Causes of death in London in 1632

by Ok-Adhesiveness1133

32 comments

  2. I’m not sure if I’d rather be murthered or murdered… which is a more pleasant death?

  3. Infants were particularly murderous in Victorian London. This was back when a straight razor was considered a good baby gift. Modern science proved that babies and razors are a bad mix.

  5. For anyone who’s interested in a definition for some of the more weird sounding ones:

    – Ague = feverish illness, often malaria
    – Apoplex = stroke (the rupture or clogging of a blood vessel in the brain), paralysis resulting from a stroke – sometimes also refers to other spontaneous causes of internal bleeding like burst aneurysms
    – Meagrom = migraine, severe headache – this obvious symptom could be deadly if it originated from things like a brain tumor, bleeding within the brain / stroke, concussion / TBI / swelling within the brain…
    – Bloody flux, scowring, flux = dysentery / bloody diarrhea or otherwise severe diarrhea, often from diseases like cholera
    – Childbed = death during or shortly after giving birth
    – Chrisomes = death of unbaptised infant / death of infant less than a month old
    – Colick, stone, and strangury = severe abdominal pain, bladder / kidney stones, rupture in abdomen (appendicitis, bladder rupture, etc)
    – Consumption = tuberculosis
    – Cut of the stone = died during/from the surgery to cut out bladder / kidney stones
    – Dropsie and swelling = edema, swelling of a body part
    – Falling sickness = epilepsy, seizures
    – Flocks and small pox = smallpox, other diseases causing pustules over the body like cowpox and chickenpox
    – French pox = syphilis
    – Jaundies = jaundice, yellowing of the skin and eyes often a symptom of liver failure
    – Jawfain = “jaw fallen” / lockjaw, often tetanus
    – Impostume = abscess, a deep infection full of pus
    – Killed by several accidents = essentially the “miscellaneous accident” category. For example one person got kicked by horse. Three fell off a roof. Two got ran over in the street. Just a mix of random accidents that year, total of 46 deaths but where the specifics weren’t worth listing.
    – King’s Evil = scrofula, aka tuberculosis infection of the neck glands. The touch of a king was said to cure this disease.
    – Lethargie = depression?
    – Livergrown = unknown, some think it might have been another term for rickets or it could be from diseases which resulted in a swollen, enlarged liver – things like chronic alcoholism, hepatitis, or congestive heart failure.
    – Made away themselves = suicide
    – Murthered = murdered
    – Over-laid = infant that died after being unintentionally smothered / parent rolled onto them while sleeping
    – Starved at nurse = insufficient breast milk, or the child had a disease that caused them to “fail to thrive” / not gain weight and die even though being fed
    – Palsie = palsy, paralysis or other muscle difficulties
    – Piles = hemorrhoids
    – Planet = aka planet-struck, any very sudden severe illness or paralysis that was thought to result from the “influence” of a planet. Like how the moon (luna) was once thought to cause insanity (creating lunatics).
    – Pleurisie = swollen, inflamed pleura – the membranous tissue surrounding the lungs
    – Purples = bruising, especially wide-spread – many causes
    – Spotted feaver = typhus or meningitis
    – Quinsie = tonsillitis / inflamed tonsils, especially when abscessed and obstructing breathing
    – Rising of the lights = as an organ meat, lungs are often called “lights” because they are very light-weight organs. Nobody’s sure about what exactly “rising of the lights” was, but it may be related to severe coughing and the perception that during a cough the lungs would rise up in the chest. Perhaps croup, a respiratory disease causing a severe ‘barking’ cough.
    – Suddenly = unknown sudden death
    – Surfet = overeating / gluttony, vomiting from overeating. Aside from direct “death from overeating” it may have been a grouping for many types of death that often went along with being overweight – death from untreated diabetes, cushing’s disease, heart failure, etc. “Surfet” also might have been the cause-of-death given if someone over drank, passed out, and died from aspirating their own vomit.
    – Teeth = dental infection leading to death
    – Thrush = yeast overgrowth / yeast infection of mouth (or genitals)
    – Tympany = either abdominal tumor growth, or other bloating / distension of the abdomen – especially when air or gas is caught within the abdomen or intestines, causing a hollow sound when thumped
    – Tissick = cough, can also refer to the coughing and wasting away of tuberculosis

  8. Since this comes up so often:

    – Chrisomes are cloths used during the baptism ceremony; here it refers to infants who died in their first month (before being baptised).
    – Consumption: TB
    – Impostume: infected abscesses
    – Jawfaln: lockjaw, tetanus
    – King‘s Evil: scrofula (TB of the throat)
    – Pleurisie: chest infections/pneumonia
    – Rising of the Lights: coughs like croup and pertussis
    – Overlaid and starved at nurse: baby didn’t attach to the breast to suckle breast milk and starved.
    – Wolf: Cancer „eating up“ a person

  12. Interesting that 62 people had the COVID vaccine back in 1632.

    Edit:I love that people are down voting this. 🤪

  21. Cant come into work today, got a bit of the King’s Evil.

  22. Well found it’s fascinating Ty
    Haven’t looked in the comments for what you think some are

  23. Teeth though urgh painful tiny and then boom dead

  26. Rising of the lights…? Planet? The King’s Evil?? (I mean i’m not saying he isn’t…)

    Mind you i was pretty sure i was going to die of piles this morning.

  28. “Cancer, and Wolf – 10”

    Damn, those 10 people really had a bad year. Or medieval doctors used to think cancer and wolf attacks had a similar pathology and lumped them in together.

  30. It’s exactly what would happen again if reform uk run the NHS

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