The people of Newcastle : a demographic history, 1780-1914

This chapter, the first detailed study on the subject, considers demographic trends in Newcastle in the context of national debates on demographic change in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The study emphasises the role of regional and local welfare changes in housing and public health,in relation to the dynamics of demography. The article highlights the significance of demographic trends, particularly in the late nineteenth century, in creating a distinctive urban-industrial culture, which ultimately had dramatic ramifications in the subsequent period. However, an important thread running throughout the study is the significance of intra-urban variations in most of the demographic variables examined, and the consequent variations in life chances and experience for different segments of Newcastle’s population. The study is based upon detailed original analysis of sampled census enumeration district data for Newcastle for 1851 and 1891, and the Annual Reports of the Registrar General, together with supplementary data from sources such as the Medical Officer’s Annual Report Series. It is an invited contribution to the first major history of the city of Newcastle to be published in fifty years. This, together with Barke’s other submitted outputs, emanates from an on-going research focus on the dynamics of demographic change and their spatial variations in the North East of England. Barke’s research strategy is to contextualise detailed local studies within their broader regional and national context.