Infant and young adult mortality in London’s West End, 1750-1824

Migration was a key component of the demographic regime of London in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is probable that a regular inflow of migrants was required to balance the high urban mortality rates and maintain the population of London until at least the late eighteenth century. While there is strong evidence of high urban mortality in infant mortality rates and in the large excess of burials with respect to baptisms in city registers, relatively little is known about adult mortality in the capital, and even less is known about the mortality risk of migrants themselves. Migrants may have been at higher risk of mortality than native-born Londoners if they experienced poorer living conditions, as a consequence of residential segregation and low socioeconomic status. However migrants may also have differed from the native-born population in their susceptibility to certain diseases as a consequence of their immune status prior to migration. The immune status of immigrants could have made them more vulnerable or possibly more robust than their urban-born peers, depending on the nature of the diseases they encountered, and the epidemiology of their native environment.