ABSTRACT
Giuseppe Aleati bequeathed an important database of sex-differentiated baptismal tallies for the Lombard city of Pavia over a century and a half. While these are organised by calendar year, ignore the social class of parents and do not include some rural parishes in the jurisdiction, the results reflect some of the features found in Tuscany. A number of years display overall sex ratios at baptism that imply female infanticide at levels that are statistically significant. However, Pavia’s 23 parishes under review reflect an enduring disparity of sex ratios ranging about 20 percent from the most male to the most female. One can also suspect that there were too few twin baptisms relative to their natural occurrence.
