Stow recorded the remains of dead bodies found in Spitalfields in 1576 when the digging of a field revealed urns containing ashes, the ‘burnt bones of men of the Romans’, as well as many burials in churches and churchyards. In St Michael’s Church in Crooked Lane (the church was destroyed by the Great Fire and was rebuilt in 1687 by Sir Christopher Wren) Stow notes a number of London citizens buried including John Shrow, a fishmonger who died in 1487. His epitaph read:
Farewell, my friends, the tide abideth no man,
I am departed hence, and so shall ye.
But in this passage the real best song that I can,
Is requiem aternam, now Jesus grant it me:
When I have ended all mine advertise,
Grant me in Paradise to have a mansion,
That sheddest thy blood for my redemption.
When writing about the topic of chronicling the London dead the person of John Graunt (1620–74) must loom large in any discussion. Despite this, no significant biography has been written about the man who is considered by many historians to have founded the science of demography. The seventeenth-century writer John Aubrey (1629–97) includes Graunt in his collection of short biographical pieces, Brief Lives. Graunt was born to Henry and Mary Graunt at Birchin Lane, in the parish of St Michael in Cornhill. He married Mary Scott in 1641 and they had one son and three daughters, one of whom became a nun. Aubrey tells us that Captain (later Major) John Graunt was a ‘man generally beloved; a faythfull friend … He had an excellent working head, and was very facetious and fluent in his conversation’. Samuel Pepys thought Graunt’s ‘most excellent discourses well worth hearing’. Graunt would rise early in the morning to study. He had a good grasp of Latin and French, was an amateur scientist, wrote in shorthand, had an interest in art and by profession followed his father as a haberdasher of small wares. He served as Captain of the trained bands for several years, but was ‘putt out … for his religion,’ a reference to his conversion to Catholicism.
Commenting on the changes in London during the 1660s he noted that ‘the use of Coaches, whereunto the narrow streets of the old City are unfit, hath caused the building of those broader streets in Covent Garden, etc.’ Showing a similar concern to Evelyn regarding the light and air of London, Graunt reflected on the ‘cramming up of the … spaces, and gardens within the Walls, with houses, to the prejudice of Light, and Air, have made men Build new ones.’
It was in 1662 that Natural and Political Observations … made upon the Bills of Mortality (1662) was published. The Bills of Mortality were printed details of the numbers of people who died each week, classified according to the apparent cause of death. Graunt had no formal education but despite this he wrote his book which has to become a seminal work in demographic statistics. Commenting on Graunt’s book as well as the influence of William Petty, Aubrey wrote, ‘I beleeve, and partly know, that he had his hint from his intimate and familiar friend Sir William Petty … he intended, had he lived, to have writt more of the bills of the mortality; and also intended to have written something of religion’. The latter reference clearly stems from Aubrey’s comment that Graunt was, ‘bred-up (as the fashion then was) in the Puritan way’. As a young man in his twenties Graunt would have been influenced by Puritan ideas in London during the Civil War and period of Commonwealth. The exact timing of his move to ‘Roman Catholique, of which religion he dyed a great zealot’ is uncertain but it would have probably been during the first half of the 1660s, a conversion that clearly prejudiced him in some of the positions he held.
In Observations, Graunt reflected on the fluctuations in epidemics from one year to the next, particularly the plague, and the extent to which these had contributed to the number of deaths in London. The parish registers, introduced in 1538, recorded baptisms and burials. Graunt noted that the recording of the London statistics ‘first began in the year 1592,’ the year of a virulent epidemic. Over a seventy-year period – from 1592 to 1662 – the causes of death became the basis for Graunt’s analysis in which he examined the differences between city and rural areas, death rates between the sexes, infant mortality and life expectancy. He was clearly influenced by the work of Sir William Petty (1623–87), the economist, scientist and philosopher. Petty came to prominence under Oliver Cromwell during the Commonwealth whilst working in Ireland where he developed efficient methods for surveying land that was to be confiscated. Petty maintained his reputation after the Restoration and was knighted in 1661.
Graunt questioned, in the first edition of Observations, why he bothered to catalogue the patterns of illness and deaths ‘having (I know not by what accident) engaged my thoughts.’ Nonetheless he acknowledged that the bills contained valuable information and he drew a number of illuminating and important conclusions in which he condensed a great amount of material into ‘Tables and Deductions.’ Despite deficiencies in his work, such as the omission of some relevant information, he made a vital pioneering contribution to demographic study, drawing attention to details such as the higher mortality rate for males which he stated is evened out by the fact that more males are born than females. He gave a reasonable estimate of London’s population at 384,000 and noted the diversity of diseases as well as new trends in disease. He also dispelled some contemporary myths about the spread of plagues, notably that plagues always ‘come in with [a new] King’s Reigns.’ Graunt stressed that the ‘plague, a catastrophic illness’, was carried by ‘fleas that lived as parasites on rats’. Some of his other conclusions were:
That Autumn, or the Fall is the most unhealthfull season … That in London there have been twelve burials for eleven Christenings … That there are about six millions, and a half of people in England, and Wales … the people in, and about London, are a fifteenth part of the people of all England, and Wales … That about 6000 per Annum come up to London out of the Country … That in London about three die yearly out of eleven Families … Physicians have two Women Patients to one Man, and yet more Men die than Women … There come yearly to dwell at London about 6000 Strangers out of the Country, which swells the Burials about 200 per Annum … London not so healthfull now as heretofore.
Many historians have acknowledged Graunt’s use and creation of ‘life tables’ – the ways in which statistics on population and mortality could be presented on a chart – as his most original contribution to demography. This method allowed him to forecast the number of persons who would survive to each successive age and the life expectancy of the groups each successive year. The influence of his work on the Bills of Mortality was immediate and is reflected in the adoption of the registering of births and deaths in France and his membership to the Royal Society.
Many followed the path set down by Graunt in documenting the London dead as well as investigating, naming and analysing the causes of diseases. A pioneer in identifying the causes of mortality was London-born William Heberden (1710–1801). He studied the bills of mortality, tabulating causes of death according to categories, each containing a range of what now seem to us unusual diseases. Held in high regard by George III, Heberden became physician to Queen Charlotte in 1761. Another eminent medical statistician was William Farr (1807–83). Four years after the death of his first wife he remarried and moved to Stoke Newington. His reputation for compiling statistical articles for professional journals led to his being appointed Compiler of Abstracts at the General Register Office (now the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys). In this capacity he shaped the system of national statistics and clarified the naming of diseases on death certificates.
John Snow (1813–58) moved from York to London in 1836 to start his formal medical education. He became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1838, and was admitted to the Royal College of Physicians in 1850. Snow is best remembered for his investigation into the causes of Cholera and is considered to be one of the founders of epidemiology. When the general belief was that cholera was an airborne disease Snow rejected this ‘miasma’ theory and argued that the disease enter
ed the body through the mouth. He proved his theory in August 1854 following a cholera outbreak in Soho. Snow was also a pioneer in the field of anaesthetics. In April 1853, he was responsible for giving chloroform to Queen Victoria at the birth of her son Leopold.
London provided the material for many social commentators such as Henry Mayhew, London labour and the London poor (1851); Charles Booth, Labour and life of the people (1889); Blanchard Jarrold and Gustave Dore, London: A Pilgimage (1872); John Hollingshead, Ragged London in 1861; Andrew Mearns, The Bitter Cry of Outcast London: An Inquiry into the Condition of the Abject Poor (1883) and G.R. Sims, How the poor live (1889), Horrible London (1889). This is but a small sample among many writers who reflected on the social conditions which brought disease and death with them in what would now be described as the deprived parts of London.
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