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CHAPTER FOUR: MATERIALS AND METHODS
Introduction
This chapter is divided into two main sections, materials and methods. First, context and information is provided for the skeletal samples used in this research. It begins with an overview of London during the Industrial revolution, as this very much sets the scene for the lives of individuals used in this investigation. The individual cemetery samples are then described, including socioeconomic status and other useful information from previous skeletal analyses that might help contextualise the differing environments in which these individuals lived.
The second section of this chapter deals with methods used to record dental and skeletal data, but also details data gathered form parish burial records used to supplement skeletal information. Methods for recording dental and skeletal stress indicators pertaining to childhood health experiences are explained first, followed by skeletal lesions associated with adulthood morbidity. Following this, techniques and approaches used to establish age at death and sex for the skeletal samples are explained, along with their distribution. The collection of data from parish burial records is then described, which includes information on mortality for all age groups. Lastly, an overview of statistical approaches and tests used, including survival and risk analysis, are then briefly outlined.
Materials and context
London and the Industrial Revolution: Social and health aspects
Considering the temporal context in which people lived is vital to understanding the type of health risks they may have experienced, including how homogeneous these hazards might have been. The skeletal material used in this research are the remains of individuals who lived in London between 1673 and 1852. This means they lived and died during an age of immense social change driven by the Industrial Revolution – a period characterised by increasing urbanisation, migration, and growing disparities in wealth.
For at least the last thousand years, London has been a magnet to migrants – from rural Britain and abroad. Positioned on the upper tidal reaches of the River Thames, London and its port has been the main focus of inland trade since the 12th Century (Schofield and Vince 2003). Since the Late Middles Ages (1301–1500) trade underpinned and propelled London’s growth in both population and wealth, creating a constant demand for labourers (Landers 1987). Most migrant workers originated from rural regions and were often immunologically naïve to diseases endemic in London (Landers and Mouzas 1988). For example, analyses of the Bills of Mortality (a weekly record of all London deaths, originally actioned to monitor plague outbreaks) report a positive correlation between rising grain prices and increased deaths from smallpox and ‘fevers’, particularly affecting young adults. The inference from this being that crop failures pushed migrants to the city to escape rural hardships, increasing their risk of exposure to infectious disease (Galloway 1985; Landers 1987).
The first phase of the Industrial Revolution (1760 -1880), fuelled by the invention of the steam engine, resulted in the industrialisation of labour and factory based manufacturing (Stearns 2012). Previously, manufacturing had been at a cottage level (for example, weaving) and the technological shift created a huge demand for factory workers. This demand drew rural people to the growing towns and cities – including London (Stearns 2012). Along with an economic boom for England, the Industrial Revolution heralded many social changes: including the growth of a wealthy entrepreneurial middle class and the creation of a much larger lower working class ‘factory worker’ (Stearns 2012). As the increased average wage rose, the population density in cities also grew – placing heavy demand on infrastructures not designed to cope with such numbers; namely housing, water, and sewage.
The Industrial Revolution saw a rise in demand for both male labourers and female domestic workers, resulting in a high proportion of London’s population being young adults (Williamson 1988). The 1821 census for London, for example, showed a peak for individuals in their 20s that was nearly 10% higher than the rest of England (Davenport et al. 2010). In addition, large tracts of land that had been previously farmed by tenant farmers were now turned to cash crops by owners – displacing rural families of both home and income and forcing many to migrate to London or elsewhere (Williamson 1988). London’s population had grown steadily from the 1500s with growth largely attributed to immigrants (Landers 1991). Based on baptism and burial records, a net surplus of baptisms only occurred in London after the 1790s, but which then grew exponentially (Landers 1991). London’s infrastructure was unable to adequately cope with the increasing demands, forcing many to live in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions (Williamson 1988).
Although, in general, life expectancy improved in London over the 1800s, this was not uniform across the population (Landers and Mouzas 1988; Razzell and Spence 2005). Mortality rates, particularly for infants and children, followed population density; areas with greatest density, which were also the poorest. These overcrowded areas had the highest mortality rates – driven by increased risk of exposure to pathogens (particularly person to person) as well as inadequate sanitation and waste disposal (Huck 1995; Landers 1991). The city provided ideal conditions for many infectious diseases; around 10% of infants and children are estimated to have died from smallpox (Variola major) alone in the latter half of the 1700s, while deaths from tuberculosis (Mycobacterium tuberculosis) were almost double that during the same period, but which grew even worse as the turn of the century approached (Landers and Mouzas 1988). Tuberculosis spread rapidly across the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, peaking in the year 1800 (Murray 2004). For London, as in many other cities, the social conditions created by the Industrial Revolution ensured its continued rampage (Frith 2014). The impact of tuberculosis on the population was massive; at the end of the 1700s – a quarter of all deaths recorded in parish registries for England were attributed to tuberculosis, which is likely an under estimation (Frith 2014). These figures, however, played out differently across social strata; the poor were disproportionately impacted as not only were their living conditions and risk of exposure greater, but health care afforded by the wealthy was beyond their reach (Frith 2014).
