Topic: Mortality of women at child bearing age at Symonds Street Cemetery in nineteenth century, Auckland.

Transcription

1 Topic: Mortality of women at child bearing age at Symonds Street Cemetery in nineteenth century, Auckland. Introduction The Symonds Street Cemetery remains an inherent feature of Central Auckland s landscape. Governor William Hobson opened this first generation cemetery, in The burial records show that the cemetery was in use until 1931, but there were no burial plots available for new burials, after Higgins (1998: 11), records that there was a total of 1104 burial plots in the cemetery. Burials were in denominational sections, and the cemetery is divided into an Anglican, Catholic, Presbyterian, Jews, Wesleyan and General Sections (Wolfe 2002: 6, 110). In 1886 when Symonds Street Cemetery was closed, Waikumete Cemetery in West Auckland was opened and intended as replacement to cater for Auckland s growing population and expansion (MacManus and Du Plessis 2011). Health concerns, over water contamination also made the closing of the cemetery necessary. People were allowed to use already existing family plots for any new burials but with the following conditions. That they were related either by blood or by marriage to those already buried. Later on, only those aged 50 years and over was added to the previous conditions by the 1908 Auckland Cemeteries Act. This research project looks into using available burial records of those buried at Symonds Street Cemetery as a study sample of Auckland s population in the nineteenth century, against anthropological demographic theory. In particular, this essay report will look into women who died at child bearing age, which is between the ages of 15 and 49. The data available from the cemetery online records will form the basis for statistical calculations and graphs to show trends and significant relationships between the deaths of women at child bearing age with that of their religion. Because of the overlapping causes and effects between maternal 1

2 mortality and infant mortality, they are both interchangeably used in reference to each other in this essay as well. Study Design and Methods. For the purpose of this project, the cemetery burial records available online from the Auckland Council Library database, was divided by last names in alphabetical order amongst the five members taking the course. In the first three weeks of the semester, we were to transcribe our allocated portion of the burial records from the online database into individual excel files. These individual files were later combined into a master spread sheet, that everyone could access for analysis in lab activities as well as for our own individual projects. Of the information transcribed, name, sex, date of birth, date of death and burial section, were amongst the most frequently available data. In addition, other know information provided were noted, such as date of burial, place of birth, residential town. Importantly, in addition to remaining known burial records from churches, civil records and newspaper obituaries; the records made from tomb stone inscriptions in 1958 by two women named, Irene Broun and Zara Mettam contributed greatly to the existing available records held at the Auckland City library (Verran 1998). The government s Department of Statistics website also provide national census data from , which I used in conjunction with the sample from the cemetery records ( I have chosen the 1871 census, with specific emphasis on the data for the Auckland region to complement the cemetery data in informing the discussion to follow. The literature on New Zealand migrants and settlement history, help explain the way the society lived in relation to the environmental, social, economic and political climate of the period, which in turn impacted lives and deaths of the people. The study data 2

3 consists of more than five and a half thousand entries transcribed from the Symonds Street Cemetery online database, of which 514 entries are women between the ages of 15 and 49 and 322 entries of infants, aged between birth and one year. The identification of denominational burial sections per entry may just be one factor, but it is factor that is important when considering the cultural makeup of the population. Therefore, because religious beliefs and practices are said to have been influential in how people lived their lives, maternal health included; an examination of the differences or similarities in religious practices for the main religious denominations is important to determine whether women s death at child bearing age had been affected by religion or not. In figure 1, a graph depicting the death trend at Symonds Street Cemetery is shown in total and of males and females separately. It shows a fluctuating but increasing number of deaths from the early years of the nineteenth century with a peak of 162 deaths in 1885, before a sharp decline and eventual levelling off toward the early decades of the twentieth century. This peak and sudden decline in number of deaths can also be explained by the fact that the cemetery was closed in 1886, forcing subsequent deaths to be buried elsewhere. However, the graph shows that both male and female deaths follow the same trend, though male deaths were always higher. This could be attributed to the higher proportion of males in relation to the number of females in the total population. The 1871 population of Auckland Province of was made up of 57 percent male, and 43 per cent female respectively. 3

4 Number of Death Figure 1: Death trends from recorded burials at Symonds Street Cemetery Death trend Total Male Female Year Source: Author, generated from class excel data entries. Discussion: General Population In a migrants settlement colony like New Zealand, the population is young with majority of its people born overseas. The 1871 census show that about 53 per cent of the population were born British, with the majority being from England, then Wales, Ireland and Scotland. About 36.5 per cent were born in New Zealand and the remaining 10.5 percentage distributed among other countries, like Australia, China and European nations. Theoretically and generally, women were expected to be married, bear and raise the children and manage the household. The fathers and male figures were the bread winners, supporting and providing for the family. Women were expected to be homemakers while men earned money through labour and trade. This is reflected in the very high percentage, of 59.6 per cent, of the 1871 population identifying their occupation as domestic duties or no occupation. These were mainly made of up of the women and children. The 1871 census also stated the proportion of married women to be higher than that of married men. For instance, for every 100 males in the total male population, per cent were married compared to per cent from every 100 in the total female 4

