Hostname: page-component-788cddb947-tr9hg Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-10-08T09:29:18.208Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Mortality in early modern Scotland: the life expectancy of advocates

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Rab Houston
Affiliation:
Department of Modern History, University of St Andrews.

Abstract

Image of the first page of this content. For PDF version, please use the ‘Save PDF’ preceeding this image.'
Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Houston, R. A., ‘The demographic regime, 1760–1830’, in Devine, T. M. and Mitchison, R. eds., A social history of modern Scotland, Vol. 1 (Edinburgh, 1988), 926Google ScholarHouston, R. A., The population history of Britain and Ireland, 1500–1750 (London, 1992).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Flinn, M. W. ed., Scottish population history from the 17th century to the 1930s (Cambridge, 1977), 4551.Google Scholar

3 Mitchison, R., ‘Webster revisited: a re-examination of the 1755 “census” of Scotland’, in Devine, T. M. ed., Improvement and enlightenment (Edinburgh, 1989), 71.Google Scholar

4 Donaldson, G., ‘The legal profession in Scottish society in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’, Juridical Review (1976), 9.Google Scholar

5 Phillipson, N., ‘Lawyers, landowners, and the civic leadership of post-Union Scotland’, Juridical Review (1976), 104.Google ScholarFor the parallel development of the writers to the signet, see A history of the Society of Writers to Her Majesty's Signet with a list of the members of the Society from 1594 to 1890 and an abstract of the minutes (Edinburgh, 1890).Google Scholar

6 Pinkerton, J. M. ed., The minute book of the Faculty of Advocates, Vol. I: 16611712 (Edinburgh, 1976), ix–xGoogle ScholarMurdoch, A., ‘The advocates, the law and the nation in early modern Scotland’, in Prest, W. ed., Lawyers in early modern Europe and America (London, 1981), 150.Google Scholar

7 Murdoch, , ‘Advocates’, 149.Google Scholar

8 Phillipson, N., ‘The social structure of the Faculty of Advocates in Scotland, 1661–1840’, in Harding, A. ed., Law-making and laiv-makers in British history (London, 1980), 148–9.Google Scholar

9 Grant, F. J. ed., The Faculty of Advocates in Scotland, 1532–1943 (Edinburgh, 1944).Google Scholar

10 Phillipson, , ‘Social structure’, 147.Google Scholar

11 Hatcher, J., ‘Mortality in the fifteenth century: some new evidence’, Economic History Review 39 (1986), 25.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

12 Ibid., 29–31.

13 Pinkerton, , Minute book, xiiixiv.Google Scholar

14 This article uses a method adapted by Jim Oeppen from Turnbull, B. W., ‘The empirical distribution function with arbitrarily grouped, censored and truncated data’, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, series B 38 (1976), 290–5.Google Scholar This concerns estimations from incomplete observations. Such a method is necessary because advocates enter observation at different ages, meaning that the data will be truncated. If no allowance was made for truncation, changes in the age at entry would cause apparent but unreal changes in life expectancy. For example, some advocates will enter at 25, others at a much later age. In order to estimate the probability of surviving to a given age, say 65, the mortality of all advocates who lived for some years between, say, age 25 and 65 is used to impute the size of a ‘phantom cohort’ that entered at 25 which would be just big enough to ensure that one person survived to age 65. This is then used to complete the observation of a man who entered the Faculty at, say, 35 and so on for all those who did not enter at 25. The imputation method is based on internal consistency and results in a life table which is most consistent with the complete and ‘incomplete’ observations at every age.

15 Mitchison, , ‘Webster revisited’, 71.Google ScholarMitchison's figure is for both sexes combined and male e0 and e30 will have been lower than this figure. See Coale, A. J. and Demeny, P., Regional model lfe tables (2nd edn, London, 1983).Google Scholar

16 Tyson, R. E., ‘Contrasting regimes; population growth in Ireland and Scotland during the eighteenth century’, in Houston, R. A. et al. eds., Conflict and identity in the social and economic history of Ireland and Scotland (Edinburgh, 1992).Google Scholar Dr Elspeth Graham, Department of Geography, University of St Andrews, confirms the picture of marked improvements in infant and child mortality in the second half of the eighteenth century while adult mortality improved only slightly – based on her Wellcome project on Fife parish registers during this period.

