̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - population

Cambridge experts bust myths about family, sex, marriage and work in English history

ta385 — Wed, 10 Jul 2024 23:01:00 +0000

Sex before marriage was unusual in the past – Myth! In some periods, over half of all brides were already pregnant when they got married.

̽��ֱ��rich have always outlived the poor –Myth! Before the 20th century the evidence for a survival advantage of wealth is mixed. In England, babies of agricultural labourers (the poorest workers) had a better chance of reaching their first birthday than infants in wealthy families, and life expectancy was no higher for aristocrats than for the rest of the population. These patterns contrast strongly with national and international patterns today, where wealth confers a clear survival advantage everywhere and at all ages.

In the past people (particularly women) married in their teens – Myth! In reality, women married in their mid-20s, men around 2.5 years older. Apart from a few decades in the early 1800s, the only time since 1550 that the average age of first marriage for women fell below 24 was during the baby boom of the 1950s and 1960s.

These are just some of the stubborn myths busted by researchers from ̽��ֱ��Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure (Campop). Their Top of the CamPops blog (www.campop.geog.cam.ac.uk/blog) went live on 11 July 2024, with new posts being added every week. ̽��ֱ��blog will reveal ‘60 things you didn't know about family, marriage, work, and death since the middle ages’.

̽��ֱ��initiative marks the influential research group’s 60th anniversary. Founded in 1964 by Peter Laslett and Tony Wrigley to conduct data-driven research into family and demographic history, Campop has contributed to hundreds of research articles and books, and made the history of England’s population the best understood in the world.

Earlier this year, the group made headlines when Professor Leigh Shaw-Taylor revealed that the Industrial Revolution in Britain started 100 years earlier than traditionally assumed.

Professor Alice Reid, Director of Campop and a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge, said: “Assumptions about lives, families and work in the past continue to influence attitudes today. But many of these are myths. Over the last 60 years, our researchers have gone through huge amounts of data to set the record straight. This blog shares some of our most surprising and important discoveries for a broad audience.”

Myth: Until the 20th century, few people lived beyond the age of 40. Reality: Actually, people who survived the first year or two of life had a reasonable chance of living until 70.

Myth: Childbirth was really dangerous for women in the past, and carried a high chance of death. Reality: ̽��ֱ��risk of death during or following childbirth was certainly higher than it is now, but was far lower than many people suppose.

Myth: Families in the past generally lived in extended, multigenerational households. Reality: Young couples generally formed a new household on marriage, reducing the prevalence of multi-generational households. As today, the living circumstances of old people varied. Many continued to live as couples or on their own, some lived with their children, whilst very few lived in institutions.

Myth: Marital titles for women arose from men’s desire to distinguish available women from those who were already ‘owned’. Reality: Both ‘miss’ and ‘mrs’ are shortened forms of ‘mistress’, which was a status designation indicating a gentlewoman or employer. Mrs had no necessary connection to marriage until circa 1900 (and even then, there was an exception for upper servants).

Myth: Famine and starvation were common in the past. Reality: Not in England! Here, the poor laws and a ‘low pressure’ demographic system provided a safety net. This helps to explain why hunger and famine are absent from English fairy tales but common in the folklore of most European societies.

Myth: Women working (outside the home) is a late 20th century phenomenon. Reality: Most women in the past engaged in gainful employment, both before and after marriage

Myth: Women take their husbands’ surnames because of patriarchal norms. Reality: ̽��ֱ��practice of taking a husband’s surname developed in England from the peculiarly restrictive rule of ‘coverture’ in marital property. Elsewhere in Europe, where the husband managed the wife’s property but did not own it, women retained their birth names until circa 1900.

Myth: People rarely moved far from their place of birth in the past. Reality: Migration was actually quite common – a village population could change more than half its members from one decade to the next. Rural to urban migration enabled the growth of cities, and since people migrated almost exclusively to find work, the sex ratio of cities can indicate what kind of work was available.

Campop’s Professor Amy Erickson said: “People, not least politicians, often refer to history to nudge us to do something, or stop doing something. Not all of this history is accurate, and repeating myths about sex, marriage, family and work can be quite harmful. They can put unfair pressure on people, create guilt and raise false expectations, while also misrepresenting the lives of our ancestors.”

On World Population Day, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge researchers bust some of the biggest myths about life in England since the Middle Ages, challenging assumptions about everything from sex before marriage to migration and the health/wealth gap.

Assumptions about lives, families and work in the past continue to influence attitudes today. But many of these are myths.

