Birth spacing and infant mortality on the isle of Skye, Scotland, in the 1880s: A comparison with the town of Ipswich, England

The paper compares two contrasting communities. Skye, where the population lived almost exclusively in rural surroundings in widely dispersed settlements with Gaelic as their mother tongue, had little in common with the urban centre of Ipswich. However, by comparing the demographic experience of two such places from the seldom available, longitudinal perspective it was hoped that new insights might be gleaned into demographic behaviour. Following Galley and Woods' article it was of interest to see if reporting of Scottish data differed in any way from a community in England, and if the latter would differ significantly from the standard profile of the distribution of deaths in the first year of life. If such differences were discerned what wider implications were there for the understanding of British nineteenth century demography?.