Marmande

There were, however, certain situations where infants would not be found in the baptismal registries. The only infants who were absent from the records were the stillborn infants. Stillbirth was the largest single component of reproductive mortality and accounted for around two-thirds of the total death rates among infants. As baptism could not be administered to the dead, stillborn infants did not appear in the baptismal records. For this reason there is no way of ascertaining the number of stillborn there were throughout the period. Hart argues that stillbirth indicated maternal health and physique, which acted as a major factor in reproductive mortality and was a reflection of social and economic circumstances around the childbirth. However, …show more content…
Condou’s great compilation of work relies entirely on archival documents found in both Marmande and the Agen region. He discusses a wide variety of topics, from history of the town dating from the ancient times to the modern period. He also discusses the history of various buildings, paying close attention to Notre Dame de Marmande. Condou devotes a great amount of research to the social structures and classes of Marmande throughout history. This includes a history of women and their roles within the community, a history of the peasantry and the various artisans and workers found within the town, and also several extensive studies dedicated to the upper classes and major families that were at the top of the hierarchy within Marmande. Condou is one of the few, if not the only, historian to write on Marmande. This combined with the great amount of detail and research his work consists of lends to why this article will rely very heavily on his …show more content…
After collecting the total data it was then split into different social classes. As the records clearly displayed the parent’s profession, this was a simple task. A variety of classes were studied so the effects that famines and crises could be calculated across society in Marmande. It was also possible to track the upper classes as well. In order to distinguish a member of the upper classes, the priests used a number of status-specific job-titles. They used a variety of titles, from the common “sieur” or “demoiselle”, which equated to “master” and “mistress, to knights, viscounts, nobles, officers etc. These titles were signs of wealth and power within Marmande, and so these elites were grouped separately in order to possibly track if the upper classes committed infanticide against a different gender than the lower. Furthermore, this essay will also examine if the upper classes were affected by the numerous famines in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This will all be examined in Chapter