Population and Urbanization of Leeds during the Industrial Revolution (INDUSTRIALIZATION AND URBANIZATION)

Abstract

The chief purpose of this paper is to deduce various demographic indices of the population of an English town, Leeds, during the Industrial Revolution, by making an aggregative analysis of the Parish Registers, and to obtain some general ideas of the relation between urbanization-concentration of population into the urban areas and/or the growth of the urban population-and industrialization. The Parish of Leeds, co-extensive with the Borough, which contained the township of Leeds -' in-town', six extra-urban industrial and four agricultural villages, experienced three sharp rises in the baptisms in 1715, the mid-174O'sand the l770's, while the burials continued to have outnumbered the baptisms until the 1770's. The very existence of the difference in the trends of baptisms and burials between the three distinct areas in the Parish seems to be significant in considering the relation between urbanization, industrialization and population. High birth-rates establisged in the in-town in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, which can be calculated from the number of revised baptisms, James Lucas' survey of population in 1775 and the Census Returns, seem to have been brought about by many factors, such as the lower age at marriage, higher level of marital fertility (baptisms per marriage), higher marriage rates and nuptiality. The proportion of immigration in the gross increase of population, the ratio of extra-parochial marriages and the geographical distribution of immigrants into Leeds in search of marriage partners suggest the following characteristics of migration of population into Leeds; though immigration played a significant role in the growth of population, the geographical extent of immigration was smaller and the rate of self-recruitment of population in Leeds was higher than those in other towns. These peculiar features in the migration of population into Leeds in the latter half of the eighteenth century could possibly be interpreted as the result that population growth had been under wav and there had been sufficient reservoirs of population in and around the in-town of Leeds, before the impact of industrialization was felt. Between 1783 and 1820, the dominant position Leeds had hitherto enjoyed in the Yorkshire woollen industry had gradually been demolished. The 1820's, however, saw the highest rate of population growth the in-town had ever experienced. That the in-town could keep and feed its increasing population from 1820's on may be safely said to be due to a great change of the economy in the in-town which occurred after the 1820's. The town economy broadened to include more diversified trades, having got rid of the dependence almost exclusively on the textile industry, and was provided with the proliferation of labour-intensive handicrafts and small shops, which absorbed the increasing population after the l820's.