21 March, 2.30-3.30pm
Seminar Room A, Coombs Building (9), Fellows Road
Helen Moyle, PhD Candidate, Australian Demographic & Social Research Institute
PhD mid-term seminar
The aim of my thesis is to investigate the fall of marital fertility in Tasmania in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by examining changes in the birth patterns of couples marrying in the second half of the 19th century. I am investigating when marital fertility fell, how it fell—that is, whether it was by changes in starting, stopping or spacing behaviours—and the extent to which this differed by characteristics such as husband’s occupational status, families’ geographic location, religion, literacy and infant/child survival.
I have reconstituted the birth histories of couples who married in Tasmania in four different years—1860, 1870, 1880 and 1890—using the Tasmanian 19th digitised birth, marriage and death records as my major data source. I have also used numerous other sources such as: the Victorian and Queensland births, deaths and marriage indexes; the 19th and 20th century Australian digitized newspapers; Australian cemetery indexes; and the Australian electoral rolls.
Photo: Family group. State Library of South Australia, B 69055/4, http://www.catalog.slsa.sa.gov.au:80/record=b2104845~S1.