The Bills of Mortality & Sudden Violent Death

As reported by the London weekly Bills of Mortality for the week of 2nd January 1655:

1 Drowned at St Katherine by the Tower;
1 killed by a bull at St Saviours Southwark;
murdered – an infant found in the street at St John the Evangelist;
1 scalded to death in a brewer’s kettle at St Botolph Bishopsgate;
1 slain at St Andrew Holborn.

Clearly the most notable of these fatalities are the persons killed by a bull and scalded in a brewer’s kettle. The bull incident was actually quite a rare occurrence; during the period 1654 to 1735 only twenty-two people were killed by cattle within the area of the Bills. Given that somewhere in the region of 90,000 live cattle passed through the London markets each year during this period the death toll seems relatively light considering the number of workers and passersby who might have been exposed to the animals. Perhaps people were careful to stay out of their way – most of the time? The brewing fatality was however a relatively more common incident, the heady mix of alcohol, boiling liquids and industrial processes actually resulted in the small number of brewery workers being exposed to a higher risk of fatal accident than many other metropolitan occupations.

This entry was posted on 07/01/2012 at 9:18 pm and is filed under Accident, Bills of Mortality, Murder, Uncategorized with tags animals, brewing, drowning, infant, scalded. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.