Alice Reid

Black and white photograph of a family lined up against a wall in E W Hope, Report on the physical welfare of mothers and children (Liverpool, ̽��ֱ��Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, 1917), volume 1

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

Mind Over Chatter: ̽��ֱ��future of reproduction

ns480 — Thu, 27 May 2021 12:41:58 +0000

Season 2, episode 6

Our reproductive capabilities are changing in exciting ways, altering our fundamental understanding of fertility, reproduction, and even parenthood.

In this episode of Mind Over Chatter, we ask our guests what the consequences of novel reproductive technologies are likely to be, and how they will impact the future of human reproduction.

Subscribe to Mind Over Chatter

We cover topics ranging from egg-freezing, so-called ‘three-parent-babies, and the importance of studying the embryonic development of primates.

Historical demographer, Dr Alice Reid, who researches fertility, mortality and health in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, tells us how reproduction has changed over the last 200 years and how it has been influenced by improvements in gender equality, as well as discussing the likely demographic impact of assisted reproduction.

Dr Lucy Van de Wiel, whose research focuses on the social and cultural analysis of assisted reproductive technologies such as egg freezing, introduces the important ways in which reproductive technologies must be considered in the context of wide social and political issues.

Finally, Dr Thorsten Boroviak shares his cutting-edge research on developing new reproductive technologies – the ability to generate your own egg or sperm from any cell of your body – and the importance of studying the embryonic development of primates.

Key points:

[2:10]- change of human reproduction over the last 200 years

[5:45]- egg freezing and changing meaning of what it means to be ‘fertile’

[12:05]- higher levels of gender equity can produce higher levels of fertility

[23:19]- generating eggs and sperms from any human cell

[24:02]- can a man produce an egg?

[40:37]- when should one freeze their eggs?

[64:54]- reproductive justice and reproductive equity. Ensuring reproductive autonomy while ensuring non-exploitation

[65:59]- Final question: what is the most exciting thing that will happen to humankind in the future?

Mind Over Chatter: ̽��ֱ��Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Podcast

Year 8 students work with Cambridge researchers to help their peers learn about the census

sc604 — Thu, 13 May 2021 14:33:38 +0000

Researchers from Cambridge’s Department of Geography and Year 8 students in Wales have worked together to produce a series of learning resources based on census data, showing how the country has changed over time.

̽��ֱ��materials, including worksheets and a series of podcasts, are freely available for teachers to incorporate into their lessons.

Year 8 students from Radyr Comprehensive School and Pontarddulais Comprehensive School in Cardiff worked with Dr Alice Reid and colleagues from Cambridge, Leicester and Edinburgh Universities, to co-produce a learning resource about exploring the census in the past and present. They explored the Populations Past and Data Shine websites to discover facts about their local area and compared them with other parts of England and Wales.

After exploring the websites, the students drew up a set of interview questions to ask experts on historical and recent censuses, including the former National Statistician, Dame Jil Matheson. These interviews were recorded as podcasts.

̽��ֱ��collaboration is part of the ‘Engaging the Public in Census 2021 project’, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), part of UK Research and Innovation. This project teaches students about the relevance of the census and provides insight into being a data-driven social scientist.

“ ̽��ֱ��students were really responsive and thoughtful,” said Reid. “We had originally thought they would be most interested in their local areas, and while some of them were, they all seemed fascinated by the comparative aspects, both over time and between places, and they easily grasped the idea of letting the patterns in the data guide them to interesting questions which we could then explore with them.”

Students were particularly interested in what life was like for children their age in other eras. Today young people have to stay in full-time education until they are 18, but in the middle of the nineteenth century, school was not compulsory. ̽��ֱ��first Education Act in 1870 established local school boards which could build and manage schools, and the 1880 Education Act made school compulsory between the ages of 5 and 10 years. However, the continued need to pay fees until 1891 meant that not all children could afford to attend school. Children not at school may have been earning money or doing housework at home.

Imogen, one of the students who took part, said, “I find it interesting how children aren't allowed to work the same jobs now as kids did in 1861 and 1911. Did the government think that it was ok to let children work?”

Lewys, another student, said: “I find this information interesting because it shows a clear link between history and data, and how it affects people’s lives.”

One of the teachers involved in the project said: “An important part of the new curriculum in Wales is to embed the history of the local area into our study. It also combines History, Geography and RE as an all-around humanities subject. This project was the perfect combination of Geography and History and we will definitely be building the data into our curriculum in the future.”

