From: Robert Appelbaum [r_appel@yahoo.com]
Sent: Tuesday, August 08, 2000 11:52 AM
To: milton-l@richmond.edu
Subject: Re: Early modern breeding


The most recent in depth study of the subject of
"breeding" (a word which we Americans prefer, however,
to apply only to dogs) is by David Cressy.  I don't
have the book in front of me, but the title is
something like "Birth, Marriage, and Death in Early
Modern England."  Lots of tables and charts and
first-rate empirical research, although I find the
interpretation of the data to be a little pedestrian.
Perhaps someone out there with a copy at hand can give
us the answer, if there is an answer.  Birthrates
varied considerably along class lines, and yet our
evidence is best for the wealthy.


--- Louis Schwartz <lschwart@richmond.edu> wrote:
 > Alan,
 >
 > A lot depends upon which women you're talking about
 > (where they lived, what
 > socio-economic level, what age, whether they nursed,
 > etc.).  There may be
 > more recent work done on the question, but when I
 > was rooting around among
 > the demographic historians I found the following
 > stats:  For women in
 > London among the wealthier classes the average birth
 > interval was
 > approximately 23 months with some sets of statistics
 > yeilding averages as
 > short as 20.5 months.  Among lower-class women the
 > rate was slower (approx.
 > 27 months) because they tended to nurse their own
 > and others' children.  18
 > months was, of course, physically possible for some
 > women, and some no
 > doubt experienced intervals that short, but on
 > average it was slower.  Also
 > the intervals tended to lengthen as a woman got
 > older.  There are other
 > factors that affected the length of time as well (if
 > an infant died, for
 > example, the interval to the next birth was often
 > shorter, etc).  These
 > numbers were culled from Roger Finlay's *Population
 > and Metropolis:  The
 > Demography of London 1580-1650 (Cambridge, 1981),
 > 133-50 and Dorothy
 > McLaren's "Marital Fertility and Lactation
 > 1570-1720," in *Women in English
 > Society 1500-1800,* ed. Mary Prior (London, 1986),
 > 22-53.  McLaren's essay
 > looks at demographic information from parishes in
 > Oxfordshire,
 > Buckinhamshire, and Hertforshire and from family
 > reconstruction work done
 > in Somerset.  She reports much longer birth
 > intervals for women who nursed
 > their own and others' infants, which she observes
 > was most women in the
 > period, and establishes the very different pattern
 > experienced by wealthier
 > women who hired the other women as wet nurses.  You
 > may be able to figure
 > where your subject falls in all of the highly
 > educated speculation on the
 > matter.
 >
 > Louis Schwartz
 >
 > At 12:26 PM 07/27/2000 -0800, you wrote:
 >  >
 >  >Recently I was trying to figure out a "likely"
 > birthdate for someone who
 >  >had x elder brothers and y elder sisters, the only
 > d.o.b known being that
 >  >of the firstborn son.  Disagreeing with my
 > predecessor in this exercise
 >  >(who reckoned two years between births), I thought
 > 18 months was likely, on
 >  >the perhaps flippant ground that if my mother
 > could do it early modern
 >  >woman must have been able to.
 >  >
 >  >Then the thought presented itself that someone (L.
 > Stone?) must have done
 >  >some research on this; there must be somewhere a
 > statistic giving the
 >  >average number of months between births, perhaps
 > even doing it in what some
 >  >would nowadays doubtless call "racist" ways, i.e.
 > looking at the Irish,
 >  >Scots, and Welsh separately from the English.
 > I'm thinking of the
 >  >time-period 1600-1620 more or less. And the county
 > of Hereford, if that
 >  >should make a difference.
 >  >
 >  >Alan Rudrum
 >  >
 >  >
 >  >
 >
 > =======================================
 > Louis Schwartz
 > English Department
 > University of Richmond
 > Richmond, VA  23173
 >
 > (804) 289-8315
 > lschwart@richmond.edu
 >


=====
Robert AppelbaumFellow, English Department, University of San DiegoFellow, 
Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington D.C.Fellow, Newberry Library, 
ChicagoVisit my home page: www.geocities.com/r_appel/Robert.html

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