been high, 10-30 mg/m3. Employment at the paper mill was found to be associated with an increased risk of bronchial asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (odds ratio = 3.8, p less than 0.05).

From City to Metropolis

THE NINE ESSAYS in this volume are coherent in content and of a consistently high quality: the topics covered are population growth (Finlay and Shearer) and immigration (Kitch); the social topography of the city (Power); the approach of the city governors to sickness (Pelling), plague (Slack) and poverty (Macfarlane); and the generation of wealth by manufacturing (Beier), by internal trade in England (Chartres) and by overseas trade (Dietz). As the editors point out in their introduction, there are aspects of metropolitan life which are almost completely ignored in this collection of essays, for example religion, culture (whether high or low), City companies and City government and the interaction of London and national politics. Slack does however write interestingly about the divergent views of the Royal Council and the Court of Aldermen as to what were practicable and desirable solutions to the plague epidemics in the city. But no volume, even one of nearly 300 pages, can be expected to deal with every aspect of a metropolis as large as London; and this volume, at a modest cost, provides not only original and, on occasion exciting, essays but also a wealth of documentation including over a hundred notes of useful historiographical references provided by the editors in their introductory survey. All the essays are based on source material: some contributors have continued to mine rich seams which they have already made their own. For example Finlay and Shearer have extended the use of parish registers as a fruitful source for population studies along the lines already developed by Finlay in his Population and Metropolis: the demography of London 1580-1650 (1981). Power has continued his study of the Hearth Taxes of the 1660s as indicators of wealth or poverty and in this essay extends his earlier study of 'East and west in early modern London' (published in 1978 in Wealth and Power in Tudor England: Essays presented to S. T. Bindof!) to include the whole metropolitan area. Some source material is here exploited for the first time. Dietz has used the Privy Seal books in the P.R. O. to chart the rapid development of the Thames-side ship building industry between 1558 and 1618, and Beier exploits the burial registers as a hitherto neglected source for the occupations of Londoners. As Beier points out (p. 145) the burial registers list the occupations of females and adolescents, 'groups ignored by most other sources', and although not all burial registers record occupations it has been possible to use those of 15 parishes which cover a reasonably wide range in size, prosperity and location (eleven within the walls and four outside). In all, the trades of nearly 27,000 Londoners dying in the period 1540-1700 are analysed and classified into 13 different categories such as 'building' or 'miscellaneous production'. As Beier admits, the classification is bound to involve anomalies and arbitrary decisions (e.g. is a skinner more properly a leatherworker or a merchant?), but his new analysis opens up interesting lines of enquiry and his conclusion that three-fifths of the city's work force was engaged in production rather than service or trade, does lend convincing support to his assertion (p. 151) that 'the capital as market thesis is misleading where London is concerned.' The novelty, or interest, of the various essays will strike different readers differently. In his analysis of the City's responses to the recurrent problem of plague Slack effectively demonstrates the difficult position of the aldermen who were caught between the rigorous demands of the Royal Council and the sense of social community which prevailed in the local parish. Macfarlane detects in the different solutions to the problem of poverty in the late seventeenth century, a difference of politics. Whereas the Corporation of the Poor which attempted to centralise poor relief and link it to education and 'retraining' was largely supported by Whigs like Sir Robert Clayton, the Tories favoured the more traditional, less directed, parish system of relief which, indeed, finally triumphed. This renewed anxiety about the poor in London in the late seventeenth century may be linked to a change, effectively analysed by Dietz, in the source of London's wealth. The great trading prosperity of London, based as it had been on the import of luxury goods and the monopoly of trade with the

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

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.

WIDOWHOOD AND MORTALITY IN AN ARMENIAN CHURCH PARISH IN LEBANON1

A nonconcurrent cohort study was conducted in Lebanon by using the parish records of an Armenian Apostolic Orthodox church. Included in the study were 1,529 married couples. The observation period extended from 1949-1980 with follow-up information available on 90% of the subjects based on a review of burial registers, parish census records, and neighborhood inquiries. Identified during the observation period were 152 widowers and 623 widows. Three analytic procedures were used to compare the mortality of widowed to married subjects: person-years, matched-pair, and life table analyses. The results showed an increased risk of mortality for widowed compared with married subjects, although this excess in risk was not overall statistically significant. Most important was the result that among widowers as opposed to widows the higher risk of mortality acted at approximately ages 66-75 years. The suggested hypotheses to explain this finding include changes in the network size as well as social support systems which act in a particular way in this culture for men at the age of retirement. The results of this initial study of a specific community in a Middle Eastern society parallel findings in studies of Western industrial societies; they also tend to give additional evidence for the association of increased risk when widowhood is accompanied by increased stress caused by other life changes such as retirement.

The method of transmission of epidemic influenza: further evidence from archival mortality data.

Evidence for influenza-associated excess mortality in the three centuries before the 20th has been sought from parish burial registers in Cumbria, Devon, Dyfed, East Anglia, Gloucestershire and Northumbria, compared with inter-epidemic years. Most of the registers showed excess of burials concordant with eight historic influenza epidemics. Comparison of the dates of these epidemics, deduced from the burials data in different areas, showed a rate of spread difficult to reconcile with direct person-to-person spread of influenza from the sick. An alternative explanation based on development of latency of the virus in the sick person and subsequent seasonal reactivation is discussed.

150.000 missing Filipinos: a demographic crisis in Batangas, 1887-1903.

On one level, this article examines a delimited demographic crisis in the provincial Philippines : an apparently precipitous decline in the population of Batangas between 1887 and 1903. On another, it sub- jects to scrutiny two of the major sources of Philippine historical demography — parish records and the census of 1903. This study finds that both the parish records and the census are seriously flawed. The chief deficiency of the former is under-registration of events, especially in the burial registers, which in one year alone failed to include at least 31 percent of the deceased. The latter, which has often been used by demographers as a baseline in population projections, undercounts the population of Batangas by no fewer than 10,000 people, approximately 4 percent of the total count. Given tbe flaws of the sources, the author is unable to account for the observed population décline in Batangas with any précision, but it is able, all the same, to make an informed guess about the principal demographic trends of the period. Between 1887 and 1898, natural increase in the province appeared to be minimal, because of an abnormally high level of mortality due to epidemic disease. Conditions then seemed to improve slightly between 1899 and 1901, and the level of mortality decreased. Finally, in 1902, there were two successive epidemies — malaria and cholera — which together were responsible for most of the population decline ; all in all, during that single year alone, the natural decrease was close to 34,000.