“We were keen to work with Key Stage 3 students on this project in order to demonstrate the power and relevance of the social sciences,” said Reid. “ ̽��ֱ��process of creating the material in collaboration with students inspired us to interrogate and explore our data in different ways which we are planning to build into our research programme.”

“I think it was really important to work with students on the project to gain insight into what they found most interesting about the census and to develop learning resources that were student-centred and responded to their needs and interests,” said Sophy Arulanantham from the Department of Geography. “This will help inform our work with schools and the development of further resources in future.”

Initial findings from the 2021 Census, which took place in March, are expected in March 2022, with a final release due in March 2023.

Year 8 students work with Cambridge researchers to help their peers learn about the census.

I find this information interesting because it shows a clear link between history and data, and how it affects people’s lives

Lewys, Year 8 student

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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"Reproduction matters to us all": latest issue of Horizons magazine

lw355 — Fri, 20 Nov 2020 11:26:45 +0000

Professor Kathy Niakan talks about why it’s vital to take a multidisciplined approach to understanding the urgent challenges posed by reproduction today – and introduces our Spotlight on some of this work, highlighted in the latest issue of Cambridge's Horizons magazine.

̽��ֱ��man we love to hate: it’s time to reappraise Thomas Robert Malthus

amb206 — Wed, 18 May 2016 08:00:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��controversial theorist Thomas Robert Malthus did not much enjoy travelling. Invited by his friend and fellow political economist, David Ricardo, to stay at the country house of Gatcombe Park in Gloucestershire, he declared that “that part of the world” was simply too far from his home near London, and wrote that he’d resolved “not to make distant excursions more than once a year”.

Now new research confirms that Malthus travelled vicariously all over the world, immersed in the accounts of voyages to the new lands being explored and colonised by Europeans. Malthus’s journeying through the medium of print to far-flung shores in the Americas and Pacific informed the theories on human development, population, and land use (and the precarious balance among them) for which he quickly became famous.

Professors Alison Bashford (Cambridge, Jesus College) and Joyce E Chaplin (Harvard) explore this under-researched aspect of Malthus’s life and works. ̽��ֱ��New Worlds of Thomas Robert Malthus reveals that the contentious theorist raised profound and prescient questions about the nature of people worldwide – and, in particular, about the collision of interests that resulted when white settlers claimed territories inhabited by indigenous communities.

̽��ֱ��New Worlds of Thomas Robert Malthus radically re-casts the famous economist’s ideas from a British and European context, to a world and imperial one. ̽��ֱ��book is already hailed, by scholars on both sides of the Atlantic, as a stunningly distinctive contribution to interpretations of Malthus. One scholar calls it “the most important new reading of the life and work of Malthus in a generation”.

̽��ֱ��seventh child in a well-off family, Malthus was born 250 years ago on 13 February 1766. His father’s social circle included some of the best-known philosophers of the time, including David Hume and Jean Jacques Rousseau. Like many younger sons of the gentry, Malthus took orders in the Church of England and, after an education at Jesus College, Cambridge, became a curate who corresponded widely. He began to publish pamphlets on topical issues in the stormy last decade of the 18th century.

Though cast as ‘parson Malthus’, for most of his life he was in fact a professor of political economy at the East India Company College in Haileybury. Bashford explains: “This put him at the centre of the imperial world, for several generations educating young men for service as Company clerks in India.”

Malthus is best known for his Essay on the Principle of Population, which first appeared in 1798. In the thesis, both respected and vilified for the past 200 years, he argued that while population multiplies exponentially, food supplies increase only arithmetically. ̽��ֱ��oscillating mismatch between the two would spell disaster when ‘checked’ by nature through famine or disease, or by humans through war or infanticide.

̽��ֱ��most troubling aspect of Malthus’s essay is his interpretation of poverty. While a generation of utopians was imagining a brighter and better future for all, Malthus proposed a much bleaker picture. Some poverty, he argued, was inevitable. As population increased when times were good, so the poorest would perish when times were bad. Disease and famine served as natural checks to over-population. These uncompromising views led Malthus to be much disliked or even hated.

Yet Malthus also thought the number of people on that poverty line could and should be reduced. “Despite assertions that Malthus blamed only the poor for producing too many children, for being the problem, he was in fact at least equally critical of the behaviour of the privileged,” Chaplin points out. “He argued that when the rich had large families, the poor disproportionately suffered any material shortages, therefore wealthier people were morally obliged to produce fewer children.”

