This work examines mortality among young children in the period from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. It does so using several types and sources of information from the census unit England and Wales, and from Ireland. The sources of information used in this study include memoirs, diaries, poems, church records and numerical accounts. They offer descriptions of the quality of life and child mortality over the three centuries under study. Additional sources for the nineteenth century are two census-derived numerical indexes of the quality of life. They are the VICQUAL index for England and Wales, and the QUALEIRE index for Ireland. Statistical procedures have been applied to the numbers provided by the sources with the aim to identify effects of and associations between such variables as gender, age, and social background. The book examines the results to consider the impact of children's deaths upon parents and families, and concludes that there are differences and continuities across the centuries.

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Introduction.- Chapter 1. Housing as Quality of Life, Dublin 1798 1821.- Chapter 2. The Anthropometric Committee of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1875-1883.- Chapter 3. Mars and Hygeia: The Application of Victorian Army Data on Height to the Quality of Life in the British Population .- Chapter 4. ''The Great Contrast'': Factor Analysis Applied to Quality of Life in the Era of the Irish Famine (co-authored with Pickett, L.).- Chapter 5. Victorian Economic Change and Heights: a Note on Lagged Effects.- Chapter 6. Sons of St. Patrick: Quality of Life and Heights of Young Irish Males at Mid-Nineteenth Century. <