Love in the time of cholera. Cholera epidemics and changes in the marriage market in nineteenth-century Poznań

Liczbińska, Grażyna; Brabec, Marek; Pankowski, Patryk; Antosik, Szymon; Vögele, Jörg Peter

Love in the time of cholera. Cholera epidemics and changes in the marriage market in nineteenth-century Poznań

Abstract

This study investigates how cholera epidemics shaped marriage patterns in 19th-century Poznań, using formalized statistical modeling on individual records of 12,606 married couples from 1830 to 1874. Seven waves of cholera epidemics were studied (1831, 1837, 1848, 1852, 1855, 1866, and 1873). The number of months between the date of marriage and the end of the last epidemic was used in the modelling as a covariate with a potentially non-linear response. To examine the effects of epidemics upon marriages, we focused on the immediate post-epidemic period. The time frame of interest was defined as the interval starting at the end of a cholera epidemic and ending 12 months later. We observed a statistically significant effect of the parish (inter-parish heterogeneity; p < 0.001) and the number of months elapsing after the end of the cholera epidemic (p < 0.05) on the difference in the mean marriage age between groom and bride (in years). This difference rose in a non-linear and non-monotonic fashion, peaking twice: around 2 months and 8–9 months after the epidemic. The likelihood of marriages involving a disparity in marital status – where one partner was a widow/widower and the other was marrying for the first time – fluctuated significantly throughout the post-epidemic year, increasing in January, July, and August, and declining in April and October. The waves of cholera epidemics significantly influenced the likelihood of marriages between partners of different religious affiliations, particularly in the period following the end of the outbreaks. These patterns reflect a demographic deficit in Poznań after each epidemic, unevenly distributed across social strata, which disrupted the marriage market, influenced partner selection, and altered marriage timing and age dynamics. The findings underscore the profound social and demographic consequences of epidemics, highlighting how mortality crises can reshape intimate social structures and behaviors.

Keywords

post-epidemic phases marriage age difference first-married spouses widowed individuals generalized additive modelling complexity-penalized splines

Citation

Grażyna Liczbińska, Marek Brabec, Patryk Pankowski, Szymon Antosik & Jörg Peter Vögele. (2025). Love in the time of cholera. Cholera epidemics and changes in the marriage market in nineteenth-century Poznań. The History of the Family, 31(1), 138–160. DOI: 10.1080/1081602X.2025.2578470.