The parish clerks of London were required to record the causes of death of everyone who died in London. At this time, however, physicians did not have to issue a death certificate, so poor elderly women were employed as "searchers" who went around to find out the cause of death for each person. Many diseases were not diagnosed properly, and the searchers were also willing to accept bribes to change an embarrassing cause of death such as syphilis to something more acceptable. Nonetheless, these statistics give us some idea of English city life in 1700, and of the way people looked at things then (even by what afflictions are lumped together in categories). Thanks a ton to liveforever for explaining what some of these things mean!
- Abortive and stillborn - 546
- Aged and bedridden - 1242
- Ague (malaria or other disease with chills) and fever - 3676
- Apoplexy (stroke) and suddenly - 104
- Bleeding, bloody-flux, and flux - 13
- Cancer, canker, and thrush - 124
- Chicken pox - 1
- Childbed - 240
- Chrisoms and infants - 78
- Colick - 72
- Consumption and tissick - 2819
- Convulsion - 4631
- Cough and chincough - 7
- Cut of the stone, and stone - 43 (liveforever says "'Cut of the stone' or 'stone' refers to kidney stones, bladder stones, etc. They were operating for kidney stones already in 1700, but the operations were horrendously risky." I can imagine!)
- Diabetes - 1
- Distracted and lunatick - 35
- Dropsie and tyranny - 659
- Evil - 83 (This probably refers to a disease known as "the King's Evil" or as scrofula.)
- Executed - 29 (Don't ask me why this is listed as a disease rather than a casualty in the list below.)
- Falling-sickness - 1
- Flox, smallpox, and measles - 1031
- French pox - 69
- Gangrene, fistula, and mortification - 36
- Gout and cramp - 15
- Grief - 5
- Griping in the Guts - 1004
- Headache - 1
- Head-mould-shot - 6
- Jaundice - 73
- Impostume - 59 (a festering boil or abscess)
- Lethargy - 5
- Livergrown - 11
- Looseness - 1
- Overlaid - 69 (this means that a baby sleeping in bed with a parent was accidentally smothered; liveforever adds that "This was also used as a euphemism when the child had clearly suffered infanticide (not uncommon in large families that couldn't feed another mouth).")
- Palsy - 31
- Pleurisy - 30
- Quinsie (an old word for a bad tonsillitis)- 10
- Rheumatism - 16
- Rickets - 393
- Rising of the lights - 101 (When I asked liveforever if he had any clue what this was, he replied, "well, nobody really knows. Seems everybody has a theory, but no hard facts to back it up. Me, I have this pet theory that it's beri-beri. As you know, that manifests as water being retained in the lower body, with increasing pain as the water rises towards the abdomen. The patient usually dies when it reaches the heart. Deficiency disease. However, some say that "lights" was an old term for the lungs. This might indicate some sort of lung disease. Perhaps a pulmonary embolus. Yet, from the records, it would seem to have mostly hit women who were new mothers. That might indicate some sort of postpartum illness. Perhaps postpartum depression? An unusual cause of death - I'd favour the pulmonary embolus, myself." nanoakron suggests that "your 'rising of the lights' in london deaths in 1700 may well be eclampsia - a condition of high blood pressure in mothers associated with fits and flashing lights...you never know.")
- Rupture - 18
- St. Anthony's Fire - 9
- Scarlet fever - 1
- Scurvy - 5
- Shingles - 1
- Sores and ulcers - 62
- Spleen - 3
- Spotted Fever and purples - 189
- Stoppage in the stomach - 320
- Strangury - 9
- Surfeit - 70
- Swelling in the neck - 1
- Teeth - 1159 (liveforever was kind enough to explain this one. "The consensus among researchers is that this (while it does include deaths due to bad teeth) for the most part covers children who have died following the emergence of their first milk teeth. The thing is, when children get their first milk teeth, their mothers generally tend to stop breast-feeding them (for obvious reasons). When that happens, the natural immunological boost received from breast milk is suddenly removed, which causes an elevated mortality. This hypothesis is supported by microhistorical studies of specific populations where death can be fairly precisely established. There is a mortality "spike" in the appropriate age group."
- Twisting of the guts - 2
- Vapours and water in the head - 7
- Vomiting - 15
- Worms - 53 (liveforever comments that ""worms" may
refer to what is also called a "worm fit". It's an old term for cramps associated with gastric problems, or in teething infants. The idea was that the cramps were caused by actual worms, rather than (as we would diagnose it today) dehydration/malnutrition.")
Casualties
Source: "A General Bill of all the
Christenings and
Burials, from the 19 of December
1699 to the 17 of December
1700, According to the Report made to the King His Most Excellent Majesty," reproduced in Maureen Waller's
1700: Scenes From London Life. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows,
2000.