Population Growth 1750-1830 essays

Population Growth 1750-1830 essays In this essay we are going to consider the population growth from 1750-1830. The basis for the material is taken from the "Macmillan Series, Mastering Economic and Social History" written by David Taylor. In his book, Taylor gives several reasons as to why the population increased between 1750-1830. He argues that the practice of living-in disappeared, there was a decline in apprenticeships, and the speenhamland allowance encouraged large families. He also concluded that the general well-being of the people improved though diet. There's no one explanation as to why this happened, or one history. It may have been the fall in the death rate and the increase in the birth rate. Up to the nineteenth century no official census had taken place. In 1086 the Doomsday book placed the population at about 3.5 million. Attempts were made at counting the population in the seventeenth century by Gregory King a civil servant. Nevertheless, it proved unreliable and was more or less a guesstimate basing his figures on hearth-tax returns and parish records. Taylor states concerning Gregory Kip^i M(ie estimated the number of people living in a house and gradually built up a cumulative total of people of the whole country - the figure he arrived at was 5.2 million". The first official census was taken in 1801 and has been conducted every ten years apart from 1941. The population was low before 1750 owing to a number of factors. "Between 1520 and the end of the seventeenth century the population of England and Wales seemed to have risen from about 2.5 million to about 5.2 million. This contrasts with the fact that the population had risen hardly at all since the Black Deat h, and from 1650 to 1750 it rose only by a further million. Interrupted by bad harvests, with or with out outbreaks of plague, influenza, smallpox and dysentery in 1550s, 1580s, 1590, and 1630s". (A new History of England 410-1975) The bubonic plague of 1665 also took its toll on the po...