5 population ( accessed 5 th October, 2016). The population pyramid projected below was generated from the government s 1871 census data for the nation. There is clear indication of the country s migrant population, as shown by the large number of males in the 20 and under 40 age ranges, and that of the 40 and under 50 age ranges. The proportion of female population in the 20 and under 40 age, corresponds to the proportion of the male population, although there the proportion of males is still significantly higher. This leads to the conclusion that women in this age range migrated to the country accompanying their husbands. The pyramid however, show a relatively young population. These were young families with small children ranging from infants to 10 years of age, shown at by the broad base of the pyramid. Figure 1: A Population Pyramid for New Zealand in National Population Age distribution Pyramid 65 and upwards. 55 and under and under and under and under and under 15. FEMALES. MALES. 5 and under 10. Under 5 Years Percentage % Source: Author, generated from Stats NZ 1871 Census data. 5

6 The census data seem to agree with the argument by Pool et al (2007: 46), stating that two of the main driving forces shaping the country s demography were family values and with that came a keeping with traditional structures and forms that the migrant community brought with them from the mother land. The family values such as adherence to religious teachings, the importance of children in the family, fathers and male figures as head of the household and women as care givers and housewives. These were values, structured to inform the daily lives of people in the society at the time. New Zealand families are then said to be comparable to other industrialized nations, like Britain respectively. The size being standard, although there is a record of high fertility rate in mind nineteenth century. The argument by Pool et al (2007) being that women had many children to make sure that some of her offspring survive into adulthood. It is also this idea of women having many children, that was often the case for maternal mortality. Maternal Health/Mortality. The literature on maternal health and mortality is to a great extent, always tied to infant mortality which is the more studied phenomenon. Religious affiliation is also an influential factor. Since the data from the cemetery includes infants and religious denomination by way of burial sections for the deceased, I chose to examine these three factors in relation to each other. In a nineteenth century study of fertility and infant mortality in Montreal, Thornton and Olson (1991: 402-3) found that the main cause of infant mortality was attributed to cultural communities, forcing them to reject an earlier hypothesis of infant deaths being entirely caused by socio- economic status although there is a strong but intricate relations between cultural communities and socio-economic status. The cultural communities they identified were related 6

7 to people s place of origin and their religious affiliation. They identified three cultural communities which were the French Catholic, Irish Catholic and Protestant. They asserted that infant mortality reflected not only income disparities between people, but also the level of education parents received. Education was important in the sense that not only it could help alleviate, poverty but also their sense of hygiene and mother s feeding habits of their babies (Mosley and Chen 1984 in ibid.). In talking about feeding habits, fertility is often discerned from the mother s breast feeding period of their children. High fertility resulted from shorter lactating periods so that mothers often have shorter birth intervals which in turn were both harmful to the mother and the newly born babies. The babies lacked the required nutrition and immunity received from breast milk while on the hand, mothers did not have sufficient time for their bodies to recover, thus ending up with long lasting health related consequences. The results were often drastic especially in socio-economically marginalized communities as argued for by several researchers (in Alter et. al 2007: 785). Figure 3: Percentage proportion by denomination of deaths in women of child bearing age at the Symonds Street Cemetery. Death percentage of child bearing women. (blank) 14% Jewish 1% Weslyan 11% Presbyterian 8% Catholic 14% Anglican 52% Source: Author 7

8 Although the pie graph in figure 3 is not representative and true reflection of maternal mortality, for women of Auckland, I believe that it can be used as a model depicting religious influence over fertility and maternal health. The pie graph above, show that more than half the deaths of child bearing age women were Anglicans, followed by Catholics and those unaccounted for at 14 percent each. The Presbyterian section accounting for 8 percent and only 1 percent from the Jews section. According to McQuillan (2004), the high fertility of Catholic women was previously a fundamental aspect of demographic studies because it showed the degree of influence religion had on fertility and in turn population growth. However, in recent researches, they show that Catholic fertility was levelling out and is comparable to the fertility rate of other major religious denominations (ibid.: 25). Thorton and Olson (2011: 160) argues that cultural/religious communities and their different breast feeding practices accounted for higher or lower fertility, infant mortality due to closely spaced births. Their findings suggested that French Canadian mothers lacked fertility control and weaned their babies earlier than Irish and Catholic and Protestant mothers. Furthermore, the graph attributed one per cent of deaths as Jewish, the Jewish community worldwide are known for their controlled fertility. Therefore, Jews have the lowest fertility rate (in America) amongst religious communities with an average of first birth interval of 4.3 years and shorter for older women but still the birth interval was still longer than two years which was the norm for non-jewish women. Later marriages for some Jewish women also meant lower fertility, peaking at ages compared to other non-jewish fertility peaking age range of (DellaPergola 1980). Jews infants and children are reported to survive and live healthier lives than others (Thorton and Olson 2011: 160). 8

