Archive for children

I am ‘fully persuaded that many lives would be saved’: Children falling from windows then and now

Posted in Accident, Bills of Mortality, Newspapers, Uncategorized with tags , on 13/08/2025 by Craig Spence

On 13 August 2025, BBC News reported the publication of a report by the UK’s NHS-funded National Child Mortality Database. The quote above is not, however, taken from that report. It is, in fact, from a letter sent to The Gentleman’s Magazine in January 1751. The anonymous letter writer expressed concerns for childhood deaths that occurred through accidental falls from windows and burns from stoves. Despite the nearly three hundred years that separate the report, the letter, and the deaths they encompass the circumstances remain tragically alike.

Between 1655 and 1735, the Bills of Mortality reported that 209 people died after falling accidentally from windows. The number of others who were injured but survived after such events is not known. Given the severity of injuries often sustained in falls from height, however, it is likely that most falls during the period proved fatal.

The sense one gets from reading associated evidence is that women and children were at particular risk. To give some examples, in late April 1657, a girl named Penelope Bayley fell from a window and died in Dorset Garden in St Bride’s parish south of Fleet Street.

The London Archives: P69/BRI/A/005/ MS06540/001 (5 May 1657)

Also in late April, but this time in 1673, a child named William Pen died after falling out of a window in the City of London parish of St Katherine Cree.

The London Archives: P69/KAT2/A/001/MS07889/001 (2 May 1673)

In the parish of St Mary Newington in Southwark, a girl was reported, in the Bill of Mortality of 22nd October 1706, to have fallen from a window and died. While the parish register does not provide a cause of death, it is likely to have been Mary Austwick, daughter of William Austwick, who was buried on 24 October of that year.

In a final example, evidence is derived from a contemporary newspaper, the Original Weekly Journal. In December 1717, it reported the death in the parish of St Giles in the Fields of an unnamed ‘poor woman’ who ‘throwing a pail of water out of the window of her lofty tenement, unhappily fell out herself’.

The BBC article notes the observation of Dr Noelle Mottershead, paediatric consultant at Manchester Royal Infirmary, that more children with window fall-related injuries presented in the first half of 2025 than usual. The implication is made that the exceptionally hot spring weather was to blame. This is a well-placed observation, as across the 75 years of Bills of Mortality evidence, the peak season for window fall fatalities was the spring, while the peak month was May (27 reports). Although detailed weather information is not available for the early modern period, it is clear that seasonally warmer days accompanied by ‘spring cleaning’ and associated maintenance activities likely encouraged the opening of windows that, in the preceding winter months, had been kept firmly shut.

There is yet another unsettling parallel between the concerns of the anonymous author of the 1751 letter and modern-day incidents: building technology. The letter in The Gentleman’s Magazine noted that ‘It is well known that many families in London are obliged to live upstairs, one, two or three stories … we hear of dreadful accidents by children falling through the windows, or by the sashes being lifted open, and the unhappy young things left (by carelessness) to gaze at … something’ falling out.

Sashes were a relatively new form of window in the early 18th century, though by mid-century they had become a common design element in newly constructed buildings across the metropolis. The author of the letter goes on to suggest fixing the lower sash in place and opening the upper would hinder many accidental falls, effectively proposing the functional equivalent of modern window restrictors.

Whether 300 years ago or today, children falling to their deaths from poorly designed, faulty, or improperly operated windows remains a concern. Contributing factors include the need for ventilation in poorly designed accommodation, especially during periods of hotter weather, and lapses in appropriate maintenance actions. Also, it is clear that while status might not be considered relevant in all cases, whether then or now, social deprivation remains a critical driver of many events.

Such deaths were, for the most part, avoidable then. Such deaths should be avoidable now. As the anonymous letter writer of 1751 observed, by the application of some simple measures, they were ‘fully persuaded that many lives would be saved’.

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This week in 1728: Falling out of windows and into gin!

Posted in Accident, Bills of Mortality with tags , , , on 05/03/2012 by Craig Spence

As reported by the LondonBills of Mortality for the week of 5th March 1728:

1 bruised by a fall from a window at St Katherine Coleman;
1 found dead at St George the Martyr [Southwark];
1 found in the River of Thames, a boy unknown, buried at St Olave Southwark;
1 scalded in a distillers copper, a young man, at St James Clerkenwell.

A small but interesting group of fatalities from this first week of March in 1728. Falls from buildings, and especially windows, tended to occur disproportionately often during this first quarter of the year throughout the later 17th and early 18th centuries. Perhaps the first glimpses of warmer weather enticed people to open windows previously kept firmly shut against the colder weather, or maybe it just represents the recommencement of construction activity after the winter ‘break’.

Although adults were often found washed up on the shores of the Thames it was rarer to encounter the body of a child. Whether such fatalities were suicides, accident or murder victims was hard to tell, in this case however the first category might be fairly safely omitted. Finally the young man scalded to death was most likely a distiller’s (or brewer’s) servant or possibly apprentice. Just goes to show that it wasn’t only the consumers of gin who suffered early deaths but, as on this occasion, it could also be the manufacturers.

Hogarth’s ‘Gin Alley’ engraving of 1751 depicts the detrimental affects of gin but in this case on the consumers not the producers. We will return to this, and other of Hogarth’s works, in future posts as they often feature aspects of violent death in the metropolis.

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Boys will be boys as they venture onto thin ice

Posted in Accident, Bills of Mortality, Newspapers with tags , , on 29/01/2012 by Craig Spence

As reported by the London Bills of Mortality for the week of 31st January 1721:

1 found dead at St Margaret Westminster
1 hanged himself being distracted at St Andrew Holborn
2 drowned in a pond by the breaking of the ice at St Leonard Shoreditch
1 killed with a sword at St Brides Fleet Street and buried at St Anne Blackfriars

The Bills report the deaths of two drowned in a pond in the semi-rural parish of St Leonard Shoreditch, clearly the weather was wintery as the two in question died after the ice they were on broke plunging them into the freezing water. The register of St Stephen Coleman Street records one of these deaths when it noted the burial on 6 February 1721 of ‘Aron Peter drowned in a pond of water by the sudden breaking of the ice where on he was sliding.’

Contemporary newspapers, such as  Applebee’s Original Weekly Journal and the Weekly Journal or Saturday’s Post, support the Bills of Mortality by making it clear that Aron did not die alone. The newspapers report ‘two boys, whose parents lives in Swan Alley, Coleman Street’ … ‘were drowned in the pond behind the Haberdashers Alms-House, the ice breaking under them as they were sliding on it’. With only one burial noted in the parish register of St Stephen Coleman Street it suggests that these boys were more likely friends and neighbours rather than brothers.

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