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Romola Davenport BA, BA, MSc PhD

Senior Research Associate, Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure

Demographer with interests in mortality and the history of medicine, particularly the contribution of different causes of death to the decline of mortality since the eighteenth century, and the relative importance of different causes of death to age and sex patterns of mortality in different societies.

Biography

After completing two undergraduate degrees in various subjects (History, Modern Chinese and Botany), I did a Ph.D. in plant physiology in Cambridge and then worked for seven years as a research fellow in the Plant Sciences Dept there, investigating the causes of salt sensitivity in crop plants grown in saline soils. During 2003-05 I did a part-time M.Sc. in London and retrained as a demographer, with specific interests in biodemography and mortality. I combined a career change with fertility recuperation (two children born 2006 and 2009) and have worked part-time since 2006.

Career

  • 1998-2000: Postdoctoral Research Associate, Department of Plant Sciences, Cambridge
  • 1998-2001: Junior Research Fellow, Newnham College Cambridge
  • 2000-2005: Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Research Fellow
  • 2001-2006: Senior Research Fellow, Newnham College Cambridge
  • 2006-2007: Research Fellow, Oxford Institute of Ageing
  • 2007-08: Departmental Lecturer in Demography, Institute of Human Sciences, University of Oxford.
  • 2008-2010: Visiting Research Fellow, Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure
  • 2010-2011: Research Associate, Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure (Wellcome Generation to Reproduction project)
  • 2011- : Senior Research Associate, Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure

Qualifications

  • B.A. (History) University of New South Wales
  • B.A. (Hons, Botany) University of Adelaide
  • Ph.D. (Botany) University of Cambridge
  • M.Sc. (Demography) London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

Research

My current research is focused on two questions: (1) the causes of the dramatic transformation of the urban mortality regime in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and (2) the contributions of specific causes of death to the curious patterns of mortality change by age and cohort in the English population between 1750 and c.1930. The eighteenth century marked the beginning of secular population growth in England and Wales, and the transformation of urban centres from demographic sinks, consuming the population surplus of the countryside, to populations capable of natural increase. Although Victorian reformers thought contemporary urban death rates were horrific, it is unlikely that Britain could have urbanized to the extent necessary for the Industrial Revolution, without dramatic prior reductions in urban mortality. To study mortality decline in the period before civil registration of deaths in the 1830s, I have been analysing parish burial records from the Paupers' Lives Project, with Leonard Schwarz (University of Birmingham) and Jeremy Boulton (University of Newcastle) (http://research.ncl.ac.uk./pauperlives/). These records derive from the sexton's books of St. Martin in the Fields, and record age, sex, cause of death, address and burial cost of burials in this very large London parish from 1750-1825. Our understanding of urban demography in this period is extremely weak, due to the limitations of most sources, and the very rich records of St. Martin in the Fields offer a thus far unique insight into the decline of mortality in London. In addition I have been using the workhouse admission and discharge records for the parish, which detail the duration of stay, and reasons for discharge (including death) of all paupers using the workhouse, making it possible to study mortality in the workhouse using event history analysis. We currently hold an ESRC grant to investigate infant mortality by social status, using the records of fees paid for baptisms in the parish. We will link these to infant burial records to measure the extent (and causes) of status differences in infant mortality, in the period where these differences are first thought to have emerged.

For the later nineteenth century I have made machine-readable the annual counts of deaths by cause, sex and age from the Registrar-General's Reports for England & Wales 1848-1900, making with the Office of National Statistics' series a continuous cause of death series to 2006 (documentation). This is the longest cause of death series available for any national population, and enables the study of long-run changes in mortality patterns in the period of secular decline in mortality in England & Wales in great detail. In particular, it permits long-run studies of mortality by cohort and cause, and allows detailed assessment of the extent of redistribution of deaths between categories of cause of death, which is not possible when only isolated causes of death are examined. I am in the proces of creating a similar database for Scotland covering the period 1855-1949. Both projects were funded by the British Academy.

Current projects using these data include (see 'publications' for detail):

  • The decline of adult smallpox in London in the 1770s;
  • The impact of immigration to London on metropolitan and national mortality rates, 1750-1900;
  • Stillbirth and neonatal mortality in eighteenth century London
  • The contribution of the workhouse to mortality rates under the 'Old Poor Law'.
  • The contribution of urbanisation to the late decline of infant mortality in England & Wales;
  • The role of childhood infectious diseases in cohort adult chronic disease mortality (a test of the 'inflammatory hypothesis', that early exposure to infectious disease causes inflammatory immune responses that increase predisposition to cardiovascular diseases);
  • Cohort and age effects in influenza mortality (using long-run cause-specific data from the USA, France, Japan and England & Wales) (with Ian Timaeus, LSHTM)

Publications

Selected publications

Selected seminar presentations

  • Urban mortality change and the workhouse: St. Martin-in-the-Fields 1725-1824' Quantitative History seminar, Cambridge, January 2012 (slides)
  • 'Mortality decline in eighteenth century London: new evidence from burials by cause, age and burial cost from the sextons' books of St Martin in the Fields'. Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure seminar series, November 2009 (abstract)
  • 'Infant and young adult mortality in London's West End, 1750-1824'. Workshop on 'Death, disease, environment and social status: new approaches to mortality in England 1380-1860' Cambridge May 22 2009 (slides)
  • 'Testing the inflammatory hypothesis using cause-specific infant and child mortality in Victorian England and Wales' British Society for Population Studies Annual Conference, St Andrews, Sept 13 2007 (slides)
  • 'Testing the inflammatory hypothesis using cause-specific infant and child mortality in Victorian England and Wales: advertisement or warning?' Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure seminar series, April 30 2007(slides)
  • 'Original antigenic sin and the 1918 influenza pandemic' The Institute for Emerging Infectious Diseases, Oxford, March 2006 (slides)