Historians have consistently set Malthus within a European context. But Bashford and Chaplin show that his Essay was about the Atlantic and Pacific new worlds as well. It was written within the tradition of ‘stadial’ theories of economic development; these ‘universal histories’ sought to understand all cultures in all places and times. Using Jesuit travel accounts, 18th-century journals of Pacific voyagers, and the writings of new world settlers, Malthus wrote a world history.

Bashford and Chaplin initially approached Malthus from different chronological perspectives. Chaplin had written extensively about English interpretations of colonisation and population, also on Benjamin Franklin’s influential population thesis, which was a key inspiration for Malthus. Meanwhile, Bashford had examined modern theories of population and of 20th-century Malthusianism. They began to talk about population, and Malthus, while Bashford was a visiting professor at Harvard ̽��ֱ��.

“Several years ago, I opened the 1803 edition of Malthus’s Essay and was entirely surprised to see the name Bennelong,” explains Bashford. “Well known to Australian historians, Bennelong was an Aboriginal leader in the earliest years of British colony of New South Wales, a cultural interlocutor who spent several years in London in the 1790s. But what was he doing in Malthus’s famous Essay?” ̽��ֱ��need to re-interpret Malthus’s work in the light of colonial and imperial history was clear.

Chaplin then discovered that Franklin’s and Malthus’s works on population had been produced by the same London publisher. “That seemed more than coincidental,” Chaplin says. “Together, the two authors — American and British — and their two books show that new world colonies and the imperial centre were neither topically distant or theoretically distinct.”

Many of the books Malthus used to research and write his world history are in the Old Library at Jesus College. ̽��ֱ��Malthus Collection includes volumes that belonged to his father, his brother, his learned cousin, Jane Dalton, and Malthus himself. Among them are copies of Benjamin Franklin’s essays, Cook’s journals from the South Sea, and Jesuit accounts of New France and New Spain – all owned by Malthus.

Bashford and Chaplin’s research reveals that, as white settlers began to claim new territories, Malthus occasionally questioned the morality of colonisation, very unusual for his time, and almost unique among his political economy contemporaries. As early as 1803, he anticipated and deplored the fate he foresaw awaiting the inhabitants of the new world as settler populations increasingly claimed lands that seemed to offer almost limitless resources.

Anticipating formal policies for the removal of indigenous people in North America and Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania), he wrote: “ ̽��ֱ��right of exterminating, or driving into a corner where they must starve, even the inhabitants of these thinly populated regions, will be questioned in a moral view.”

̽��ֱ��New Worlds of Thomas Robert Malthus also explains Malthus’s views on the slave trade. His Essay, written and rewritten between 1798 and 1830, coincided with the height of the abolitionist campaigns, first against the slave trade and then against slavery. He asked William Wilberforce to inform the House of Commons that he was against the slave trade, in large part because quite a few slave traders were using his Principle of Population in their own defence.

“Yet Malthus spoke out against the slave trade somewhat reluctantly,” argue Bashford and Chaplin, “and he never spoke out against slavery itself.” This diffidence is evident in his famous books, analysed in terms of slavery and abolition, for the first time. While it was common at the time to consider slavery in terms of reproduction and population, ̽��ֱ��New Worlds of Thomas Robert Malthus explains why and how Malthus sidestepped the issue.

̽��ֱ��New Worlds of Thomas Robert Malthus analyses, for the first time, the reception history of the work in the very places Malthus examined. He was read and discussed in new world sites that ran from Lexington in Kentucky to Hobart in Tasmania. So eager were new world people to read him that his text appeared in a pirated edition produced in the United States. His ideas entered public discourse: settler populations, for example, debated his key statement that they should neither exterminate nor drive into ‘a corner’ indigenous populations.

Malthus was bolder than many of his European and American contemporaries and, in terms of continuing arguments over the rights of different global populations, his text remains deeply resonant today.

̽��ֱ��New Worlds of Thomas Robert Malthus is published by Princeton ̽��ֱ�� Press.

Thomas Robert Malthus, who was born 250 years ago, became notorious for his ‘principle of population’. He argued that, because poverty was inevitable, some people would not find a seat at ‘nature’s table’ and would perish. In a new book, historians at Cambridge and Harvard set the life and work of this contentious thinker within a wider context – and look in particular at his engagement with the world beyond Europe.

As early as 1803, Malthus anticipated and deplored the fate he foresaw awaiting the inhabitants of the new world as settler populations increasingly claimed lands that seemed to offer almost limitless resources.

