Mortality in closed girls’ boarding schools of the Russian Empire. St. Petersburg: first half of the 19th century

Abstract

Introduction. The subject of this study is the mortality rate and causes of female students in closed girls’ boarding schools in the capital cities of the Russian Empire in the first half of the 19th century. This topic has not previously been the subject of specialized historiography.

Materials and methods. The primary source for this study was data from parish registers, introduced into scientific circulation for the first time for this purpose.

Results and discussion. The registers recorded deaths of female students at the girls’ boarding schools. At the beginning of the 19th century, causes of death were not specified, and only later, beginning in the 1810s, did the priest record the illness that caused death. In very rare cases, the registers included references to diagnoses made by the institute physician. The chosen chronological period is explained by the fact that only beginning in the 1860s were female students permitted to leave their schools for vacations, and later for holidays and even weekends, meaning that the registration of deaths in the registers of the institute churches became increasingly incomplete. The processed data is analyzed using the principles of historicism and objectivity.

Conclusion. Infant mortality in the Russian Empire remained consistently high. Even as early as the 1760s, when the first of the institutes, Smolny, was established, everyday life was based on the strictest rules of sanitation and hygiene, constant medical supervision, and the organization of proper quarantines in the event of epidemics. Records from the registers of births allow for relatively accurate calculations of the number of deaths among female students at the institutes and an analysis of quantitative data on the diseases that led to death, given the inaccuracy of diagnostics in the first half of the 19th century. The most common cause of death among adolescents at closed girls’ boarding schools was tuberculosis. It is noteworthy that, overall, the number of deaths due to epidemics at this colleges was insignificant.

Acknowledgements. The study was conducted under the state assignment of Lomonosov Moscow State University.

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