Early Modern London Shapefiles
by
Jessica Otis
2022-08-01The team is excited to announce that shapefiles for 17th and 18th century London are now available on our GitHub: https://github.com/chnm/bom/tree/main/parish-shapefiles
Blog
Old Age and Aged Deaths
by
Kayleigh Seng, Jessica Otis
2022-07-18The London Bills of Mortality were originally and primarily focused on deaths from plague, however they very quickly expanded to include other causes of death as well. From accidents and drownings to measles and smallpox, the printed bills included citywide summary statistics—rather than parish-by-parish breakdowns—for each week. While we can therefore learn a fair amount about causes of death throughout the city, very little information can be gleaned from the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century bills about the age at which people died.
The Parish Clerks' memento mori: Iconography of Death and trademark in The London Bills of Mortality, 1727-1752
by
Hernán Adasme
2022-07-05In the fourth week of 1727 the habitual readers of the Bills of Mortality noticed something different in the most recent bill. The bill printed on Thursday January 9th showcased a border of skulls and crossed-bones framing the death counts in both the verso and the recto.1 The artwork of the skull was fairly simple: a bike-seat-like cranium slightly bent to the right, with triangular nostrils, three ovals as eyes and mouth, and two crossed-bones at the bottom.
Strangled himself (being distracted): Messy Data and Suicides in the Bills of Mortality
by
Emily Meyers
2022-06-20Content Warning: This post contains subject matter that some may find sensitive or disturbing, be advised. If uncomfortable with this topic, you may support Death By Numbers in other posts. This blog post will be a bit different than a few of our previous posts. Now that we have discussed our project workflow, we are going to begin to discuss the content of the Bills themselves. One thing that we immediately noticed on beginning this project is that suicides are reported on the Bills in a variety of ways that lead to more questions than answers regarding the weekly suicide rate in London.
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Infant Mortality In The Monarchical Bills of Mortality, 1665-1669
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