London weekly bills of mortality, 1644-1849

DOI

This dataset comprises enumerations relating to London burials (and baptisms) transcribed from 9,950 extant Weekly Bills of Mortality from 1644 to 1849. Each Bill comprises four main sections containing different types of information for that week: 1) counts - the number of persons buried, dying of plague or christened weekly in each parish from 1644 to 1849. 2) ages - the number of dead persons in all parishes together in each of circa twelve age groups weekly from 1729 to 1849. 3) cods - the number of dead persons in all parishes together ascribed to particular causes of death, ie each 'disease or casualty', weekly from 1644 to 1845. 4) bread - the weight of bread of several types sold at a standard price in London, weekly from 1644 to 1815.These weekly data on London burials, baptisms, causes of death and bread prices were compiled as part of a research programme exploring long-run changes in England's mortality regime. Today, life expectancy is higher in urban rather than rural areas, but early modern towns and cities were demographic sinks with extraordinarily high mortality, especially among the young and migrants who were essential for city growth. The project investigated how and when cities transformed from urban graveyards into promoters of health between 1600 and 1945. The process of endemicisation and exogenous disease variation is key to the evolution of both urban and non-urban mortality regimes, especially with respect to: infectious diseases among the young, maternal health and adult migrants and their health/immunological status.

Every post-1644 extant Weekly Bill of Mortality for London that could be accessed was transcribed by Goldsmith from originals photographed at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, London Metropolitan Archive, British Library, Wellcome Library, or from microfiche held at Cambridge University Library, depending on availability (scattered earlier Weekly Bills exist but do not form a complete series and were not transcribed).

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.5255/UKDA-SN-854104
Metadata Access https://datacatalogue.cessda.eu/oai-pmh/v0/oai?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_ddi25&identifier=790c004db8b811724a65af185fd019e506332cdec5b71c931097958852d7b744
Provenance
Creator Smith, R, University of Cambridge; Davenport, R, University of Cambridge; Newton, G, University of Cambridge
Publisher UK Data Service
Publication Year 2020
Funding Reference Wellcome Trust
Rights Richard Smith, University of Cambridge. Romola Davenport, University of Cambridge. Gill Newton, University of Cambridge; The Data Collection is available to any user without the requirement for registration for download/access. Commercial Use of data is not permitted.
OpenAccess true
Representation
Resource Type Numeric; Text
Discipline Economics; History; Humanities; Social and Behavioural Sciences
Spatial Coverage London; United Kingdom