PAPERS READ at the 47Th LAMAS LOCAL HISTORY CONFERENCE HELD at the MUSEUM of LONDON in NOVEMBER 2012: ‘A CAPITAL WAY to GO: DEATH in LONDON THROUGH the AGES’
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
PAPERS READ AT THE 47th LAMAS LOCAL HISTORY CONFERENCE HELD AT THE MUSEUM OF LONDON IN NOVEMBER 2012: ‘A CAPITAL WAY TO GO: DEATH IN LONDON THROUGH THE AGES’ THE HISTORY OF MORTALITY IN seeing whether the first same-name child is LONDON, 1550—1850 registered or not. This is illustrated by the family of Samuel and Sarah Fowler, where Peter Razzell there were three first same-name children, Traditionally, London has been seen as an only two of which were registered in the burial over-crowded, squalid city, full of manure register. This represents an omission rate of and sewerage, and ravaged by infection one third, allowing the establishment of a and disease. It has been characterised as a correction ratio for under-registered deaths. ‘mortality sink’, with mortality so severe as Research was carried out on 18 London to require constant in-migration to replace parishes using same-name correction ratios. population lost through an excessively high Families were reconstructed by tracing the death rate. In this lecture I challenge this baptisms and burials occurring in individual picture, and present evidence to show that families, and the data were based on Boyd’s London’s mortality history was much more Inhabitants of London. The results of this varied and complex than this traditional research indicate that infant mortality rose image. sharply amongst all families in the periods The major problem with research on 1539—99 and 1700—49. This occurred amongst the history of mortality is the reliability the total sample and in elite wealthy families, of evidence. William Ogle, the late 19th- with mortality approximately tripling. By the century Registrar-General, estimated that at first half of the 18th century nearly 60% of least 44% of all burials were missing in the children died under the age of five, which London Bills of Mortality in the 18th century. is what gave London its reputation as a Research on a number of sources indicates mortality sink. However, only about 32% of that between a fifth and a third of all deaths such young children had died in the 16th were missing from burial registers, with a century, and mortality fell after the middle similar proportion of missing births. One of of the 18th century to about 25% by 1800— the best ways of measuring the reliability of 49. These lower figures were approximately parish registers is the ‘same-name method’, similar to what occurred nationally in whereby the name of a dead child was given England, suggesting that London in the 16th to a subsequent sibling. The reliability of and early 19th century was not an especially parish registers can then be checked by unhealthy and mortal place. 261 262 Papers read at LAMAS Local History Conference held at the Museum of London November 2012 Adult mortality was very high in London humoral theory, including a prohibition of during the period 1600—1749, with nearly a bathing in hot water. Travel, wet-nursing, and half of fathers of men and women marrying infection transmitted by servants and others under the age of 21 dead by the date of the also probably contributed to the relative marriage. This mortality fell after the middle lack of a social class gradient in disease and of the 18th century, reducing to about 29% mortality in London during the 17th, 18th by 1840—49. Adult mortality fell earlier and and 19th centuries. more rapidly in rural areas. There appears We can only speculate on the reasons for to have been little difference in this type of the sharp increase in infant and child mort- mortality amongst the rich and poor. This ality in the 17th and early 18th centuries. It is is reflected in the absence of significant probable that the fatality of certain diseases mortality differences between wealthy West increased as a result of the importation End and poor East End parishes in the of more virulent strains of infection with period 1838—44, when Registrar-General’s the growth of world trade. For example, data become available. smallpox killed less than 5% of children This surprising absence of a correlation attacked in London during the late 16th between poverty and mortality requires century, whereas by the late 19th century it additional research for further clarification. killed about 45%. Undoubtedly, London’s However, it is likely that the ‘hazards of squalid environment was partly responsible wealth’ – an excessive consumption of rich for the high mortality in the 18th century, foods and strong alcohol, and the absence but mortality is the result of an interaction of physical activity – are partly responsible of disease and environment, and even where for the relatively high mortality amongst the the environment is very unhygienic, in the wealthy. Also responsible for the high adult absence of disease mortality will be low. This mortality among the rich was the