Draft3

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Mistress, Miss, Mrs or Ms: untangling the shifting history of titles

amb206 — Mon, 06 Oct 2014 07:00:00 +0000

In July composer Judith Weir was named as the first woman to hold the post of Master of the Queen’s Music, following in the footsteps of dozens of eminent male musicians with the same title. ̽��ֱ��Guardian reported that 'the palace never even suggested "mistress" of the Queen's music and neither did she'.

When the role Master of the King’s Music was created in 1626, the words master and mistress were direct equivalents. Today mistress carries multiple connotations, one of which the Daily Mail alluded to in a headline before the announcement asking if Weir might be the Queen’s first Music Mistress.

Research by Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� historian Dr Amy Erickson, published in the autumn issue of History Workshop Journal, unravels the complex history of an extraordinarily slippery word and suggests that the title of Mrs, pronounced ‘mistress’, was for centuries applied to all adult women of higher social status, whether married or not.

Erickson’s inquiries into forms of female address emerged from her study of women’s employment before the advent of the national census in 1801. What she found in registers, records and archives led her to question existing assumptions and track the changes that have taken place in the history of titles.

She says: “Few people realise that ‘Mistress’ is the root word of both of the abbreviations ‘Mrs’ and ‘Miss’, just as Mr is an abbreviation of ‘Master’. ̽��ֱ��ways that words derived from Mistress have developed their own meanings is quite fascinating and shifts in these meanings can tell us a lot about the changing status of women in society, at home and in the workplace.”

Throughout history ‘mistress’ was a term with a multiplicity of meanings, like so many forms of female address. In his Dictionary of 1755, Samuel Johnson defined mistress as: '1. A woman who governs; correlative to subject or servant; 2 A woman skilled in anything; 3. A woman teacher; 4. A woman beloved and courted; 5. A term of contemptuous address; 6. A whore or concubine.'

Neither ‘mistress’ nor ‘Mrs’ bore any marital connotation whatsoever for Dr Johnson. When in 1784 he wrote about having dinner with his friends “Mrs Carter, Miss Hannah More and Miss Fanny Burney”, all three women were unmarried. Elizabeth Carter, a distinguished scholar and lifelong friend of Johnson’s, was his own age and was invariably known as Mrs Carter; Hannah More and Fanny Burney were much younger and used the new style Miss.

Erickson’s investigations have revealed that ‘Miss’ was adopted by adult women for the first time in the middle of the 18th century. Before that, Miss was only used for girls, in the way that Master is only ever (today increasingly rarely) used for boys. To refer to an adult woman as a ‘Miss’ was to imply she was a prostitute.

She explains: “Until the 19th century, most women did not have any prefix before their name. Mrs and, later, Miss were both restricted to those of higher social standing. Women on the bottom rungs of the social scale were addressed simply by their names. Thus, in a large household the housekeeper might be Mrs Green, while the scullery maid was simply Molly and the woman who came in to do the laundry was Tom Black's wife or Betty Black.

“Historians have long known that Mrs indicated social status, but they normally assume it also shows that the woman was married. So they have wrongly concluded that women like Johnson's friend Elizabeth Carter were addressed as Mrs as an acknowledgement of distinction, to grant them the same status as a married woman.”

Erickson suggests that this interpretation is mistaken: “Mrs was the exact equivalent of Mr. Either term described a person who governed servants or apprentices, in Johnson's terms – we might say a person with capital. Once we adopt Johnson's understanding of the term (which was how it was used in the 18th century), it becomes clear that ‘Mrs’ was more likely to indicate a businesswoman than a married woman. So the women who took membership of the London Companies in the 18th century, all of whom were single and many of whom were involved in luxury trades, were invariably known as ‘Mrs’, as the men were ‘Mr’. Literally, they were masters and mistresses of their trades.”

Historians have often misidentified women as married because they were addressed as ‘Mrs’ – when they were actually single. “It's easy enough to identify the marital status of a prominent woman, or those taking the Freedom of the City of London (since they had to be single),” says Erickson. “But it’s much harder to identify whether those women described as Mrs in a parish listing of households were ever married - especially the ones with common names like Joan Smith.”

A 1698 tax list from Shrewsbury lists from the top: William Prince Esqr Mm [Madam] Elizabeth Prince Wdd [widow] Mm Mary Prince Wdd Ms [mistress] Mary her daughter Mm Judeth Prince Mr Philip Wingfield Bat [baronet] Ms Gertrude Wingfield [who is either the wife or the daughter of Mr Wingfield above] followed by a number of women below with only a first and last name. This example shows that not all women had a title in front of their name, and demonstrates the use of Ms for an unmarried women (Mary Prince) and for a woman whose marital status is unclear (Gertrude Wingfield). Madam appears to be used here as the title for married/widowed women of social standing.