17 Wrigley, E. A. and Schofield, R. S., ‘English population history from family reconstitution; summary results, 1600–1799’, Population Studies 37 (1983), 177–9.Google ScholarPubMed

18 Phillipson, , ‘Social structure’, 150.Google Scholar

19 ibid., 151.

20 Murdoch, , ‘Advocates’, 151.Google Scholar

21 Donaldson, , ‘Legal profession’, 1516.Google Scholar

22 Edinburgh City Archives (hereafter ECA), Edinburgh charity workhouse minutes, Vol. 1, 5/11/1742.

23 Phillipson, , ‘Social structure’, 153.Google Scholar

24 Donaldson, , ‘Legal profession’, 11.Google Scholar

25 Phillipson, , ‘Lawyers’, 107.Google Scholar

26 Murdoch, , ‘Advocates’, 150.Google Scholar

27 Marshall, R., ‘Wetnursing in Scotland, 1500–1800’, Review of Scottish Culture 1(1984), 47–8.Google Scholar

28 Hollingsworth, T. H., ‘The demography of the British peerage’, Population Studies 18, 2(suppl.) (1964), 56, 68.Google Scholar

29 Perrenoud, A., ‘L'inégalité sociale devant Ia mort à Genève au XVIIe siècle’, Population (1975), 223.Google Scholar

30 Pinkerton, , Minute book, xiiGoogle ScholarPhillipson, , ‘Lawyers’, 101–2.Google Scholar

31 Perrenoud, , ‘L'inégalité sociale’, 239.Google Scholar

32 Galloway, P. R., ‘Differentials in demographic responses to annual price variations in pre-revolutionary France; a comparison of rich and poor areas of Rouen, 1681–1787European Journal of Population 2 (1986), 269305.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33 Schellekens, J., ‘Mortality and socio-economic status in two eighteenth-century Dutch villages’, Population Studies 43, (1989), 394–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34 Henry, L., Anciennes familles genevoises. Etude démographique: XVIe–XXe siècles (Paris, 1956). 156, 167–9, 182. The trend for the total population is different; see Note 35.Google Scholar

35 Ibid., 152. For comparison, e20 for the mass of Geneva's population was as follows; 32.9 years 1625–49, 34.6 years 1650–74, 36.4 years 1675–99, 36.0 years 1700–24, 39.3 years 1725–44, 39.3 years 1745–69, 39.6 years 1770–90 (A. Perrenoud, ‘La mortalité à Genève de 1625 à 1825’, Annales de demographic historique (1978), 223).Google Scholar

36 Zanetti, D. E., La demografia del patriziato milanese nei secolo XVII, XVIII, XIX(Pavia, 1972), 214.Google ScholarZanetti has published an English abstract of his book as ‘The patriziato of Milan from the domination of Spain to the unification of Italy: an outline of the social and demographic history’, Social History 6 (1977), 745–60.Google Scholar Readers should note that the e20s at p. 758 are medians rather than means and comparison with p. 227 of Demografia shows the former to be consistently higher than the mean life expectancies.

37 Houdaille, J., ‘La noblesse française, 1600–1900’, Population 3 (1989), 506.Google Scholar

38 Le Bras, H. and Dinet, D., ‘Mortalité des laïcs et mortalité des religieux: les Bénédictins de St-Maur aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles’, Population 35 (1980), 356,Google ScholarVandenbroeke, J. P. (‘Survival and expectation of life from the 1400s to the present: a study of the Knighthood Order of the Golden Fleece’, American Journal of Epidemiology 122 (1985), 1007–16) analyses members of the European nobility. Results are presented in a form not easily comparable with other studies. Expectations of life for Knights at age 20 are, very approximately, 33 years for the fifteenth-century, 28 years for the sixteenth century, 31 years for the seventeenth century and 42 for the eighteenth century.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