The Industrial Revolution created a socially bipolarised London; for the successful middle classes, access to good housing, nutrition, and health care made their lives somewhat more comfortable than conditions experienced by the poorer working classes. While social groups are often simplified to two extremes (for example, rich and poor), it was actually a continuum where outcomes were influenced by where members of a group were situated. Furthermore, the spatial divisions are not always particularly evident, even within a single parish. While some wealthy families lived away from the unsanitary and overcrowded city – in more pleasant semirural surroundings, such as Chelsea; others often lived nearer or at their places of business in the city, such as in the commercial area around Fleet Street. Within the city, wealthy and poor frequently lived next door to each other – as respectable, or even grand, houses could be found in streets that led to overcrowded allies and tenements. The skeletal samples used in this research are of individuals who belonged to differing socioeconomic groups, providing a gradient from the poorest workhouse residences to wealthy business owners. In addition, the samples include groups who resided in the heart of the commercial area, but also in the suburban areas, outside the densely populated city. During this period, it is likely that most people experienced high levels of disease exposure, particularly tuberculosis. In this case, the status advantage might lie in the ability to resist or slow progression, if not overcome the disease, due to greater immunological function afforded by better nutrition and health care. Therefore, considering how socioeconomic status might influence variation in health outcomes is particularly germane. A further consideration is how migration might impact apparent associations between early and later life health outcomes. The skeletal samples will likely vary in their composition of individuals who were raised in London or migrated as adults from rural regions– something that is unknowable from the available data, but will need to be considered when interpreting results.
The skeletal samples
The skeletal samples originate from four different burial grounds in three parishes shown in Figure 4.1. All are curated by The Centre for Human Bioarchaeology, which is part of the London Archaeological Archive and Research Centre (LAARC). Chelsea Old Church, St. Benet’s Sherehog, and St. Bride’s Lower collections are housed at the Museum of London, while the St. Bride’s Crypt collection is housed in the crypt under St. Bride’s Church, Fleet Street. The samples range across broad socioeconomic divides and their experiences of life, and London, were probably very different. I am interested in how their childhood health experiences may have impacted or shaped their adult life expectancy, and how their social status may have mediated these outcomes.
Prior to my field trips, individuals from St. Brides Lower (Farringdon), Chelsea Old Church, and St. Benet’s Sherehog, were selected from the Wellcome Osteological Research Database (WORD 2016), which holds skeletal data for many of the collections curated by the Museum of London. My intention was not to construct demographic profiles of the once living populations, but to address specific questions relating childhood to adulthood health outcomes at an individual level, so it was important that all adult age groups were represented, especially the older individuals. It was also essential that individuals had reached adulthood, retained at least one mandibular canine, and were in a good state of preservation with at least the crania, innominate, and femur or tibia present. A stratified sampling approach was used to select at least 100 individuals meeting the above criteria for each of the three sites, which involved selecting individuals evenly spread across each site’s list.
At the time of recording, many of those originally selected where found to have essential data unrecordable, for example a mandibular canine may have been present, but too damaged to be reliably assessed, therefore Table 4.1 reports only final sample sizes. The lists generated by WORD (2016) were in numeric order based on catalogue numbers, but were already random with respect to criteria used. Note that two separate collections originate from the one parish of St. Bride’s; St. Bride’s crypt collection are individuals originally interred within the church, while St. Bride’s lower collection were interred in the lower burial ground in Farringdon Street and is referred to as the Farringdon sample. The Bride’s crypt collection was offered to me, unexpectedly, during the second visit so these individuals had not been previously selected. This collection is housed in the church’s crypt and selection, by necessity, was based on accessibility of individual storage boxes (these were not ordered by any particular criteria). All accessible individuals were recorded if my selection criteria were met. The number of individuals recorded from each site, along with internment dates are presented in Table 4.1.
