The Bills of Mortality & Sudden Violent Death

As reported by the London Bills of Mortality for the week of 23rd January 1672:

2 killed; one at St Martinin the Fields, one at St Margaret Westminster;
1 by excessive drinking at St Olave Southwark;
1 broken leg;
A women burnt being drunk in St Paul Shadwell;
1 by a fall from a scaffold in St Giles without Cripplegate;
1 burnt at St Paul Covent Garden.

This account of sudden death from London’s teeming streets in 1672 is actually fairly typical. The use of the term ‘killed’ within the Bills of Mortality is not particularly helpful in describing the actual cause of death but a wider reading of the records suggest the use of this phrase was most often associated with those accidentally killed during casual violence; in other words various forms of manslaughter.

As for the role of alcohol as an agent of death the specific noting of those who died by ‘excessive drinking’ clearly had moralising overtones. Noting the drunken state of the woman who (in all probability) fell into the fire in the riverside parish of Shadwell perhaps represents a more direct attempt to evoke a salutary lesson while warning of the evils of drink.

This entry was posted on 22/01/2012 at 5:15 pm and is filed under Accident, Bills of Mortality with tags alcohol, burnt, killed, scaffold. 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.