39 Finlay, R. A. P., Population and metropolis: the demography of London, 1580–1650 (Cambridge, 1981), 2150.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40 Rappaport, S., Worlds within worlds: structures of life in sixteenth-century London (Cambridge, 1989), 69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

41 Wrigley, E. A. and schofield, R. S., The population history of England, 1541–1871: a reconstruction (London, 1981), 250.Google Scholar

42 Perrenoud, , ‘L'inégalité sociale’, 222.Google Scholar

43 Eversley, D. E. C., ‘The demography of the Irish Quakers, 1650–1850’, in Goldstrom, J. A. and Clarkson, L. A. eds., Irish population, economy, and society (Oxford, 1981), 5961, 82–5.Google Scholar

44 Landers, J., ‘Age patterns of mortality in London during the “long eighteenth century”: a test of the “high potential” model of metropolitan mortality’, Social History of Medicine 3 (1990), 2760.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The ‘mid-range’ estimate in Table 5 may be slightly optimistic because of the nature of the statistical algorithm used to calculate it.

45 Hatcher, ‘Mortality’, 28.Google Scholar

46 Dobson, M. J., ‘Mortality gradients and disease exchanges: comparisons between old England and colonial America’, Social History of Medicine 2 (1989), 259–97CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Dobson, M. J., ‘The last hiccup of the old demographic regime’, Continuity and Change 4 (1989), 395428CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Walter, J. and Schofield, R. S., ‘Introduction’ in Walter, J. and Schofield, R. S. eds., Famine, disease and the social order in early modern society (Cambridge, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Post, J. D., Food shortage, climatic variability, and epidemic disease in preindustrial Europe. The mortality peak in the early 1740s (Ithaca, 1985).Google Scholar

47 Alter, G., ‘Plague and the Amsterdam annuitant: a new look at life annuities as a source for historical demography’, Population Studies 37 (1983), 38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

48 Ibid., 38; Henry, , Anciennes familIes, 183.Google Scholar

49 Flinn, , Scottish population, 133–49.Google Scholar

50 Slack, P., The impact of plague in Tudor and Stuart England (London, 1985).Google Scholar

51 Alter, , ‘Plague’, 34–5Google Scholar; Schofield, R. S., ‘An anatomy of an epidemic: Colyton, November 1645 to November 1646’, in The plague reconsidered. A new look at its origins and effects in 16th and 17th century England, Local Population Studies supplement (1977), 111, 115Google ScholarFinlay, , Population, 111–32.Google Scholar

52 Schofield, , ‘Anatomy’, 118–19.Google Scholar

53 Henry, , Anciennes families, 183.Google Scholar

54 Alter, , ‘Plague’, 38.Google Scholar

55 Youngson, A. J., The making of classical Edinburgh (Edinburgh, 1966), 14.Google Scholar

56 ECA, Edinburgh charity workhouse minutes, Vol. 2, 183.Google Scholar

57 Porter, R., Disease, medicine and society in England, 1550–1860 (London, 1987).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

58 Walter and Schofield, ‘Introduction’, 68; Riley, J. C., The eighteenth-century campaign to avoid disease (London, 1987).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

59 Walter, and Schofield, , ‘Introduction’, 68.Google Scholar

60 Flinn, , Scottish population, 115, 158, 163–4.Google Scholar

61 Ibid., 164.

62 Blayo, Y., ‘La mortalité en France de 1740 à 1860’, Population 30 (1975) special number, 123–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

63 Phillipson, , ‘Lawyers’, 100.Google Scholar

64 Zanetti, , Demografia, 216Google ScholarHenry, , Anciennes families, 153.Google Scholar

65 Anderson, M., Population change in north-western Europe, 1750–1850 (London, 1988), 57CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Perrenoud, , ‘Mortalité’, 223–5Google Scholar; Houston, R. A., The population history of Britain and Ireland, 1500–1750 (London, 1992).CrossRefGoogle Scholar