St. Bride’s church is located just off Fleet Street and archaeology suggests there has been a church on the site continually since at least the 7th century, involving seven replacement churches. Prior to post WWII rebuilding work in the 1950s, 227 coffin burials were excavated from within the church, including coffin plates (example Figure 4.2). These were dated from the mid-1700s to mid-1800s (Scheuer and Bowman 1995).
Fleet Street was the focus of a busy commercial and retail area, known for its association with the printing and publishing industry. The individuals who comprise the crypt collection represent the wealthier families of the parish. Not only was it more expensive to be buried within the church, but parish records show an array of noteworthy people, including a Lord Mayor of London, members of parliament, titled individuals, professional and businessmen of note and their families. Although this skeletal sample represents individuals of relatively higher socioeconomic status compared to the other samples used in this research, they lived in a crowded commercial area where poor and wealthy lived side by side. For example, a survey of the St. Bride’s burial register reveals in one small area off Fleet Street, Peterborough Court, high status individuals, who could afforded to be buried in the aisle and vaults within the church, were just as likely to reside in the court as those from the workhouse, which was also located in the court. A further example of this juxtaposition is provided by a public health proponent writing at the time: “Immediately behind rows of the best constructed houses in the fashionable districts of London are some of the worst dwellings, into which the working classes are crowded; and these dwellings, by the noxious influences described, are the foci of disease” (Chadwick 1842:92).
Most of the crypt skeletal collection is comprised of adults, with the greatest number of individuals dying in their sixties, while just over 10% were under twenty years. This proportion of subadults is lower than the number recorded as buried within the church (26%), while in the wider parish, including St. Brides Lower (Farringdon), 40% were under 20 years (Scheuer and Bowman 1995). This difference may have arisen due to recovery bias during excavation, or alternatively, reflect the composition of the higher status population in St. Bride’s parish. For example, wealthier families may not have considered the commercial area particularly desirable for raising children. Although St. Bride’s coffin plate collection has been the focus of a number of investigations regarding age and sexing, little has been reported on the health of this groups, other than dental pathology. In summary, this is a collection of predominantly high status individuals, but who lived in the heart of a densely populated urban area, often alongside poverty and squalor.
Chelsea Old Church
Excavations were carried out in 2000 at the site of All Saints Chelsea Old Church following the demolition of the old vicarage in advance of rebuilding (Cowie et al. 2008). Based on their location within the burial ground as well as dates from a number of lead coffin plates and burial furniture styles, most burials date from 1700 to 1850 (Cowie et al. 2008). Of the 290 burials recovered, 198 individuals were recordable and data entered into the WORD database. Prior to the 1700s, Chelsea had been a rural riverside village with easy access to Westminster and the city via the river (Figure 4.3). By the early 1700s, however, the village had grown substantially into a London suburb with approximately 300 houses, although still with a rural aspect surrounded by fields and orchards. (Cowie et al. 2008). By the 1800s it had become increasing urbanised as new streets continued to replace agricultural land.
Chelsea was outside the City of London so not included in the Bills of Mortality or the London census, making it more difficult to assess actual social and mortality distributions of the village. However, skeletal analysis undertaken by the Museum of London suggests that the percentage of subadults appears relatively low compared to other London parishes at the time, with a greater proportion probably surviving into older adulthood (Cowie et al. 2008). This could possibly reflect a generally lower risk of disease exposure due to its more rural location. But despite being situated outside London, its residents were still susceptible to tuberculosis. Analyses by the Museum of London showed vertebral lesions highly consistent with tuberculosis infection in several individuals (Cowie et al. 2008). These occurrences were lower than those observed in other London skeletal collections from the same period, tentatively suggesting that tuberculosis might have been experienced less frequently than in urban London (Cowie et al. 2008). In addition, most of its residents were probably reasonably wealthy, with archaeological evidence describing a middle to upper middle class population able to afford to live in a growing suburb that allowed easy access to the City while avoiding many of its problems. Conversely, the presence of a workhouse (built in 1737) suggests that the population was likely more a mix of wealthy and poor, and would have included lower paid agricultural and factory workers (Croot 2004; Cowie et al. 2008).
