This analysis has been done using the Bishop’s Transcripts for Thockrington and the entries in the National Burial Index, as I do not currently have access to the original burial registers.
Between 1813 and 1837, seventy three individuals were buried in Thockrington. The number of burials in each year ranges from zero in 1818 to seven in 1815, with an average of three each year. The higher number of burials in 1815 is probably not significant, given such a small sample size. The winter of 1814-1815 was however particularly harsh and there was an outbreak of measles nationally in 1815. Only one of these seven was a child though and it seems likely that children would be more susceptible to measles. Given Thockrington’s isolated situation, the epidemic may not have reached them.
Males accounted for thirty nine of these deaths, with the remaining thirty four being female.
The ages at death show the expected peak for the under tens, with a quarter of all those who died being in this age group. Nine, 12.3%, were under the age of one. This is in line with national infant mortality rates, which had remained at this level since the seventeenth century or earlier.
13.7% of the residents reached their eighties. Two men and two women, were allegedly in their nineties when they died: Jane Coxon aged 91, who died in 1824. William Scott aged 95, who died in 1817; William Cook aged 97, who died in 1834 and Alice Robson aged 98, who died in 1823. These are phenomenal ages for the early nineteenth century, especially given the harsh living conditions in Thockrington. I have yet to attempt to verify these claims to great age.
The History Interpreter - Janet Few 