Infant mortality in London, 1538-1850: a methodological study.

A review of evidence on infant mortality derived from the London bills of mortality and parish registers indicates that there were major registration problems throughout the whole of the parish register period. One way of addressing these problems is to carry out reconstitution studies of individual London parishes, but there are a number of problems with reconstitution methodology, including the traffic in corpses between parishes both inside and outside of London and the negligence of clergymen in registering both baptisms and burials. In this paper the triangulation of sources has been employed to measure the adequacy of burial registration, including the comparison of data from bills of mortality, parish registers and probate returns, as well as the use of the same-name technique.

The decline of adult smallpox in eighteenth-century London: a commentary.

This article is a response to Davenport, Schwarz, and Boulton's article, ‘The decline of adult smallpox in eighteenth-century London’. It introduces new data on the parish of St Mary Whitechapel which casts doubt on the pattern of the age incidence of smallpox found by Davenport et al. However, it is concluded that there was a decline in adult smallpox in London, accompanied by a concentration of the disease among children under the age of five.

The evaluation of Bedfordshire burial registration, 1538-1851.

This article is based mainly on a digital transcript of burials for 126 Bedfordshire parishes 1538-1851, and a county index of wills for the same period. The comparison of probate with burial register data indicated that there was little long-term change over time in burial under-registration, with between 21 and 27 per cent of will entries missing in the registers. There was also little variation between parishes of different population sizes, suggesting that burial under-registration was predominantly a random process linked to clerical negligence.

Poverty, birthweight, and infant weight gain in Hertfordshire, 1923-1939.

Objective: To investigate the association between poverty, birthweight, and infant weight gain in Hertfordshire, 1923-1939.

Design: Cohort study based on the Hertfordshire Health Visitors' Register (HHVR).

Setting: The population of Hertfordshire, and a sub-sample of five Hertfordshire towns-Hoddesdon, Berkhampstead, Hertford, Hitchin, and Bishops Stortford-extracted from the HHVR.

The pre-clinical curriculum: an information processing problem.

In this study revision procedures for examinations were investigated by questionnaire in a group of students undertaking a new pre-clinical course. The results revealed that students' own notes were by far the most preferred source of revision material and that lectures were the main source of these notes. Evidence of the actual revision strategies used together with their time scheduling was also obtained.