Records of a dowry investment fund operated by the city of Florence, Italy from 1425-1545 contain information on life cycle events of about 32,000 girls. This information includes date of birth, date and amount of investment, and date of dowry payment or death. In the present study, the first of 19 volumes of these records were used to compute death rates and payment rates (an approximation of marriage rates) and to analyze these rates according to age, time, and socioeconomic status. Usable records were obtained for 1631 girls. There were 315 deaths; death rates per 1000 person-years were 38, 17, 11, 16, and 19 for ages less than 5, 5-9, 10-14, 15-19, and 20+, respectively. Compared to previous and succeeding years, death rates increased 5-10 times in 1437-1438 and 1449-1450, years in which epidemics have been recorded. During these periods of epidemics, death rates were relatively low in the winter months. Death rate were made for 1274 girls. About three-fourths of these payments were made by age 20. Rate of payment increased with amount of investment. Proportionally, births were least frequent during December and January, indicating a deficit of conceptions around the time of Lent.
Epidemics and mortality in 15th and 16th century Florence, Italy, were investigated by use of records of the government-sponsored Dowry Fund. These records contain the date of birth, date of investment, and date of dowry payment or death of 19,000 girls and women. Major epidemics ("plagues") occurred repeatedly. The most severe were in 1430, 1437-38, 1449-50, 1478-79, and 1527-31. Annual death rates of girls enrolled in the Dowry Fund increased by 5 to 10 times in each of these periods. During the last period, at least 20-25 per cent of the population of Florence is Between the Black Death of 1348 and the French plagues of the 1720s, western Europe was struck by a series of epidemics. These epidemics were a major historical force and they continue to be the subject of investigation and debate. '-5 We have a rich heritage of literary and pictorial images of the suffering, terror, and devastation that were created, but we lack many of the corresponding numerical facts: the severity and even the existence of specific outbreaks, mortality by time and by age, and the contribution of these epidemics to the total death rate.Some of this information is derived from records which have survived in archives throughout Europe. Much of what has come to light so far is drawn from death registrations; the London Bills of Mortality6 are the best-known source of this type. Early death registrations were the forerunner of present-day death certificates. However, the registrations were crude. They give at most only a rough indication of age; they usually cannot be linked to populations of known size; and the sources varied greatly in their thoroughness from time to time.We have used the records of the Florentine Dowry Fund (Monte delle doti) in a study of epidemics in the 15th and 16th centuries. These records are unique for their time because of their "longitudinal" structure: each record gives the date of birth and the dates on which observation begins and ends, including the date of death, when applicable. Deaths can be referred to a population of known size and age composition to give age-specific death rates, in times of both epidemics and "normal" mortality. mortality declined by about 10 per cent over the 15th and 16th centuries. Epidemic mortality was not consistently related to age. The effects of epidemics were most severe in the summer and autumn. Non-epidemic mortality was also greater in the summer and autumn than in the winter and spring. (Am J Public Health 1985, 75:528-535.) patterns, and long-term trends of mortality. We also compare our results to historical reports of epidemics and to findings based on death registrations in Florence. (Data on boys were excluded from our analysis because investments for boys represented only about 1 per cent of the total, and because these records are not as complete as the girls' records with respect to the information necessary for mortality analysis.)
Sostrata. Io ho sempre mai sentito dire che egli é uffizio d'un prudente pigliare de' cattivi partiti el migliore.— Niccoló MachiavelliIn their magisterial work, Les Toscans et leurs families, David Herlihy and Christiane Klapisch-Zuber examined in considerable detail a problem faced by many historians studying late medieval tax censuses such as the Florentine catasto: how much credence to give to the ages of individuals whose names are included in these documents? Following a lengthy investigation of the catasto of 1427-1429, they reached the wistful conclusion that “Tuscans in 1427 had only a vague knowledge of their own ages or were loath to report them accurately.“ In the course of their inquiry, Herlihy and Klapisch compared the ages of some individuals recorded in the catasto with the ages of the same individuals found in other documents.
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