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Parish Registers and Urban Structure : The example of late-eighteenth century Liverpool

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2009

John Langton  and
Paul Laxton
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Extract

Readers of the Yearbook may readily ascertain from its register of research and bibliography that the energy applied to the urban history of Victorian England has not only been substantial but is far from expended. The attraction of huge amounts of raw material, both quantitative and literary, is difficult to resist. However, the challenge of seeking less solidly founded insights with the less abundant and more indirect sources of the eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries has met with a far less enthusiastic response. In any case the sparseness of eighteenth-century sources is less stark than at first appears. Although by no means as reliable or as widely ramified in content as census data, Anglican parish registers offer considerable scope for anyone willful enough to resist the census honey pot. Particularly when supported by ancillary sources, such as maps and directories, they provide sufficient information for at least a tentative exploration of the beginning and unfolding of an urban process whose mature expression is revealed in the cornucopia of the middle-nineteenth century.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History Yearbook , Volume 5 , May 1978 , pp. 74 - 84
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

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References

1. Krause, J. T., ‘The changing adequacy of English registration, 1690–1837’, in Glass, D. V. and Eversley, D. E. C. (eds), Population in History (1965), 379–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar, is the largely unchallenged source of this disquiet. Some of the issues in large industrial towns are trenchantly discussed by Hammond, B., ‘Urban death-rates in the early nineteenth century’, Economic History, i (1928), 419–28.Google Scholar

2. St Peter's had the status of parish church and the remaining churches were effectively parochial chapels. The districts created from 1822 were formal or conventional having little significance for parochial registration.

3. See note 6.

4. Manchester (70, 409), Salford (13, 611) and adjacent suburbs (approx. 2, 500?) compare with Liverpool (77, 653), suburbs (approx. 1, 800) and seamen in port (approx. 6,000). Cf. Chalklin, C. W., The Provincial Towns of Georgian England (1974), 336–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar, a book which stands alone in its well-documented attempt to grapple with urban population size in the eighteenth century as well as other issues touched on here.

5. Law, C. M., ‘Local censuses in the eighteenth century’, Population Studies, xxiii (1969), 87–100CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and also his ‘Some notes on the urban population of England and Wales in the eighteenth century’, Local Historian, x (1972), 13–26.Google Scholar

6. There are three sources of estimates. William Enfield published the results of an enumeration in An Essay towards a History of Liverpool (Liverpool 1773), 25.Google Scholar His figure is 34,407. Matthew Gregson built on Enfield's work, including his retrospective estimates, using the Bills of Mortality from the 1770s and other sources which cannot be described here. Makin Simmons published the results of a street-by-street census taken in 1789–90 in Gore's Liverpool Directory for 1790. This last source is discussed briefly in Taylor, I., ‘Black Spot on the Mersey’ (unpublished Ph. D. thesis, University of Liverpool, 1976), p. 224.Google Scholar

7. From 1784 the Liverpool Bills of Mortality list non-Anglican places of worship and give corrected annual totals retrospectively to 1778. Direct comparison is therefore possible.

8. 1773–90,2·85 per cent; 1790–1801, 2·99 per cent; 1801–11,1·94 per cent; 1811–21, 2·31 per cent; 1821–31, 3·25 per cent; 1831–41, 2·98 per cent. These are arithmetic rates using the mid-intercensal formula since periods between estimates vary and the population is rising steeply. It is unlikely that they are more than a decimal point different from rates based on any of the compounding formulae.

9. Uncorrected figures: baptisms 57, 578, burials 48, 914, natural increase 8, 664. Arbitrarily inflated figures: baptisms + 13 per cent, 65, 063; burials + 5 per cent, 51, 360; natural increase 13,703. Population increase = approximately 45,000.

10. Beckwith, F., ‘The population of Leeds during the Industrial Revolution’, Publications Thoresby Society, xli (1954), 118–96Google Scholar; Chambers, J. D., ‘Population change in a provincial town; Nottingham 1700–1800’, in Pressnell, L. S. (ed.) Studies in the Industrial Revolution (1960), 97–124.Google Scholar Using data from these papers, rates have been roughly calculated as follows: Leeds 1775–1801, 69 per cent; Nottingham 1740–80, 73 per cent; Nottingham 1780–1801, 58 per cent. But these are standardized to a 15 per cent and 10 per cent inflation of baptisms and burials respectively: using the levels of non-Anglican registration found in Liverpool 1777–87 (23 per cent and 9 per cent) these contributions would be 55, 45 and 43 per cent respectively.

11. Deane, P. and Cole, W. A., British Economic Growth 1688–1959 (1964), 113.Google Scholar But cf. Clark, P. (ed.), The Early Modern Town (1976), 25.Google Scholar

12. Jackson, S. and Laxton, P., ‘For such as are of riper years: a note on age at baptism’, Local Population Studies, xviii (1977), 30–36.Google Scholar

13. 1767–70, 70·4 per cent (N = 999); 1795–7, 67·1 per cent (N = 1000); national sample, 1754–84, 61·3 per cent (N = 2126). Schofield, R. S., ‘Dimensions of illiteracy, 1750–1850’, Explorations in Economic History, x (1973), 437–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14. By the 1790s it is possible to calculate average age at death for particular occupations and locations, but for the period illustrated in figure 3, having identified epidemics in a time series, the contribution of child deaths (simply those named as son or daughter of x) can be mapped and compared with other social indicators.

15. It is felt that the practice of establishing socio-economic classes by using, say, the R.-G.'s 1951 classification would not be useful here. The 1871 instruction book for census officers was used in doubtful cases but generally the 1861 published tables were adequate. The whole problem is thoroughly treated by Armstrong, W. A. in Wrigley, E. A. (ed.), Nineteenth-Century Society (1972), 191–310.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16. Besides clerical policy is the problem of lack of free seats for the working class in many churches. In the 1790s Matthew Gregson observed that there was ‘evidently a want of churches, particularly for the lower classes of the community…and none of the lately built churches, but St Paul and St John, have been built to remedy this evil hellip;[which has] contributed not a little to fill the dissenting Meeting houses…’ Liverpool Record Office, Holt Gregson papers, vol. 19, p. 211.

17. Taylor, I., ‘The court and cellar dwelling: the eighteenth-century origin of the Liverpool slum’, Transactions Historic Society Lancashire and Cheshire, cxxii (1970), 67–90.Google Scholar

18. The proportion in occupational class V (orders 10–15 manufacturing industry) on some preliminary results seem to have fallen by 1810 (about 25–30 per cent as against 50–55 per cent in the 1760s), whilst those in order 16 (labourers) increased (30 per cent as against 10 per cent). Apart from statistical reasons there may be several other explanations for this, notably occupational description.

19. The authors are familiar with Vigier's, F., Change and Apathy: Liverpool and Manchester during the Industrial Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1970).Google Scholar However, despite posing interesting questions about urban structure, it is largely derived from a mixed bag of local histories and its discussion of population trends and topographical evolution is unreferenced and inaccurate.