A Slaughter of Innocents: Aspects of Child Health in the Eighteenth-Century City

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A Slaughter ofInnocents: Aspects of Child Health in the Eighteenth-Century City GEORGE ROSEN In 1767, the Scottish economist Sir James Steuart observed that “The principal objections against great cities are, that health there is not so good, that marriages are not so frequent as in the country, that debauchery prevails, and that abuses are multiplied.” Moreover, referring to Paris and London, he added, “It is further urged that the number of deaths exceeds the number of births in great cities; consequently smaller towns, and even the country, is stripped of its inhabitants, in order to recruit these capitals.”1 The points listed by Steuart derive from views widely held at the time. That same year, for example, a Lutheran clergyman, Johann Bruckner (1726—1804) noted that population was clearly hindered from increasing in large cities, because the poor who were the majority lived crowded together in miserable quarters and as a result died in large numbers.2 Two years later, in 1769, the Italian economist and jurist Cesare Beccaria (1738—1794) published his Elementi di Economia Pubblica in which he discussed the causes that checked the increase or led to a decline of population. Among 293 294 / GEORGE ROSEN these Beccaria included the growth of cities at the expense of rural districts which led to an increase of vice, misery and disease, and consequently to a much higher urban mortality.3 Though these views do not apply in all respects and in the same degree to eighteenth-century cities and towns, yet they do reflect urban conditions in various parts of Europe, and are supported by contemporary evidence. There was no dominant German city comparable to London or Paris, where political, economic and cultural power was concentrated, but no matter whether one turns to a Residenzstadt such as Berlin or a commercial center like Frankfurt am Main, the health experience of the respective popu­ lations is not very different. According to the Prussian military chaplain and demographer, Johann Peter Sussmilch (1707—1767), from 1720 to 1744 in Berlin the number of baptisms was almost as large as the number of deaths, and in some years was greater, but on balance there was no internal growth. During the same period there was also a considerable excess of deaths over births in Vienna, and most other German cities had a similar experience in the course of the century.4 In Frankfurt a. M. there were consis­ tently more deaths than births throughout the period from 1710 to 1800.5 In some years or places the births were higher than the deaths, as in Braunschweig, Coburg, Erlangen and Schweinfurt during 1755—56, and in Danzig, Hamburg and Altona in 1780.6 Although the statistics for the German cities are quite defective and must be pieced together from a number of different sources there can be no doubt about the main trends. On the whole deaths exceeded births in the towns and yet the urban centers continued to grow, some more rapidly, some more slowly. They depended for growth chiefly on the increase of the rural population and the influx of migrants from the countryside. This trend in the German states is linked to a characteristic of this period, namely, the rapid increase of population which began about the middle of the century. The population which until then had been practically stationary began to grow rapidly. From 1748 to 1800, for exam­ ple, the population of Prussia almost doubled, while that of Berlin increased about fivefold from 1700 to 1797.7 Slaughter ofInnocents / 295 The experience of England and London is similar in some respects. Around the middle of the century a marked and con­ tinuing increase in population was set in motion in England which carried through to the nineteenth century. In London, as in Berlin, deaths exceeded births during the first half of the century, but the situation began to change after 1750. Nevertheless, it was not until the final decade of the century that an excess of births began to occur regularly. Throughout the entire period the growth of Lon­ don was due for the most part to a continuous flow of new people from rural areas. Indeed, about one...