The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between urbanization and respiratory stress in three parish communities from within and outside London during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Expanding upon earlier studies that linked early life metabolic insults to adult morbidity in the past, this study also explores the relationship between childhood vitamin D deficiency and adult respiratory stress. Previously recorded demographic (age and sex estimates) and paleopathological data (maxillary sinusitis and rib lesion frequencies) for all 601 adults were taken with permission from the Wellcome Osteological Research Database curated by the Centre for Human Bioarchaeology at the Museum of London. Logistic regression was employed to test the hypothesis that the odds of respiratory stress were similar between affluent individuals living within and outside the city. The results tentatively support this hypothesis but suggest that more data are needed to further investigate the relationship between urbanization and respiratory stress within the context of industrialization. Moreover, further research into the relationship between early life adversity and adult respiratory stress is needed, as only two individuals presented evidence of respiratory stress and residual rickets.