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XXI: Mortality in Magherafelt, County Derry, in the early eighteenth century reappraised

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2016

William Macafee  and
Valerie Morgan
William Macafee
Affiliation:
New University of Ulster
Valerie Morgan
Affiliation:
New University of Ulster
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Extract

The study of Irish historical demography has long been an area of complexity and controversy; and the further back into the past the search for patterns and trends is pushed, the more the problems multiply. Much of the difficulty stems from the inadequacy and/or variability of the available sources. Hearth-tax returns, enumeration lists of various types, estate records and registers of baptisms, marriages and burials, all pose problems of interpretation and in addition, for any single area, they are likely to provide only fragmentary and discontinuous evidence. $$Largely because of these difficulties, only a limited number of detailed analyses of population patterns in specific areas as far back as the late seventeenth century and early eighteenth century have been attempted. Yet at the same time the work which has been done has made it apparent both that this is a crucial period in terms of demographic history and that only detailed case studies can provide the evidence necessary to enlarge upon our current very general understanding.

Type
Historical Revision
Information
Irish Historical Studies , Volume 23 , Issue 89 , 1982 , pp. 50 - 60
Copyright
Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 1982

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References

1 Morgan, Valerie, ‘Mortality in Magherafelt, County Derry, in the early eighteenth century’ in I.H.S., xix, no. 74 (Sept. 1974), pp 125-35Google Scholar; Morgan, Valerie, ‘A case study of population change over two centuries: Blaris, Lisburn, 1661-1848’ in Irish Economic and Social History, iii (1976), pp 5–16 Google Scholar; Worthington, P. A., ‘Death, disease and famine in pre-industrial Ulster: a study of mortality crises in two parishes in the Lagan Valley, 1725-1745’ (unpublished B.A. thesis, Queen’s University of Belfast, 1976)Google Scholar; Macafee, William, ‘The colonisation of the Maghera region of south Derry during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’ in Ulster Folklife, xxiii (1977), pp 70–91.Google Scholar

2 Macafee, ‘Colonisation of the Maghera region’, p. 77.

3 Morgan, ‘Mortality in Magherafelt’, p. 128.

4 P.R.O.N.L, T307, 1663 hearth-money roll, Co. Londonderry, Parish of Magherafelt.

5 P.R.O.N.I., T808/15258, 1740 protestant householders returns, Parish of Magherafelt.

6 P.R.O.N.I., T808/15267, 1766 religious returns, Co. Londonderry, Parish of Magherafelt.

7 P.R.O.N.I., Mic. 1/1, 2, Church of Ireland parish register for Magherafelt.

8 P.R.O.N.I., Mic. 6/236, 1836 Ordnance Survey memoir for the parish of Magherafelt.

9 Ibid.

10 Connell, K. H., The population of Ireland. 1750-1845 (Oxford, 1950), p. 25.Google Scholar

11 Morgan, ‘Mortality in Magherafelt’, pp 131, 134.

12 Appleby, A. B., ‘Disease or famine?: mortality in Cumberland and Westmorland, 1580-1640’ in Econ. Hist. Rev., 2nd ser., xxvi (1973), p. 423 Google Scholar. This article suggests a methodology for differentiating between disease and famine.

13 Cullen, L. M., An economic history of Ireland since 1660 (London, 1972), p. 46.Google Scholar

14 Comparison of a poll-tax return for the parish of Donagheady, 1660 (P.R.O.N.I., T 1365/3) and the 1666 hearth returns for the same parish (P.R.O.N.I., T 307) suggests an error of 10 per cent for the British population in the hearth returns.

15 P.R.O.N.I., Mic. 6/236, 1836 Ordnance Survey memoir for the parish of Magherafelt.

16 Connell, Population of Ireland, p. 25.

17 Laslett, Peter, ‘Size and structure of the household in England over three centuries, part I: mean household size in England since the sixteenth century’ in Population Studies, xxiii (1969), p. 200 Google Scholar, suggests a figure as low as 4.75.