Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

Between 1751 and 1801 the population of England increased by some 46.4%
from 5,922,000 to 8,671,000. 10
Over the same period Gloucestershire increased by some
25%, Worcestershire by 29% and Warwickshire by 75%. 11 Of course, as noted for the
earlier period, population growth was not uniform within these counties. 12
The likes of
Birmingham and Coventry attracted many outsiders, but even in the ‘rather stagnant’
country town of Stratford-upon-Avon 27.4% of its families were incomers in 1765. 13
Martin’s study of Bidford exemplifies some of the complex factors affecting population
change. 14
Between 1801 and 1841 both regional and national population growth was
dramatic. Wrigley puts the population of England at some 8.67 million in 1801 and
14.94 million in 1841, (a growth of some 72 %). 15 The comparative statement from the
1841 census shows county population growth between these two dates as follows:
Worcestershire from 139,333 to 233,484 (68%), Gloucestershire from 250,809 to
431,307 (72%) and Warwickshire from 208,190 to 402,121 (93%). 16 Population growth
in the Study Area was more modest at this time, growing by 52.9%, as seen in Table 3.14
below, but some parishes grew at above the national rate.
An examination of each zone’s population in turn will demonstrate the striking
differences between zones. For most parishes in the study area information on
10 Wrigley in Floud and Johnson, The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain, p. 57.
11 E. A. Wrigley, ‘English county populations in the later eighteenth century’, Econ. Hist. Rev., 60, (2007),
p. 60. N. B. The figures differ slightly in Wrigley’s article of the same title on www.hpss.geog.cam.ac.uk
(10 a.m., 12 Aug. 2008) which shows rises in Gloucestershire (approximately) 24%, Worcestershire 30%
and Warwickshire 71%.
12 E. A. Wrigley, ‘Mapping the geography of English population growth 1761-1841’ on
www.hpss.geog.cam.ac.uk shows that the hundreds in the study area were in the group which grew
between 0% and 50% between 1761 and 1841.
13 Martin, ‘The rise in population in eighteenth-century Warwickshire’, p. 20.
14 Ibid., pp. 25, 27, 33, 36. Whereas the average age for first marriage by males went up between 1750 and
1799, the reverse was true for females. Bidford’s baptism aggregates rose after 1770 and mortality of
infants and of children up to the age of fourteen declined.
15 Wrigley, in Floud, and Johnson, The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain, pp. 64-5.
16 www.histpop.org.uk (4.45 p.m., 19 Aug. 2008).
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