**This weekly bill of mortality shows causes of death recorded during the week of 19th–26th September 1665, during the height of the Great Plague of London.**
**A total of 7,165 people in 126 parishes were proclaimed to have died of “Plague” — a number most historians believe to be low, considering how many people (Quakers, Anabaptists, Jews, and the very poor, among others) were not taken into account by the recording Anglicans.**
**Explanation for some of the more strangely named causes:**
*Spotted feaver* – most likely typhus or meningitis
*Planet* – referred to any illness thought to have been caused by the negative influence/position of one of the planets at the time (a similar astrological source lies behind the name Influenza, literally influence)
*Rising of the Lights* – a seventeenth-century term for any death associated with respiratory trouble (“lights” being a word for lungs)
*Griping in the guts + Stopping of the stomach* – used for deaths accompanied by gastrointestinal complaints
*Consumption* – tuberculosis
*Kingsevil* – tubercular swelling of the lymph glands which was thought to be curable by the touch of royalty
*Surfeit* – overindulgence in food or drink
*Dropsie* – edema
*Gowt* – gout
*Teeth* – babies who died while teething
*Chrisomes* – catch-all for children who died before they could talk
labels such as “*suddenly*”, “*frighted*”, and “*grief*” – speak of the often approximate nature of assigning a cause (not carried out by medical professionals but rather the “searchers”)
I give respects to the person who burned his bed with a a candle at Saint Giles Cripplegate.
I …… don’t understand a thing
Regarding “Winde”… Is it accurate to say that 3 people farted themselves to death in one week in 1665?… Based on my experiences with British cuisine, I’d say that’s *at least* 50% below a normal week…
How did he die?
Suddenly
…
That’s actually pretty sick.
Wait, this this happen in only one week or the whole of 1665?
I can’t unsee the bread part there in the end.
Gives a little bit of a Sweeney Todd vibe.
Be wary of confumption and convulfion, Phteven!
That’s a lot of disease-induced deaths.
Wait… someone was killed by a timpany?
Teeth like rotten teeth or getting bitten to death?
I’m surprised there’s no beatings or stabbings, with numbers this high. Guess it wasn’t a very violent week.
Teeth
Some of those are so r/oddlyspecific.
How’d you die?
Teeth
I too might die out of lethargy one day.
Death by truth.
Also childrens beds seem to be used as murder weapons with suspicious frequency.
If you could die from lethargy, I would have died decades ago
Wormes
43 for aging, wow what a nice time to be alive
Stopping of the ftomach
Also Childbed 42 per week, that’s a lot.
Teeth continues to be a problem, eh?
The difeafes and cafualties
> Infants – 16.
Beware the roaming gangs of infants going round killing people. It’s no joke.
This being England, 121 dying from “teeth” is very funny because of the stereotype :)+
Compare that to the deaths of the year after. I suspect there to be a large increase in death by fire
Absolute bullshit in the typhus department, 11 people, pure bullshit, that makes about 570 dead from typhus a year before John Snow in a city of 460,000. Those are absolutely rookie numbers.
*Stone*.
Two of them.
Well…I guess it’s possible. Did they eat one or get hit by one? Smaller chance to die of than plague though.
I am scared sitting next to a timpani right now
Oddly specific:
* Burnt in his Bed by a Candle at St. Giles Cripplegate
* Killed by a fall from the Belfrey at Allhllows the Great
Euphemisms:
* Grief
Explanation not required:
* Infants
Terrifying:
* Scurvy
* Flox and Small-pox
* Plague
*Really* terrifying:
* Stopping of the stomach
* Teeth
* Wormes
* Kingsevil
31 comments
**This weekly bill of mortality shows causes of death recorded during the week of 19th–26th September 1665, during the height of the Great Plague of London.**
**A total of 7,165 people in 126 parishes were proclaimed to have died of “Plague” — a number most historians believe to be low, considering how many people (Quakers, Anabaptists, Jews, and the very poor, among others) were not taken into account by the recording Anglicans.**
**Explanation for some of the more strangely named causes:**
*Spotted feaver* – most likely typhus or meningitis
*Planet* – referred to any illness thought to have been caused by the negative influence/position of one of the planets at the time (a similar astrological source lies behind the name Influenza, literally influence)
*Rising of the Lights* – a seventeenth-century term for any death associated with respiratory trouble (“lights” being a word for lungs)
*Griping in the guts + Stopping of the stomach* – used for deaths accompanied by gastrointestinal complaints
*Consumption* – tuberculosis
*Kingsevil* – tubercular swelling of the lymph glands which was thought to be curable by the touch of royalty
*Surfeit* – overindulgence in food or drink
*Dropsie* – edema
*Gowt* – gout
*Teeth* – babies who died while teething
*Chrisomes* – catch-all for children who died before they could talk
labels such as “*suddenly*”, “*frighted*”, and “*grief*” – speak of the often approximate nature of assigning a cause (not carried out by medical professionals but rather the “searchers”)
All info copied from source: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/londons-dreadful-visitation-bills-of-mortality/
I give respects to the person who burned his bed with a a candle at Saint Giles Cripplegate.
I …… don’t understand a thing
Regarding “Winde”… Is it accurate to say that 3 people farted themselves to death in one week in 1665?… Based on my experiences with British cuisine, I’d say that’s *at least* 50% below a normal week…
How did he die?
Suddenly
…
That’s actually pretty sick.
Wait, this this happen in only one week or the whole of 1665?
I can’t unsee the bread part there in the end.
Gives a little bit of a Sweeney Todd vibe.
Be wary of confumption and convulfion, Phteven!
That’s a lot of disease-induced deaths.
Wait… someone was killed by a timpany?
Teeth like rotten teeth or getting bitten to death?
I’m surprised there’s no beatings or stabbings, with numbers this high. Guess it wasn’t a very violent week.
Teeth
Some of those are so r/oddlyspecific.
How’d you die?
Teeth
I too might die out of lethargy one day.
Death by truth.
Also childrens beds seem to be used as murder weapons with suspicious frequency.
If you could die from lethargy, I would have died decades ago
Wormes
43 for aging, wow what a nice time to be alive
Stopping of the ftomach
Also Childbed 42 per week, that’s a lot.
Teeth continues to be a problem, eh?
The difeafes and cafualties
> Infants – 16.
Beware the roaming gangs of infants going round killing people. It’s no joke.
This being England, 121 dying from “teeth” is very funny because of the stereotype :)+
Compare that to the deaths of the year after. I suspect there to be a large increase in death by fire
Absolute bullshit in the typhus department, 11 people, pure bullshit, that makes about 570 dead from typhus a year before John Snow in a city of 460,000. Those are absolutely rookie numbers.
*Stone*.
Two of them.
Well…I guess it’s possible. Did they eat one or get hit by one? Smaller chance to die of than plague though.
I am scared sitting next to a timpani right now
Oddly specific:
* Burnt in his Bed by a Candle at St. Giles Cripplegate
* Killed by a fall from the Belfrey at Allhllows the Great
Euphemisms:
* Grief
Explanation not required:
* Infants
Terrifying:
* Scurvy
* Flox and Small-pox
* Plague
*Really* terrifying:
* Stopping of the stomach
* Teeth
* Wormes
* Kingsevil
“We have no clue”:
* Suddenly