The Accuracy of the London Parish Registers, 1580-1653
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4267185 |
|---|---|
| Authors | R A P Finlay, Roger Finlay (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1978 |
| Volume | 32 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 95-112 |
| Publication date | 1978-03-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Population Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0032-4728 • E-ISSN: 1477-4747 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/00324728.1978.10412794 |
| PMID | 11630572 |
| OpenAlex | W2002630959, W4248687217 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
| References cited | 5 |
In a recent discussion of London mortality experience, and in particular of the impact of the plague from 1563 to 1665, based on the Bills of Mortality, Dr I. Sutherland wrote: ‘...family reconstitution studies on the London parish registers do not appear to be a practical proposition.’ He went on to explain why this was so. ‘It seems likely that during the period under review all the burials came to the notice of the parish authorities, and that deficiencies, perhaps of the order often per cent, will have occurred by omissions either from parish registers or the bills of mortality.... The deficiencies in christenings before the Civil War will certainly have been greater than those in burials....’1 However, because it is impossible to verify the aggregate totals of baptisms and burials given in the Bills of Mortality because they are not broken down by parish, conclusions based on the use of this source will always be open to question. This is why a reconsideration of the London parish registers would merit serious attention. In this respect, the lead has been taken in an important paper by Dr T. H. Hollingsworth and his sister which has shown that it is possible to use parish registers directly for demographic work in London, with their attempt to calculate plague mortality rates for one large parish, St Botolph without Bishopsgate, in 1603 where the burial register gave ages at death.2 The completeness of the register was not the subject of their pioneering article although they did take account of the problem of the inaccuracy of the data in their work. Indeed, they may have overcompensated for omissions. The argument presented in this article is that there is good evidence to suppose that many London parish registers of baptisms, weddings and burials do in fact correspond much more closely to the actual numbers of births, marriages and deaths that occurred in London in the period before the commencement of civil registration by the Barebones Parliament in 1653 than has hitherto been thought
Ancient history · Archaeology · Genealogy · Historical demography · Notice · Plague (disease) · Political science · Population · Research methodology · Sister · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · Demography · Historical Architecture and Urbanism · Historical Art and Culture Studies · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · History · Law · Scottish History and National Identity
Reckoning with London
Population and Fertility in London, 1580-1650
Household size and structure in early‐Stuart Cambridge
Plague – a disease of children and servants? A study of the parish records of St Peter upon Cornhill, London from 1580 to 1605
Living standards and plague in London, 1560-1665
Print, authority, and the bills of mortality in seventeenth-century London
| Citations per year | 0.13 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 1979 - 2021 (43) |
| Highly cited | No |