Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

As population estimates before 1801 are speculative, further evidence has been
sought in the form of baptism totals for each parish for selected dates, where available,
using nine-year moving averages. 25
The figures for Alcester in Table 3.3 corroborate the
assumed growth of population from Elizabethan to late Stuart times, followed by
stagnation in the eighteenth century. Wrigley also found unusual patterns in Alcester’s
eighteenth century baptism registers. ‘In 1730-9, 330 baptisms occurred in reconstituted
Alcester families. Thereafter the decadal figure fluctuated but tended to sag, falling to
268 in 1780-9, and 304 in 1790-9, an unusual feature in the later eighteenth century,
when, in general, the number of baptisms was rising rapidly.’ 26
Table 3.4 Population totals for Zone A, Alcester from censuses 1801-1861
Year 1801 1811 1821 1831 1841 1851 1861
Zone A, Alcester 1625 1862 2229 2405 2399 2378 2128
The baptism figure for 1810 in Table 3.3 suggests strong population growth again
in the early nineteenth century. From 1801 we are on more certain ground with
population figures in the form of the censuses. Table 3.4 demonstrates Alcester’s
population increasing up to 1831 and then stagnating before falling away in the midnineteenth
century. 27
In each of the censuses (1801 to 1831) there are more females than
males in Alcester, suggesting employment opportunities for females in the town’s needle
trade and retail and service industries.
25 All baptisms in the registers are shown in the data (including those with fathers from outside the parish
and also unmarried mothers). Baptisms were chosen rather than marriages as several local parishes were
havens for clandestine marriages for couples from outside the parish.
26 E. A. Wrigley, English Population History from Family Reconstitution 1580-1729, (Cambridge, CUP,
1997), p. 32. Wrigley thought these baptism figures so unusual as to be untrustworthy, but other sources do
suggest this population fall.
27 See Tables 3.14, 3.15 and 3.16 for comparison with other zones.
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