ANNALES DE DÉMOGRAPHIE HISTORIQUE 1993 Société de Démographie Historique - E.H.E.S.S. Paris, 1993
THE IMPACT OF THE GREAT WAR ON INFANT MORTALITY IN LONDON
by Jay WINTER, Jon LAWRENCE, and Jackie ARIOUAT
Introduction
The debate on the impact of the First World War on the health of civilian populations is a subject attracting growing attention among scholars of several European countries1. Before the 1970s there was a gênerai consensus that the war's effect on the health of civilian populations was wholly négative2 . During the 1970s and 1980s, research was undertaken which supported the view that, at least for some sectors of the civilian population of Britain, the war years were a time of improvements in health standards which would not hâve occurred had there been no war.3 In the last few years a number of studies hâve challenged this thesis. Linda Bryder has pointed to wartime increases in tuberculosis death rates, and Bernard Harris, exploring wartime civilian mortality, has argued that "The over- whelming impression is one of continuity in the overall pattern of décline, rather than one of accélération".4
It is the object of this paper to deepen the debate and to présent a revised analysis of the contribution of the war to the health of one part of the civilian population of Britain, that of the County of London. We accept the view that national studies, using aggregate statistics, confiate contradictory trends. Conse- quently, we hâve limited our study to a significant régional population with records sufficiently detailed to provide sound statistical information on the local level. The choice of London provides both a large enough population (roughly four million in 1914) to analyze in depth, and a set of local statistics enabling us to explore district variations.
The particular measure we hâve chosen is infant mortality rates, which, on the national level, hâve been explored by most of those involved in the current debate. The argument presented hère is one of moderate optimism about the impact of war on infant survival rates. One fundamental premise of our position is that the
1. This paper forms part of a wider projection the social and démographie history of Paris, London, and Berlin, funded by the Economie and Social Research Council, the Centre national de la recherche scientifique, and the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung.
2. See for example, L. Hersch, "La mortalité causée par la guerre mondiale" Metron, VII (1927), p. 3.
3. J. M. Winter, The Great War and the British People, London, 1985 ; J. M. Winter, "Some paradoxes of the Great War" in R. M. Wall and J. M. Winter (eds), The Upheaval of War, Family, Work and Welfare in Europe 1914-1918, Cambridge, 1988.
4. L. Bryder, "The First World War : healthy or hungry ?", History Workshop Journal, 24, 1987, p. 141-57 ; B. Harris, "The démographie impact of the First World War : an anthropométrie perspective", Social History of Medicine, 1993, p. 7-9.
