Professor Romola Davenport

My research seeks to unpick the complex relationships between maternal health and foetal and infant survival in historical populations, using demographic and documentary evidence from institutional and other settings. Recent projects include work on social class differences in breastfeeding and infant survival in eighteenth century London and early nineteenth century England, long-run trends in the impact of urbanization and differing disease environments on infant and maternal mortality (c.1600 – 1945), and the causes of the persistent survival disadvantage of illegitimate infants in Britain between the eighteenth and mid-twentieth centuries.