The pooled series

The data on which this section is based were obtained by pooling the monthly burial totals for the geographical parish groups featured in chapter 8 figures 5–10.

1695–1704

Figures A4.1–3 present sets of MBIs for the parish groups in the first of the two decades. The child burial seasonalities reveal a marked divergence – between the western parishes, on the one hand, and the south and east groups on the other – in the indices for the first four months of the year. In the south and east the average January–April index (weighted by the numbers of observations) is 98 as against 110 for the western group. The August index displays a similar contrast with corresponding figures of 129 and 114.

There are thus two distinct patterns of seasonality present in the child burial data. The first of these is common to the eastern and southern parishes and displays a clear August peak. The western pattern is bimodal, with maxima in both February/March and August, whilst the figures for the central group are intermediate. The contrast is underlined by the principal components analysis which revealed that 88 per cent of the total variance was accounted for by a single component with negative coefficients for the late summer and autumn, correspondingly positive values between January and April (see figure A4.4).

The adult burial indices show less spatial variation although – compared with the western and central groups – the southern parishes have noticeably lower first quarter indices with correspondingly higher values in August and September.