{"id":12403,"date":"2017-09-27T11:00:06","date_gmt":"2017-09-27T15:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/?p=12403"},"modified":"2023-10-06T14:44:06","modified_gmt":"2023-10-06T18:44:06","slug":"revealing-data-londons-deadly-visitation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/2017\/09\/27\/revealing-data-londons-deadly-visitation\/","title":{"rendered":"Revealing Data: London’s Deadly Visitation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Circulating Now welcomes guest blogger Kristin Heitman, PhD, who shares her insights on seventeenth century data collection and analysis as part of our Revealing Data<\/a> series. Dr. Heitman is an independent scholar living in Bethesda, Maryland. She and Professor Vanessa Harding of Birkbeck College, University of London, will convene a symposium on the London Bills of Mortality as part of the 2017\u201318 program of the Folger Institute<\/a> in Washington, DC.<\/em><\/p>\n

London\u2019s Dreadful Visitation,<\/em>1665-66 is often presented as a Bill of Mortality from the Great Plague, in which an estimated 25 percent of Londoners died. The work is actually a collection of reprints of 52 weekly bills plus an annual summary. Its title page declares it a memento mori<\/em>\u2014a reminder of the imminence of death\u2014while the introduction, written by the printer E. Cotes, argues that perusing the bills plus a bit of careful thought would show that God did not furiously dole out the wages of sin but mercifully spared the survivors, who then had more time to repent.<\/p>\n

\"Title<\/a>
London\u2019s Dreadful Visitation<\/em>, 1665\u2013<\/span><\/span>1666
National Library of Medicine #2378023R<\/em><\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It is a peculiar document on many counts. First, apart from the striking title page and brief introduction, Cotes provided only a series of numerical tables. The London Bills of Mortality were neither medical records nor a way to document the deaths of individuals. They were tabulated, parish-by-parish counts of burials as compiled each week by the Company of Parish Clerks, a London guild. The original surveillance program, ordered by the English Crown during the plague of 1519, was executed by London\u2019s merchant-aldermen. While other European cities kept plague rolls<\/em>\u2014rosters in which designated local physicians recorded each plague victim\u2019s name and social status\u2014London recorded only counts.<\/p>\n

Second, the Bills included weekly counts of baptisms, and of mortalities not just of plague but of causes such as old age, childbirth, accidents and suicides, smallpox, and scurvy . The Parish Clerks had conducted comprehensive mortality counts for London\u2019s aldermen since the mid-1550s, with baptisms added by the mid-1560s. Cause of death was determined by the local clerk until that duty passed to parish women appointed and trained as inspectors (\u201csearchers\u201d) of the dead, apparently during the plague of 1592\u2013<\/span><\/span>23. These regular, comprehensive reports went only to London\u2019s aldermen, although the Crown and Chancellor began to receive next-day copies after a formal request from William Cecil, Chancellor to Elizabeth I. Publication began at the turn of the century, in step with the rising numeracy of London\u2019s population. During the plagues of 1596\u2013<\/span><\/span>97 and 1601\u2013<\/span><\/span>02, the City\u2019s printer nailed up official broadsides displaying the week\u2019s parish-by-parish counts of baptisms, plague deaths, and total burials. In 1626\u2013<\/span><\/span>67, the Parish Clerks began to print their own two-sided weekly handbills with data from the broader program instituted in the 1550s, plus an annual summary bill at Christmas. London\u2019s Dreadful Visitation<\/em> reproduces 1665\u2019s bills in full.<\/p>\n