Some Demographical Statistics
- Median age on first marriage for middle and lower classes
was 27 for men and 25 for women. ie. the average age at which
people were first married. This is not to say that no-one was
married earlier, but for every woman that was married at 18 another
did not marry until she was 32. Both Laslett (for Canterbury)
and Armstrong (for Greystoke in Cumbria) arrive at a lower figure
for women at just over 23.
- Average duration of first marriage 18 years. Not until 1770
did half the marriages last 25 years.
- Less than 10% of family units were extended. ie. unusual to
have three generations co-residing.
- Illegitimacy was rare, accounting for 3.4% of births in the
late 1500s falling to 0.9% by 1650. However, Armstrong found that
in Greystoke illegitimacy was about 6% at the end of the 1500s
which is similar to that found in Alverstoke in the early 1600s.
Armstrong notes that other communities come out nearer the 3%
mark.
- Armstrong found that in the period between 1595 and 1610 39%
of brides were pregnant at time of marriage but remarks that few
teenage brides were pregnant and most did not become pregnant
until more than a year after marriage, this teenage subfecundity
is common in developing countries today.
- Average life expectancy at birth was 32 years. This is skewed
because of the very high rates of infant mortality as follows:
25% to 30% died before their fifth birthday and a further 25%
before they were 25 years old. After this a further 30 or 40 years
of life could be expected.
- Between 1560 and 1600 in Greystoke 1 in 7 women died during
or within one month of childbirth. In the same parish stillbirths
averaged 9%, the only other figure available is for a London parish
where it was 6%.
- Average number of children in a lower class conjugal family
unit was 2.2. Armstrong found that the average number of children
born per marriage was 5, (range 0 - 10), and siblings averaged
28 months apart. Where an infant died young another was likely
to follow quickly.
- Typhus is an adult specific and is spread by lice. Children
were particularly vulnerable to the summer diseases of dysentery,
scarlet fever, smallpox and plague.
Sources:
'The Family , Sex and Marriage in England
1500-1800'. L.Stone. Penguin. Reprinted 1990.
'Time, Family and Community'. Ed. M.Drake.
Ch.3 by M.Anderson. Cambrdge U.P. 1994.
'17th Century England, A Changing Culture'
Vol 2. Ed. W.Owens. Ward Lock. 1988.
'Stuart Economy and Society'. Nigel Heard.
Hodder and Stoughton. 1995.
'Birth, Mariage and Death in Elizabethan Cumbria'.
LPS No.53 1994.