Blog

God's Terrible Voice in the City: New England Connections to the Bills of Mortality

by Dan Howlett
2022-08-29
context

God’s Terrible Voice in the City by Thomas Vincent describes the disastrous judgments of plague and fire that devastated London in 1665-1666. Today, two different editions of this work appear in the collections of Early English Books Online and Evans Early American Imprint Collection, the former published in London in 1667 and the latter published in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1668. The American publication of a book on a London disaster shows how a religious culture of providentialism- the belief that God cast down supernatural favor and punishment on the world- stretched across the Atlantic in the early modern English world (See Kierner, Inventing Disaster for more).

Chimneys and the Great Storm of 1703

by Katie Kania, Jessica Otis
2022-08-16
analysis

In late November of 1703, a “great storm” or hurricane struck the British Isles. Bad weather began a few days before the heart of the storm made landfall on November 26th, spawning tornadoes, ripping off roofs and chimneys, and destroying entire fleets. One of the most famous tragedies of the storm happened on the Goodwin Sands, a deadly sandbank off the coast of Kent. At least 53 ships were wrecked on the sandbank and over 2,000 men died just six miles from safety.

Early Modern London Shapefiles

by Jessica Otis
2022-08-01
announcements

The 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

Old Age and Aged Deaths

by Kayleigh Seng, Jessica Otis
2022-07-18
analysis

The 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.

Recent Posts

Death by Words: Textual Geography of Suicides, Drownings and Killings in the Bills of Mortality Hernan Adasme · 2024-09-26
Ambiguous Bills and Anonymous Commentators: Reflections on My Experience Transcribing the Bills of Mortality Lazlo Taba · 2024-09-10
A Deadly Decade: Yearly Plague Spikes in Early Modern London between 1638-1647 Hernan Adasme · 2024-08-28
A Woman's Touch on the Bills of Mortality Luz Adriana Giraldo Mueller · 2024-06-10
Who Counts? Religion, Inclusion, and Exclusion in the Bills of Mortality Jessica Otis · 2024-05-23

Post Tags

1665-1670 (1) adasme (6) age (1) background (8) brett (5) bukovich (2) data (2) database (2) defoe (1) disasters (3) food (3) geography (8) gis (1) grief (1) hammond (1) heppler (2) howlett (4) journal-of-the-plague-year (1) kania (5) metadata (3) meyers (5) mitchell (2) monarchical-bills (2) mueller (1) old-bailey (1) omeka (1) otis (14) pedagogy (1) plague (1) printing (2) providence (1) religion (1) scott (1) seng (1) shuman (1) taba (1) time (1) time-to-event-analysis (1) transcription (3) tropy (2) visualization (6) ward (3) weather (1) women (1)

Post Categories

analysis (14) announcements (5) context (14) workflows (7)