Little lives-reading between the lines: insights from the Northampton Infirmary Eighteenth Century Child Admission Database.

The presence of children in eighteenth-century English voluntary hospitals is an area of increasing interest and attention. The Northampton Infirmary admission records detail inpatient and outpatient ages from 1744 to 1804, allowing for longitudinal investigations of children in the institution. The most common distempers affecting children were surgical infections, infectious diseases, and skin diseases; fifty-six per cent of the child patients were male and 43.3 per cent were female. Nearly seventy-five per cent of children left the hospital 'cured'. This article outlines the Northampton Infirmary Eighteenth Century Child Admission Database, and demonstrates how the patterning of distempers within and among children provides insight into the health journeys of eighteenth-century children through the lens of their bodies, their parents, and their institutional recommenders.