The Bills of Mortality
Sorry for the radio silence, guys - still getting Sleepwalker ready.
So I've thinking about possible sequels. At present I'm engaged in the ghoulish occupation of sacking and rifling the past for occasions (and indeed juxtapositions) of high drama that can inspire my next move. Enter bubonic plague.
One of the things that I read recently to this end was London's Plague Years: Lord Have Mercy On Us by Stephen Porter. I'd picked it up in trade paperbook in the bookshop in Old Street station. It's a fascinating subject and the figures were all explained in exhaustive detail, but I couldn't help but feel that it could have done with a few broader remarks about the history of the period to contextualise the plague for the general reader. For instance, there is reference to the impact of the plague on the Civil War, but not so much about what living through the Civil War was like with the added annoyance of the plague. Perhaps the assumption is that the reader should already know a sufficient amount about the period, but this reader frequently found herself lost.
That said, it is interspersed with frequent and lively contemporary accounts of events, and seemed meticulously researched. I'd recommend it to anyone interested in the subject.
But its primary charm, if that's the right word, was the reproduction of the Bills of Mortality. These were civil service reports drawn up by the parishes in plague years reporting who died of what. It became compulsory to compile them whenever the number plague dead became higher than a certain amount.
However, the Bills themselves open up a fascinating window into what death looked like to people three and a half centuries ago, when one could die of "lethargy", "surfeit", or a "rising of the lights". (If one could die of either lethargy or surfeit, I'm a little puzzled as to why I'm still alive, but no matter). Reading through the rich, pithy descriptions I find that as a writer I'm enchanted by their muscular, no-nonsense language, before having to remind myself that real people were dying of these causes, being buried, being mourned (spawning more deaths even - there is a figure given for those who have died of "grief" or "hangd and made away themfelves").
I've transcribed the 1665 Bill from the Institute of Historical Research site just to give a flavour of what I mean. I've resisted the temptation to regularise the archaic spellings, which in their inconsistency also suggest something about the times.
Finally, to get a true sense of the scope and terror of Bubonic Plague, check out the figure next to "Plague" below. And then remember that plague was traditionally underreported in these things, as walling up the infected was difficult, dangerous, spread panic, and cost the parish money:
Cause of Death
Number Dead
Abortive and Stilborne
617
Aged
1545
Ague and Feaver
5257
Appoplex and Suddenly
116
Bedrid
10
Blafted
5
Bleeding
16
Bloody Flux, Scowring & Flux
185
Calenture
3
Cancer, Gangrene and Fiftula
56
Canker, and Thrufh
111
Childbed
625
Chrifomes and Infants
1258
Cold and Cough
68
Collick and Winde
134
Confumption and Tiffick
4808
Convultion and Mother
2036
Diftracted
5
Dropfie and Timpany
1478
Drowned
50
Executed
21
Flox and Small Pox
655
Found dead in ftreets, fields, & c.
20
French Pox
86
Frighted
23
Gout and Sciatica
27
Grief
46
Griping in the Guts
1288
Hangd & made away themfelves
7
Headmouldshot & Mouldfallen
14
Jaundies
110
Impoftume
227
Kild by feverall accidents
46
Kings Evill
86
Leprofie
2
Lethargy
14
Livergrown
20
Meagrom and Headach
12
Meafles
7
Murthered and Shot
9
Overlaid & Starved
45
Palfie
30
Plague
68596
Plannet
6
Plurifie
15
Poyfoned
1
Quinfie
35
Rickets
557
Rifing of the Lights
397
Rupture
34
Scurvy
105
Shingles and Swine pox
2
Sores, Ulcers, broken and bruifed Limbs
82
Spleen
14
Spotted Feaver and Purples
1929
Stopping of the ftomack
332
Stone and Strangury
98
Surfet
1251
Teeth and Worms
2614
Vomiting
51
Vvenh (?)
5
Currently Reading: The Scarlet Petal And The White by Michel Faber