medical can be illustrated with recent experience in treatment they received from physicians – Haiti, where in spite of a highly impoverished bleeding with contaminated lancets, excessive environment, there was an absence of cholera, purging and other practices derived from which only became prevalent when the Fig 1. ‘Drunk and Alive, the man was thine. But dead and drunk why he is mine’ Papers read at LAMAS Local History Conference held at the Museum of London November 2012 263 disease was introduced by Nepalese soldiers different forms of memorialisation, such as working for the United Nations. Likewise, the temporary wooden markers and memorial bubonic plague entered England in the 14th stones over churchyard graves, and a rich century and disappeared from the country variety of ledger stones, sculptures, tomb in the 17th, in spite of no significant change chests, incised slabs and monumental brasses in environmental conditions. which celebrate the lives of the dead in many There were probably a number of factors in of our parish churches and cathedrals.1 This the reduction of infant and child mortality in short summary will look at the evidence for London after the middle of the 18th century: memory and commemoration in London inoculation and vaccination against smallpox, from the 12th century to c.1540. In this the use of colostrun in breast-feeding, period the City contained over 100 parish improved childrearing – for example the churches, 40 or so religious houses, such as abandonment of swaddling, better hygiene, friaries and monasteries, and the old Gothic including the introduction of washable cathedral of St Paul’s. All were repositories cottons, and the general improvement of the for the dead. environment associated with the introduction Much of this commemorative heritage of the Improvement Acts. was lost through natural wear and tear and The reasons for the reduction of adult accidental damage, church rebuilding and mortality in the 18th century are very un- development, together with deliberate acts clear. As it appears to have occurred amongst of destruction. The latter was particularly all socio-economic groups and in all areas of apparent during the Reformation when the country, it probably was the result of a many of London’s religious houses, such reduction in the virulence of adult diseases. as the White Friars in Fleet Street, were The less radical and slower reduction in closed and converted into secular buildings. London may have been the result of its Elsewhere, changes in the parish structure squalid environment, which only improved led to City churches, such as St Nicholas significantly after the middle of the 18th Shambles, being closed and amalgamated century. to form new communities, and as a result In conclusion, although London was a of this, their commemorative landscape was very unhealthy city in certain periods, in swept away. Other parish churches suffered the late 16th and early 19th centuries its the loss of their fixtures and features as the mortality levels were very similar to those ‘stripping of the altars’ gained momentum. of the country as a whole. Its reputation as The Edwardian inventory accounts of a mortality sink is therefore only partly des- 1552/53 reveal the sale of vestments, altar erved, and it required the importation of cloths, chalices and ‘latten’, including the virulent strains of infection for it to become brass plates, from gravestones. At All Hallows the fatal place it was in the middle of the 18th London Wall, for example, 30 pounds of century. The disappearance of these diseases metal, taken from the gravestones, was sold was probably partly the result of medical and to Christopher Stubbs for 7s 6d (Walters other interventions, but the random flow of 1939, 118). Efforts to protect the memory exogenous disease virulence was also central of the dead were made by the Elizabethan to London’s mortality history. government in 1560 when a proclamation was issued forbidding the ‘breaking or defacing THE WRITTEN EVIDENCE FOR any parcel of any monument, or tomb, or MEMORY AND COMMEMORATION IN grave, or other inscription and memory of MEDIEVAL LONDON any person deceased’ (Hughes & Larkin 1964—9, ii, 146). For a while this seems to Christian Steer have worked. But later, during the Civil War, there was further loss and in London there The commemoration of the dead is an im- is evidence that inscriptions were censored portant act of remembrance and a celebration and the offending texts removed: the brass of life, as well as a reflection upon death. for the mercer Christopher Rawson (d 1518) This manifests itself in funerary monuments and his two wives at All Hallows Barking by which, over the centuries, have adopted many the Tower shows where the request to ‘pray 264 Papers read at LAMAS Local History Conference held at the Museum of London November 2012 for the soul’ has been scratched out together can reasonably be taken to mean incised with the exhortation ‘on whose soul may slabs and monumental brasses: the Grey God have mercy’.