ABSTRACT
The dominant nineteenth century trends were urbanization and growth, and after mid-century increasingly extensive rural depopulation (2.5-6). The late eighteenthand early nineteenth-century parish register data suggest substantial regional variations in fertility and mortality (Lawton, 1977). Natural increase (births minus deaths) was high in many rural areas but greatest in the industrializing regions, despite high mortality in large towns where deaths often exceeded births until the early nineteenth century. By the mid-nineteenth century systematic civil registration from 1837 and 1855 and the fuller censuses from 1841 permit a more accurate analysis of the components of population change. Under-registration was still a problem. For England it was 9.4 per cent in 1840-5 and 2.4 per cent in 1860-4 (Glass, 1973).
