Sewers in the City: A Case Study of Individual-Level Mortality and Public Health Initiatives in Northampton, Massachusetts, at the Turn of the Century

Abstract

Emerging industrial communities of nineteenth-century New England experienced both rapid population growth and lagging development of public health infrastructures. In turn, high mortality in these newly urban cities contributed to a delay in the regional mortality transition of the late nineteenth century. Analyzing death records and a file of linked cause-specific death and manuscript census records for the industrializing community of Northampton, Massachusetts, we show that early in the city's development, mortality clustered near industrial activities and open sewers. When industrial areas were sewered, clustering of mortality abated, and differences between industrial and commercial areas of the town were no longer significant. These findings illustrate Szreter's emphasis on considering both the benefits and costs of development. (1) Initial development contributed to high mortality in newly emergent urban-industrial centers like Northampton and was abated only when lagging public health infrastructures caught up with rapid growth and development near the turn of the century.

Mortality in late nineteenth-century Montreal: Geographic pathways of contagion

“…Exceptional sources have permitted more detailed portraits for Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and two mid-sized New England mill towns (Condran and Cheney 1984;Meckel 1985;Hautaniemi et al 1999Hautaniemi et al , 2000Beemer et al 2005;Ferrie and Troesken 2005). European and British scholars, exploiting richer sources, have demonstrated the value of studying mortality in local contexts (Williams 1992;Garrett et al 2001Garrett et al , 2006Derosas 2002).…”

Decennial Life Tables for the White Population of the United States, 1790–1900

“…S. Meindl and A. C. Swedlund (1977), Gretchen A. Condran and Eileen Crimmins (1979, 1980), Eileen Crimmins (1980), Daniel Scott Smith (1982, 2003), Gretchen A. Condran and Rose A. Cheney (1982), Rose A. Cheney (1984), Stephen Kunitz (1984), Gretchen A. Condran (1987), Richard Steckel (1988), Barbara J. Logue (1991), Eric Leif Davin (1993), Alice Kasakoff and John Adams (1995; 2000), Joseph Ferrie (1996, 2003), Antonio McDaniel and Carlos Grushka (1995), J. David Hacker (1997), John E. Murray (1997, 2000), Chulhee Lee (1997, 2003), Susan I. Hautaniemi, Alan C. Swedlund and Douglas L. Anderton (1999), Douglas L. Anderton and Susan Hautaniemi Leonard (2004), and Jeffrey K. Beemer, Douglas L. Anderton and Susan Hautaniemi Leonard (2005).…”

Gleaning signals about the past from cemetery data

“…Such studies would be much more difficult to conduct and would probably be more error-prone if cemeteries were the focus since they would require sampling numerous individual cemeteries, each of which might face issues related to representativeness of the sample, preservation, etc. These latter issues can be important enough that, even when the scale of a study is small, if adequate vital statistics and other historical information are available, then that material is chosen for study rather than cemetery headstones (e.g., Meindl and Swedlund, 1977;Steckel, 1986;Swedlund, 1990;Hauteniemi et al, 1999;Beemer et al, 2005).…”