Ways of Dying in 1665

Mine was second hand on Amazon - about £6 I think, but it's a 'good clean copy' as they say, and I don't think it's got any silverfish...

It's £25 on Amazon, but I bought a second hand copy for £3.15.

Gosh - had no idea the Old Bailey records were online!

Have just been randomly looking at records. Found this one, from a list of final words by criminals about to be hanged at Tyburn on 18 December 1691. Absolutely tragic:

IV. Mary Mott, Condemned for killing her Male Bastard Child, she said, that he who begat it, promised her Marriage: When she was quick with Child, she sent him notice of it, but he ran away, and took no Care of her, so distrusting Gods Providence how she should maintain the Child, she put it up in a Basket, and exposed it in a Gutter, to starving. She said that she had an hard cruel heart, for which she now Relents, as also, for Sabbath breaking, for Drunkenness, and the frequent neglect of Prayer and all other Religious Dutys.

And moments before she was actually hanged:

Mary Mott, was seemingly very Penitent, Crying out for Pardoning Mercy from God; for so bloody a Fact, as the Murther of the Innocent Child; but being overwhelmed with Grief, she could not express her sorrow for her sins, and particularly for that for which she Dyed.

Makes you very grateful for all the support single, unmarried mothers of "bastard children" can access these days.

Am loving this thread - and have not read through to the end - yet . I've jumped ahead to ask y'all - where on earth are you finding the Faber Book of Reportage ? I can only find 2nd hand copies, and I hate buying 2nd hand over the internet after I managed to introduce a load to silverfish to my beloved books and had to borrow a spare freezer to get rid...

I had Scarlett Fever when I was about 6/7, so early seventies. If I remember rightly the skin on my hands peeled off. (though I have also had Chicken Pox, and Measles so could of been one of them)

I'm old enough to remember our physics teacher demonstrating the properties of mercury by rolling little balls of it around on her desk.

fascinating terrifying thread

Which has just given a great hypothesis on why sleeping under them was seen as such a bad idea (as they apparently sucked your soul away), you fell asleep, mouth open, a yew needle would drop in, causing you to gasp and choke and presumably die very quickly but with no discernable cause to whoever found you. Possibly.

I had Scarletina in the 70's.I remember being very hot but not much else.

My dad used to use Mercury on the farm,to treat seed corn with.He reckons he used to mix it up in a huge tub and plunge his arms in up to the elbows.Apparently it dyes your skin red.He is nearly 74 now,which is a miracle really.

DH says his dad used to bring Mercury home from work for him and his sisters to play with.

Yew is absolutely deadlyeven in tiny amounts,it kills so fast that animals poisoned with it often still have it in their mouths when they drop down dead.I think it kills within minutes and there is no antidote.You can try a charcoal drench if you catch the animal really,really quickly and it has only ingested a small amount,but generally you'll be too late.

Saggar - my local workhouse had a scandal where one of the inmates had a baby fathered by the workhouse master. He managed to hush it up long enough to get another job at a workhouse the other side of the country and had vamoosed by the time it came out.

Fanjo in the 17th century my old college used to own a cabinet of curiosities which included 'Bishop King's gallstones, mounted in silver.' I've never thought of the danger of the operation as a factor in why these things were kept as curiosities but it makes sense - if you survived the operation then they sort of evoke good luck (or divinely ordained survival), don't they?

Hahahaha

So it couldn't be HG because she coughed/threw up blood. I guess that was surmised by a man someone who'd never had HG.

Great idea btw.

My only interesting disease is hyperemesis gravidarum. There is a view that it was that that killed Charlotte Bronte. I once read a learned paper that opined it couldn't possibly have been HG because she coughed up blood and mere morning sickness doesn't make you do that. Oh how I laughed.

Ah, Saggarmakersbottomknocker. Welcome to the thread. Thanks to your splendid name I know what a saggar maker's bottom knocker is.

I think these disease names should be brought back into use and instead of posting on Mumsnet about our child's asthma we should say 'my dc has rising of the lights' and discuss who would be the best physician to get to come and bleed him.

Another great book on the topic is The Knife Man which is all about the advent of modern surgery: www.amazon.co.uk/Extraordinary-Hunter-Father-Modern-Surgery/dp/0593052099

A few people have mentioned Pepys' kidney stone - the procedure is a lithotomy and historically the stone would have been removed with entry going via an incision in the perineum. There's a lot about this procedure in The Knife Man and how it was generally a very dangerous procedure - I'm not surprised Pepys kept his stone in a commemorative box and celebrated the anniversary!

Thanks for the great thread. Cold and wet in Scotland today so I have spent hours tucked in a fleece blanket on the couch reading through all the fascinating posts. Love the way it meanders through social history, medical history, chemistry, botany, pagan mythology, etc. I wish school could have been like this!

The Hunterian Museum in Glasgow is also worth a look:

www.gla.ac.uk/hunterian/collections/collectionsummary/medicineandanatomy/

Great thread

I used to work in archives and loved the Deaths registers [morbid] Loads of visitation from god and dentition which I assume was teething and the narrative causes; 'Having fallen from the coal cart whilst intoxicated and being trampled to death by horses' etc And the births - loads registered by the Master of the Workhouse.

I'm trying to think of my most Interesting Malady.

I had a massive abscess on my leg once. Had to be lanced in Fiji. And I had pleurisy once, which sounds satisfyingly Elinor Brent-Dyer.

Other than that, nada.

Smug off!

All the best people have asthma, me included.

Oh, and I just remembered George III was one of the people treated with arsenic (for his madness), which of course made him worse.