Erickson’s research into the 1793 parish listing for the Essex market town of Bocking shows that 25 heads of household were described as Mrs. She says: “Female household heads were by definition either single or widowed and, if Bocking was typical of other communities, around half of them would have been widows, and the other half single. But two thirds of these women in Bocking were specified as farmers or business proprietors. So Mrs is more reliably being used to identify women with capital, than to identify marital status. Only one woman was Miss: the schoolmistress.”

It seems that it was not society’s desire to mark either a woman’s availability for marriage (in the case of ‘Miss’), or to mark the socially superior status of marriage (‘Mrs’) which led to the use of titles to distinguish female marital status. Rather, socially ambitious young single women used ‘Miss’ as a means to identify their gentility, as distinct from the mere businesswoman or upper servant.

This trend was probably fuelled by the novels of the 1740s such as those by Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding and Sarah Fielding, which featured young gentry Misses and upper (single) servants titled Mrs. ̽��ֱ��boundaries between the old and new styles are blurred, but Mrs did not definitively signify a married woman until around 1900.

In the course of her research, Erickson has also looked at the way in which from the early 19th century married women acquired their husband’s full name – as in Mrs John Dashwood (Jane Austen’s Sense & Sensibility, 1811). Austen used this technique to establish seniority among women who shared the same surname. England in the early 19th century was the only place in Europe where a woman took her husband's surname

To many women in the late 20th century, the practice of replacing her first name by his first name added insult to injury. That's why this form of address was satirised as “Mrs Man", and why it has dropped out of use in all but the most socially conservative circles – except of course where a couple are addressed jointly. ̽��ֱ��introduction of Ms as a neutral alternative to 'Miss' or 'Mrs', and the direct equivalent of 'Mr', was proposed as early as 1901.

“’Those who objected to ‘Miss’ and ‘Mrs’ argue that they define a woman by which man she belongs to. If a woman is ‘Miss’, it is her father; if she is addressed as ‘Mrs’, she belongs to her husband,” says Erickson. “It’s curious that the use of Ms is often criticised today as not 'standing for' anything. In fact, it has an impeccable historical pedigree since it was one of several abbreviations for Mistress in the 17th and 18th centuries, and effectively represents a return to the state which prevailed for some 300 years with the use of Mrs for adult women – only now it applies to everyone and not just the social elite.”

̽��ֱ��question of which titles are appropriate for which women is likely to remain hotly contested. In 2012 the mayor of Cesson-Sevigne, a town in France, banned the use of ‘mademoiselle’ (the French equivalent of ‘Miss’), in favour of 'madame' (the equivalent of ‘Mrs’), which would be applied to all women, whether married or not, and regardless of age. ̽��ֱ��proposal has not met with universal favour. Some women protested that calling an adult woman ‘mademoiselle’ was a compliment.

Dr Amy Erickson's paper, ‘Mistresses and Marriage’, is published in the autumn 2014 issue of History Workshop Journal.

In a paper published in the autumn 2014 issue of History Workshop Journal Dr Amy Erickson unravels the fascinating history of the titles used to address women. Her research reveals the subtle and surprising shifts that have taken place in the usage of those ubiquitous M-words.

‘Mistress’ is the root word of both of the abbreviations ‘Mrs’ and ‘Miss’, just as Mr is an abbreviation of ‘Master’. ̽��ֱ��ways that words derived from Mistress have developed their own meanings is fascinating and shifts in these meanings can tell us a lot about the changing status of women."

Amy Erickson

Shropshire Record Office

1698 tax list from Shrewsbury

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. If you use this content on your site please link back to this page. For image rights, please see the credits associated with each individual image.

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‘Light skin’ gene mirrors socio-cultural boundaries in Indian population

fpjl2 — Wed, 13 Nov 2013 10:43:27 +0000

̽��ֱ��genetic mutation in SLC24A5 is known to be pivotal in the evolution of light skin, and is responsible for a significant part of the skin colour differences between Europeans and Africans.

Now, a new study has examined for the first time a large, uniform genetic sample collected directly in south India, and suggests that natural selection is not the sole factor in skin tone variation across the Indian sub-continent, and that cultural and linguistic traits still delineate this skin pigment genetic mutation.