St. Benet’s Sherehog
Archaeological excavations at 1 Poultry were carried out in 1994 preceding redevelopment work at this site, which uncovered the burial ground and remains of St. Benet’s Sherehog Church (Miles and White 2008). The church itself was destroyed in the Great Fire of London of 1666, but the burial ground continued to be used until 1853 as the parish was amalgamated with St. Stephen’s Walbrook in 1670 (Miles and White 2008). Burial records suggest that most individuals were interned in the first half of the 1700s; after 1750 numbers decreased until the last burial in 1827 (Miles and White 2008). St. Benet’s Sherehog was situated within London’s square mile, with the commercial nature of this area evident in Figure 4.4.
The parish was small compared to others in London, covering just 0.43 hectares. The 1695 Poll tax records show that 76 householders and 44 lodgers resided in the parish (Miles and White 2008). The 230 excavated individuals, dated after the Great Fire, may represent most of the actual burials that took place in this period, as little truncation or disturbance from encroaching burials was evident (Miles and White
2008). Based on burial records, St. Benet’s appears to have had a lower percentage of child deaths (2 -10 years) compared to London in general, but an unusually high percentage of adolescent deaths (11 – 20 years), possibly reflecting the number of apprentices employed in the area (Miles and White 2008). Previous skeletal analysis also suggests an excess of males relative to females in the assemblage (ratio = 1.31, Miles and White 2008). The social status of most individuals here may be described as ‘middling’, neither very poor nor particularly wealthy. Dominant occupations listed in Poll tax data record many as ‘merchant’ as well as a variety of trades and professions from attorneys and law clerks to bee keepers. (Miles and White 2008).
Table of Contents
Abstract
He Mihi: Greetings and Acknowledgements
Chapter 1. Introduction
1.1. Mission and Ministry Through Māori Language and Cultural Regenesis
1.2. Thesis Question and Content
1.3. Theological Research Methods
1.4. Māori Research
1.5. History of the Māori Language
1.6. The Anglican Church and the Treaty of Waitangi
1.7. Anglican Māori Biblical and Liturgical Resources
1.8. Recent Examples of Regenesis
1.9. Personal Location
1.10. Concluding Remarks
Chapter 2. Anglican Regenesis Policies in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia .
2.1. Early History of Anglican Policymaking
2.2. Bi-cultural Commission on the Treaty of Waitangi .
2.3. Anglican Church Constitution 1992
2.4. Anglican Church Canon Law
2.5. Concluding Remarks
Chapter 3. Anglican Māori Responses to Regenesis Policies
3.1. Ordination Training
3.2. Use of Māori Language
3.3. Kōhanga Reo
3.4. Māori Language Programmes
3.5. Principles of Mission
3.6. Additional Comments
3.7. Concluding Remarks
Chapter 4. Anglican Pākehā Responses to Regenesis Policies.
4.1. Ordination Training
4.2. Use of Māori Language
4.3. Kōhanga Reo
4.4. Māori Language Programmes
4.5. Principles of Mission
4.6. Additional Comments
4.7. Concluding Remarks
Chapter 5. Anglican Pacific Islander Responses to Regenesis Policies
5.1. Ordination Training
5.2. Use of Māori Language
5.3. Kōhanga Reo
5.4. Māori Language Programmes
5.5. Principles of Mission
5.6. Additional Remarks
5.7. Concluding Remarks
Chapter 6. Partnership and Biculturalism in the Public Square
6.1. Partnership
6.2. Biculturalism
6.3. Future Partnership and Biculturalism
6.4. Concluding Remarks
Chapter 7. Contemporary Māori Christian Theologies
7.1. Māori Spirituality
7.2. Māori Ecclesiology
7.3. Māori Theological Education
7.4. Māori Language and Cultural Regenesis
7.5. Concluding Remarks
Chapter 8. Synthesis
8.1. Synthesis of Māori Language and Cultural Policy and Practice
8.2. Synthesis of Partnership and Biculturalism in the Public Square
8.3. Regenesis Policy and Practice Through the Lens of Partnership and Biculturalism.
8.4. Synthesis of Contemporary Māori Theologies
8.5. Regenesis Policy and Practice through Māori Theological Lenses
8.6. Concluding Remarks
Chapter 9. Conclusion
9.1. Maintaining or Altering Current Regenesis Policy and Practice
9.2. Future Māori Language and Cultural Regenesis Mission in the Anglican Church
9.3. Future Māori Language and Cultural Regenesis Ministry Contexts
9.4. Mihinare Centre for Māori Language Regenesis
9.5. Concluding Remarks
Reference List
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Theological Perspectives on Māori Language and Cultural Regenesis Policy and Practice of the Anglican Church
