Colonial health transitions: Aboriginal and 'poor white' infant mortality compared, Victoria 1850-1910

Abstract

This paper presents results from the first two longitudinal historical cradle-to-grave datasets constructed in Australia: the Aboriginal population of the state of Victoria, reconstituted using genealogical research and vital registrations, 1835-1930; and an impoverished European population sample born at the Melbourne Lying-In Hospital, 1857-1900 and traced until 1985. It investigates the comparative infant mortality between these two severely disadvantaged population samples and finds apparently contradictory results. Aboriginal people had shorter survival at all ages apart from infancy. Infant mortality among the poor white women delivering in an urban charity hospital was extreme but the..