̽��ֱ��results show that the gene is found with much higher frequency in Indo-European speaking groups that are more prevalent in the north-west of the country.

But the mutation is also high in populations groups known to have migrated north to south, such as the Saurashtrians, who - while native to Gujarat in north-west India - are now predominantly found in the Madurai district in its southernmost tip.

Researchers say that the study, published last week in the journal PLoS Genetics, shows that the genetic mutation in SLC24A5 has a common origin between Europeans and Indians.

But while the complete dominance of the gene in Europeans is likely to be solely down to natural selection, they say, the rich diversity of this genetic variant in India - high in some populations while non-existent in others, even neighbouring ones - has some correlation with factors of language, ancestral migration and distinct social practices such as limiting marriage partners to those with specific criteria.

̽��ֱ��researchers say the findings display an “intriguing interplay” between natural selection and the “unique history and structure” of populations inhabiting the Indian subcontinent.

“In India, this genetic variant doesn’t just follow a ‘classical’ theory of natural selection - that it’s lower in the south where darker skin protects against fiercer sunlight,” said study co-author Mircea Iliescu from Cambridge’s Biological Anthropology Division.

“ ̽��ֱ��distribution of the SLC24A5 genetic variant in India follows patterns very much influenced by population. Understanding the genetic architecture behind the remarkable skin colour variation found today in the populations of India has the potential to shed light on the wider mechanisms responsible for creating diversity throughout human evolution,” Iliescu said.

In the 1950s it was proposed that there was a massive wave of European migration into northern India a few thousand years ago, described as the ‘Aryan invasion’, which led to the collapse of the Harrapan Civilisation - a Bronze-Age Civilisation.

This theory, now considered widely discredited by many researchers due to the lack of archaeological evidence, is still a hugely debated issue in contemporary Indian politics - invoked by political parties in the southern states of India who claim that the southern populations, described by some as the ‘Dravidians’, are the truly indigenous people of India.

̽��ֱ��researchers say that, while speculative, they find it “hard to imagine” a large-scale population migration at a single point in history based on this study – since the presence of this genetic mutation is too widespread, with an average frequency of 53%, including the Austroasiatic language groups thought to have originated in southeast Asia.

They say the wide variation and complex pattern hints at the possibility of multiple “gene flows” into the sub-continent over a much longer period of time, some of which might be linked to the spread of agriculture; although the study does show higher frequencies of SLC24A5 in Indo-European speaking groups compared to so-called Dravidian populations.

̽��ֱ��researchers suggest that aspects of ‘social selection’, such as high levels of ‘endogamy’ - marriage within a particular group in accordance with custom - as a result of the caste system, has created a “mosaic pattern” for this skin pigmentation mutation across Indian populations.

“This study helps us to understand various other mechanisms that could have contributed or shaped the existing biological spectrum of human skin colour besides natural selection - driven by ultraviolet rays - and further understanding of this complex phenotypic trait,” said Chandana Basu Mallick, a co-author on the study from the ̽��ֱ�� of Tartu in Estonia.

“We are taking gradual steps towards understanding the evolutionary history of this adaptive trait, and the journey of our ancestors from fur to the diverse skin tones of the present day.”

“Our work addresses human diversity, diversity which should be celebrated,” added Iliescu. “It tries to explain the origins and history of this diversity - opening up a window into a different kind of history, not just a history of places and objects, but a living history which helps us to better understand ourselves.”

“Studies on Indian populations have been under-represented in the genomic era, and the understanding of Indian genetics is still at a very early stage. With this study, we hope we’ve brought valuable new understanding to the evolutionary genetics of Indian populations.”

Latest research shows that the presence of the genetic mutation for lighter skin - found in “almost 100%” of Europeans - broadly conforms to many cultural and linguistic differences, as well as ancestral, in the wider Indian population.

In India, this genetic variant doesn’t just follow a ‘classical’ theory of natural selection

Mircea Iliescu

Prasanth Chandran

“Where you are going is more important than how fast you are going”

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Meals for one: how eating alone affects the health of the elderly

amb206 — Sat, 19 Oct 2013 07:00:00 +0000

Yesterday Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt drew attention to the plight of 800,000 elderly and lonely people in England who are “invisible” to those with busy lives. Citing research from the Campaign to End Loneliness, Mr Hunt said that television was the main form of company for some 5 million people – and this should be a source of “national shame”.

As a researcher in Social Epidemiology, I am particularly interested in the connection between people’s social relationships, or lack of contact with friends and family, and their diet – and the impact that combinations of these factors have on older people’s health.

