Friends in Life and Death: The British and Irish Quakers in the Demographic Transition, 1650-1900 (review)

Book Reviews45 quainted. I have also received corrections of entries from relatives of some of the peoplementioned—sometimes accompanied by indignantdemands thatNew York Yearly Meeting correct the error in question. I had to explain that this was impossible, not only because the volume had not been published by the yearly meeting, butalso because copies were scattered far beyond my reach, and to ask the complainants to be content with a correction in my desk copy. Having said all this in derogation, I have to return to my original assessment of its usefulness, based on lack ofother material. New York Yearly Meeting has not, to date, been the subject of very much research. It seems to be the terra incognita ofAmerican Quakerism, and this is true genealogically as well as otherwise. Until the publication by Loren V. Fay oí Quaker Census of ¡828 (Kinship, 1989), an alphabetical abstractofthe listofmembers ofNew York Yearly Meeting assembled by Orthodox Friends immediately following the Separation (and Fay's is really quite a different sort of presentation), there was no other generally accessible genealogical workgiving even solimited acoverage forNew York Yearly Meeting. So the new reissue of "Hinshaw, vol. Ill" has merit, if used cautiously. Keeper of the RecordsElizabeth H. Moger New York Yearly Meeting Friends in Life and Death: The British and Irish Quakers in the Demographic Transition, 1650-1900. By Richard T. Vann and David Eversley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1 992. xix + 282 pp. Maps, illustrations, charts, tables, notes, bibliography, and index. $49.50. Nearly thirty years ago when I was a graduate student doing research on my Ph.D. dissertation at Friends House, London, I met Richard Vann who was beginning work on a demographic study ofEnglish Quakers from the 1650s until the 1 850s. Now, finally, we have the results ofthe many years' work ofthe authors, volunteers, and others combing Quaker records in England, Ireland, and Scotland, utilizing the techniques of family reconstitution, and then applying a variety of statistical tests to the data. The reasons for using Quaker records for demography are clear; the birth, death, and marriage records provide more reliable information about a numerous population over a large area for a long period than any other English records. While demographers then have the difficulty of comparing Quakers with other Englishmen and women because Friends were by no means typical, that is not an issue for the social history ofLondon Yearly Meeting. This review will focus, therefore, not upon the considerable importance ofthis book for understanding the demographic changes in early modem England but upon the relevance ofEversley's and Vann's conclusions for Quaker history. Their initial chapter on the strengths and lacunae in Quakerrecords should be required reading forali those planning to do genealogy; it will make the frustrations easier to endure. The authors extracted from Quaker records data on life expectancy, infant mortality, fertility, cause ofdeath, occupation, and age ofmarriage. The book shows the effects on these phenomena of wealth, gender, time, and area (N. England, S. 46Quaker History England, Ireland, rural and urban). Presenting this information in both tables and clear prose, the authors allow even those readers with no sophistication in either statistics or demographic methods to understand what they are saying and the strengths and weaknesses in their data. We learn much that is new about British Quakerism from the reconstitution of 12,000 English and 2,900 Irish families. First of all, there were immense differences in the demographic data from different regions. Irish Quakers, who had a reputation of being very strict on the discipline, turn out to have an age-specific fertility ratio that is far higher than other Friends in England or colonial America and which approaches the demographers' benchmark ofhigh fertility, the Hutterites ofNorth America. Other fertility rates varied according to time and region. English Friends in the seventeenth century may have practiced some form of family limitation, most likely—the authors believe—by abstinence from sex, but there is little evidence for family limitation after 1700 until the nineteenth century. In the late eighteenth century Quakers everywhere postponed marriage until after age thirty but also produced more children per family because the interval between births declined. London...