caa a22 4500 388017961 CHVBK 20180307124916.0 cr unu---uuuuu 161130e199801 xx s 000 0 eng 10.1086/386150 doi S002193710002116X pii (NATIONALLICENCE)cambridge-10.1086/386150 Lewis Judith "'Tis a Misfortune to Be a Great Ladie”: Maternal Mortality in the British Aristocracy, 1558-1959 [Elektronische Daten] [Judith Lewis] As long ago as 1981, the distinguished demographers E. A. Wrigley and R. S. Schofield threw out a challenge to historians. "A fully satisfactory interpretation of population history,” they offered, "must embrace a wide spectrum of related topics and techniques.” Such a history would "require an alertness for opportunities to quantify historical evidence and to make effective use of statistical techniques,” they continued, but it would be "equally alive to the importance of studying the attitudes of individuals and groups wherever possible. The family,” they concluded, "is the prime institutional form in population history, and the births, marriages and deaths of its members were affected by their behavioral conventions and beliefs as well as by their social and economic circumstances.” The British aristocracy is an ideal subject for such a multifaceted, family-oriented view of population history. Thanks to T. H. Hollingsworth and other demographers, the statistical record of their population history is probably better established than that of any other social group, while thanks to their own historical importance and privileged status, their domestic experiences are richly documented. Consequently, their social mores and personal attitudes can be identified along with their demographics. While we normally assume that privileged social groups are healthier and generally live longer than those more humble in station, commonplace expectations have for centuries been reversed when it comes to one component of population history—maternal mortality. Popular culture has insisted, at least since the time of Rousseau, that ladies of fashion paid for their pleasures by being feeble and overly delicate, too weak to withstand the rigors of childbirth. Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1998 The Journal of British Studies Cambridge University Press 37/1(1998-01), 26-53 0021-9371 37:1<26 1998 37 JBR https://doi.org/10.1086/386150 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1086/386150 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- Lewis Judith NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- The Journal of British Studies Cambridge University Press 37/1(1998-01), 26-53 0021-9371 37:1<26 1998 37 JBR CC0 http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0 nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-cambridge