9 Although circumstantial, the histogram below shows death distribution by 5 year age groups in women of child bearing age at Symonds Street Cemetery. The graph shows death to be highest at the age range with 95 deaths, followed by the and age ranges. The lowest being in the age range with 66 deaths. As discussed above in relation to Jewish fertility, deaths occurring at the two age ranges where women are said to be most fertile is at their highest. Figure 4: Death distribution for women aged in Symonds Street Cemetery. 100 Death distribution for Child bearing age females D e a t h Age group Source: Author Calvin Goldscheider s (1971 in McQuillan 2004) argues for two approaches which denounces religious influence over fertility. The first approach is the characteristic approach. Goldscheider argues that the relationship between religion and fertility is nonexistent or a myth and that fertility was tied to socio-economic factors and not religion. On the other hand, he also suggested the particularized theology explaining, that in the persistence of religious influence over fertility, it can be explained by the particular doctrines of certain religions, such as Catholics being forbidden to use contraceptives (ibid. 26). Despite his arguments, that the religious influence on demographic behavior can be explained by the two approaches that he suggested, the tables below show the p-value that is less than 0.05 thus showing that there is statistical significance of a real difference and that there is a relationship between maternal and infant deaths as recorded in the Symonds Street Cemetery data and religious denominations. 9

10 Figure 5: Chi Square Test to show the P-value for maternal and infant deaths and religion. Count of Sex (Male=1, Female=2) Column Labels Row Labels Infant other Teen Women (blank) Grand Total Anglican Anglican 1 1 Catholic General 1 1 jewish Nonconformist 2 2 Not available Presbyterian Weslyan (blank) Grand Total Count of Sex (Male=1, Female=2) Column Labels Row Labels other Infant 0-1 Teen girls Women (blank) Grand Total Anglican Catholic jewish Presbyterian Weslyan (blank) Not available Grand Total Chi-square Conclusion There is an emphasis on two types of values that McQuillan (2004: 27) argues for as influential factors on fertility. These are overt values which inform the norms of behavior and identifies rules in which one is to adhere to which are directly related to determinants of fertility. The other value is more indirect, where Goldscheider s particularized theology comes in. The sample data of nineteenth century New Zealand society taken from the Symonds Street Cemetery Records supports the idea that maternal health and in death is tied to infant mortality, and both are related to religious teachings. Although this data is not a significantly reliable source of demographic information due to incompleteness, it still has value as historical source of data from that period. A direction for further research into the demography of maternal health could be in the direction of widowhood. The scope and length of this project 10

11 does not allow a look into this aspect, but the study by Alter, Dribe and von Poppel (2007) considers the impacts of widowhood on the family, claiming that stress on women is greater than men when one partner dies. It is also important to note that there are more than one contributing factor involved, in maternal mortality. This essay has focused on religious impacts mainly because of the available data used for this project, but socio-economic factors are amongst the most important factors to consider. The implications of maternal mortality on the population is significant in many ways, is that it reflects the level of economic development, education and standard of living and health care available at the time. 11

12 References Alter, G., Dribe, M., & Poppel, F. (2007). Widowhood, Family Size, and Postreproductive Mortality: A Comparative Analysis of Three Populations in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Demography, 44(4), DellaPergola, S. (1980). Patterns of American Jewish fertility. Demography, 17(3), Government Statistics Department, Census census.html#idsect1_1_506. (accessed ). Higgins, Shaun Reflections after life: The social dimensions in colonial Auckland's Symonds Street Cemetery. MA Dissertation. University of Auckland McManus, Ruth & Rosemary Du Plessis 'Death and dying - Burials and cemeteries', TeAra - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, (accessed 2 September 2016). McQuillan, K. (2004). When Does Religion Influence Fertility? Population and Development Review, 30(1), Pool, Ian & Tahu Kukutai 'Taupori Māori Māori population change - Decades of despair, ', Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, (accessed 2 September 2016)., Dharmalingham, Arunachalam, and Sceats, Janet Chapter 3: The large family of yesteryear, trends In: The New Zealand Family from 1840: A Demographic history. Auckland. University of Auckland Press, pp Thornton, P., & Olson, S. (1991). Family contexts of fertility and infant survival in nineteenth century Montreal. Journal of Family History, 16(4), (2011). Mortality in late nineteenth-century Montreal: Geographic pathways of contagion. Population Studies, 65(2), Verran, David Noel The Symonds Street Cemeteries, a brief history. Auckland-Waikato historical journal, September 1998 page Wolfe, Richard Auckland: A pictorial history. Auckland, Random House New Zealand. 12