An empirical base for understanding the early phase of the epidemiological transition: Short-term and spatial variations in infectious disease mortality in England 1600-1837. (360G-Wellcome-096504_Z_11_Z)

Omran's epidemiological transition from 'pestilences and famine' through a period of 'receding pandemics' has long been assumed to have been socio- economically, technologically and medically driven. In an English context limited success has been achieved in providing an effective epidemiological explanation for a diminution in the volatility of short-term death rates associated with infectious disease outbreaks. We will investigate to what extent different locations in England shared the sam e short term experience of mortality from c.1600 to 1837, as the nation transformed from a predominantly agrarian society to an increasingly urbanised and industrial one with an integrated transport system and growing international trading and migration flows. Using existing datasets of c.550 abstractions of individual parish burial registers (a 5 per cent sample of English parishes), we will consider whether mortality peaks and troughs coincided in different locations and whether synchronisati on increased over time. We will also aim to provide a firmer and detailed chronology for the divergence in the level and stability of adult and child mortality rates that is thought to have occurred in the early eighteenth century. We will trial similar analyses on later, Civil Registration-based data and develop more detailed age profiling using existing family reconstitutions.