'Gone for a Soldier': Family Breakdown and the Demography of Desertion in a London Parish, 1750-91

Over the past fifteen or so years social historians and demographers have subjected the institution of marriage and the patterns of family life in pre-industrial England to close and detailed scrutiny. In the wealth of interpretive studies and minute dissections which characterise the literature there is, however, one notable lacuna. Virtually no systematic study has been made of marital failure, family breakdown and desertion. Snell, in his outstanding book on the living and working experiences of the labouring poor in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, drew attention to the problem of the deserted family. Yet the discussion of abandoned families was little more than a brief textual footnote to Snell's main purpose; his sample was relatively small and the period of review very long. Even so, he offered some stimulating insights into the characteristics of marital breakdown in the countryside but had to admit that 'it is not possible to show whether an urban environment was more conducive to break-up than a rural one'. The purpose of this paper is to add an urban dimension to the line of enquiry initiated by Snell.