In the long‐running debate over standards of living during the industrial revolution, pessimists have identified deteriorating health conditions in towns as undermining the positive effects of rising real incomes on the ‘biological standard of living’. This article reviews long‐run historical relationships between urbanization and epidemiological trends in England, and then addresses the specific question: did mortality rise especially in rapidly growing industrial and manufacturing towns in the period c. 1830–50? Using comparative data for British, European, and American cities and selected rural populations, this study finds good evidence for widespread increases in mortality in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. However, this phenomenon was not confined to ‘new’ or industrial towns. Instead, mortality rose in the 1830s especially among young children (aged one to four years) in a wide range of populations and environments. This pattern of heightened mortality extended between c. 1830 and c. 1870, and coincided with a well‐established rise and decline in scarlet fever virulence and mortality. The evidence presented here therefore supports claims that mortality worsened for young children in the middle decades of the nineteenth century, but also indicates that this phenomenon was more geographically ubiquitous, less severe, and less chronologically concentrated than previously argued.

中文翻译：

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英国的城市化和死亡率，c。1800-50。

在工业革命期间关于生活水平的长期争论中，悲观主义者认为城镇健康状况恶化破坏了实际收入增加对“生物生活水平”的积极影响。本文回顾了英格兰城市化与流行病趋势之间的长期历史关系，然后解决了一个具体问题：在c时期，死亡率是否上升，尤其是在快速发展的工业和制造业城镇？. 1830-50 年？本研究使用英国、欧洲和美国城市和选定农村人口的比较数据，发现了 19 世纪下半叶死亡率普遍增加的良好证据。然而，这种现象并不局限于“新”或工业城镇。相反，死亡率在 1830 年代上升，尤其是在各种人群和环境中的幼儿（1 至 4 岁）中。这种死亡率升高的模式在c之间扩展。1830 年和c. 1870 年，恰逢猩红热毒力和死亡率的上升和下降。因此，这里提供的证据支持了 19 世纪中叶儿童死亡率恶化的说法，但也表明这种现象在地理上更普遍、不那么严重，而且按时间顺序排列也比之前认为的更不集中。