In the next two decades there will be a 45% increase in the number of over-65s and a more than seven-fold increase in the number of people aged 100 or over. While life expectancy is rising, however, so too is the time spent living with chronic illness. Nutrition plays a key role in healthy ageing just as it does at earlier stages of life. In the UK, it is estimated that around 70,000 avoidable deaths are caused by diets that fall short of current guidelines on healthy eating.

Back in 1993 EPIC-Norfolk recruited around 25,000 people aged 40 to 80 to take part in a Europe-wide study of health. For 20 years it has been following their diet and other lifestyle factors in relation to the onset of chronic diseases such as cancer or diabetes. Previous research drawing on data gathered by the study has shown that individuals who consumed extra vegetables or vegetable-based items per week had a 13% lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

People’s diet is not fixed: it changes over time. Furthermore, the ability to eat healthily is influenced by a person’s social environment – including factors such as marriage, cohabitation, friendship and general social interaction. As people age, they are less likely to eat well – and when older people are living alone their diet often suffers.

As the Campaign to End Loneliness has quite rightly brought to the nation’s attention, isolation is a growing social phenomenon – and one that affects health as well as emotional well-being. According to research cited by the Campaign, loneliness has a negative health impact equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day and is worse for us than well-known risk factors such as alcohol obesity and physical inactivity.

Around half of those people aged 75 or over now live alone. Not surprisingly, solitude has an impact on the health and eating patterns of this elderly population. Along with men and those who are socially isolated, those who live alone are the group eating a diet with least variety.

On a more optimistic note, these findings suggest that improving people’s social ties can have a positive impact on health. As one of the researchers contributing to this CEDAR study, I have been using data from EPIC-Norfolk to look at the combined influences of multiple social ties in relation to the daily variety of fruits and vegetables eaten, regardless of quantity.

Our research adds new evidence to the understanding of how a combination of factors in older people’s social lives come together to affect their diet – and, thus, their health. ̽��ֱ��results confirm, for instance, that the marital/relationship status of older people has a marked impact on the quality of their diet.

Compared with older adults in a partnership, those over-50s who were single ate 2.3 fewer vegetable products daily. Those who were widowed ate 1.1 fewer vegetable products daily. Moreover, widows and widowers living alone consumed 1.3 fewer vegetable products than married lone-dwellers. By contrast, widowers and widowers living with someone else ate the same number of different vegetable products each day as over-50s who were in a partnership and also sharing their living arrangement.

̽��ֱ��picture to emerge from these figures is significant: it is not widowhood alone that puts people at risk of a lower quality of diet but, rather, the combination of widowhood and living alone.

In terms of implications for policy, our research points to the need for interventions that increase the availability of various social relationships which, among other benefits, encourage a healthy diet. Such interventions might range from the organisation of social activities to a consideration of accommodation for the elderly that is designed to support social interaction.

An important factor to take into account is that the over-50s are more likely than any other group in the population to experience changes in their social relationships – for example, due to marital break-down or bereavement. These are key moments for assessment and intervention. For example, around the time of widowhood, an assessment of risk of unhealthy eating needs to consider gender, living arrangements, and contact with friends as part and parcel of a major life adjustment.

As the Campaign to End Loneliness argues, and Jeremy Hunt has underlined, social isolation and initiatives to combat it should be right at the top of the health policy agenda.

Annalijn Conklin is a Gates Scholar and a PhD candidate in Medical Sciences at the MRC Epidemiology Unit. Her research focuses on the collective of social and economic factors influencing diet and obesity in British older women and men. Annalijn did her undergraduate degree in Biology and Philosophy at the ̽��ֱ�� of Toronto, Canada, her first Master’s in Life Sciences at the ̽��ֱ�� of Edinburgh, and her second Master’s in Public Health at Columbia ̽��ֱ�� in New York.

For more information about this story contact Alex Buxton, Office of Communications, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, amb206@admin.cam.ac.uk 01223 761673

EPIC-Norfolk, a long-term study of health and ageing that recently celebrated its 20th birthday, provides researchers with a wealth of data. Annalijn Conklin, a PhD candidate in the Centre for Diet and Activity Research (CEDAR), discusses what we can learn from the study about the impact of isolation, and a drop in quality of diet, on the older population.

Compared with older adults in a partnership, those over-50s who were single ate 2.3 fewer vegetable products daily.

Annalijn Conklin

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Cookery class - March 2009

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