The thesis examines the problem of infant mortality in Merthyr Tydfil 1865-
1908. In particular it investigates why Merthyr Tydfil, an iron, steel and coal producing
town in south Wales, experienced high infant mortality rates throughout the nineteenth
century which rose by the end of the century despite sixty years of public health
reforms. The historiography of infant mortality in nineteenth-century Britain includes
few Welsh studies although the south Wales Coalfield played an important part in
industrial and demographic change in Britain during the second half of the nineteenth
century. The thesis argues that conditions of industrial development shaped the social,
economic and public health experience in Merthyr, ensnaring its citizens in social
disadvantage, reflected in the largely unacknowledged human toll among mothers and
babies in that process.
The thesis analyses the causes of over 17, 000 infant deaths in Merthyr Tydfil
from the primary evidence of an unusually complete series of Medical Officer of Health
Reports to identify the principal attributed causes of infant death and explain their
social origins and context. The thesis examines the work of Dr. Thomas Jones Dyke,
MOH from 1865-1900, who was the author of most of these reports, and assesses his
career in public health, but suggests that there were limits to his capacity to address the
problem of infant mortality. The analysis showed convulsions, tuberculosis, measles
and whooping cough, lung diseases, diarrhoea, nutritional causes of death and infant
deaths from antenatal causes of maternal origin to be those which drove up infant
mortality rates in Merthyr from the 1880s. From 1902 antenatal causes of infant death,
independent of the sanitary environment, and directly linked to the health of mothers,
were the only ones still rising.
Public health reforms were unable to address the social factors which
engendered poverty and ill-health. Large families dependent mainly on male
breadwinners had little margin of economic safety. Industrial conflicts in Merthyr
revealed the inability of the Poor Law to address the problems of mass destitution in an
urban setting. Women experienced few employment opportunities, married early and
undertook heavy domestic labour reflected in early death rates for women and high
perinatal infant death rates due to the poor health and socio-economic status of mothers.
The training of midwives from 1902, with the potential to save many infant lives and to
advocate for working-class mothers, failed to do so in Merthyr by 1908.
Although specifically addressing the issues of infant mortality in nineteenthcentury
Britain, the issues raised are of contemporary relevance since infant deaths
reflect many social dynamics of inequality through which infant lives are inevitably
sacrificed.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/221796 |
| Date | January 2006 |
| Creators | Lberes@bigpond.net.au, Linda Beresford |
| Publisher | Murdoch University |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | http://www.murdoch.edu.au/goto/CopyrightNotice, Copyright Linda Beresford |
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