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Original poster

Ways of Dying in 1665

840 replies

TheScarlettPimpernel · 04/02/2012 11:36

So I'm just copying out a weekly Bill of Mortality from London, 1665 (don't ask!)

Look at some of the ways of dying - anyone care to hazard a guess at what some of them might be?!

Plague - 7165 (IN A WEEK!!!)
Childbed - 42 Sad - just goes to show, it's all very well bemoaning medicalised childbirth/interventions/CSs but look at the alternative
Grief - 3 (Not bloody surprising - wonder what the actual medical cause was?)
Griping in the Guts - 51!
Rising of the Lights - 11 (WTF was that then? In offal, are the lights the lungs, right?)
Kingsevil - 2 (Don't ask me how I know this, but I believe this to be scrofula)
Wormes - 15 (OH EM GEE, you could die of worms )
Impostume - 11 (what?!)
Frighted - 3 (three people scared to death in a week Shock)
Winde - 3 (Oh yeah. FARTED TO DEATH)

I realise I am a bit morbid Hmm

OP posts:
ArielNonBio · 04/02/2012 12:15

Sniggering!

1665 was the Great Plague year, when they also helpfully exported it to Derbyshire. However the notion that the Great Fire (which was blamed on The Papists) cleansed the city of it is a myth. I learned that on QI.

Scarlett please tell me what you are doing. Please!

ExpatAgain · 04/02/2012 12:15

oh an abscess.

Here's a lucky one who got rid of his (and how!)
theimpostume.blogspot.com/

hoops997 · 04/02/2012 12:15

interesting thread, just goes to show how much, in medical terms, we take for granted nowadays :)

Original poster
TheScarlettPimpernel · 04/02/2012 12:14

OUCH to dying of painful urination

Expat no I dearly wish! I am making a 'Memento Mori' book as part of an art project thingy. I am not quite as odd as that makes me sound Grin

OP posts:
TunipTheVegemal · 04/02/2012 12:13

it's interesting - though of course obvious when you think about it - that they didn't distinguish between the symptom and the underlying disease that killed you.

choux · 04/02/2012 12:12

Yikes - according to the page posted above:

Cut of the Stone: The surgical removal of a bladder stone.

so first you have pain from a kidney stone, then you have to undergo surgery without anaesthetic and then you die!!!

ExpatAgain · 04/02/2012 12:12

fascinating, are you a social historian or something? the wonders of MN to be able to share all this!

Did you get to the bottom of "impostume" or did I miss that? will google anyway..

garlicfrother · 04/02/2012 12:12

Oh, wrong end Grin

garlicfrother · 04/02/2012 12:12

Strangury must be strangling, surely? Might include choking ... haven't googled.

TunipTheVegemal · 04/02/2012 12:11

this says strangury is painful urination.

Original poster
TheScarlettPimpernel · 04/02/2012 12:11

Incidentally I have here 64 dead of Convulsion. That could be anything that causes fits, right - so possibly diabetics? (I am not 100% clear on the symptoms). Epilepsy, also...

OP posts:
Original poster
TheScarlettPimpernel · 04/02/2012 12:10

Yeah, the food poisoning stuff make sense.

Any ideas on Strangury?

OP posts:
ScoutJemAndBoo · 04/02/2012 12:09

Some famous ones, here's Crippen?

www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=t19101011-74&div=t19101011-74&terms=Crippen#highlight

choux · 04/02/2012 12:08

Given hygiene must have been poor then I can imagine surfeit was really food poisoning rather than actual overeating

blackeyedsusan · 04/02/2012 12:07

diabetes would have been a cause of death with no insulin available. don't know what theywould call it

TunipTheVegemal · 04/02/2012 12:06

could food-poisoning have been misinterpreted as death from surfeit?

joanofarchitrave · 04/02/2012 12:05

Could surfeit actually have been food poisoning/salmonella?

Or alcoholic poisoning?

Original poster
TheScarlettPimpernel · 04/02/2012 12:05

Turnip I've always wondered that. And there was a King, wasn't there, who died of 'A surfeit of Lampreys', because the Thames was full of 'em. I wondered whether Lampreys in particular would be poisonous if you ate too many, but it looks like it's a general surfeit-related death...

OP posts:
TunipTheVegemal · 04/02/2012 12:05

it's an official weight to prevent short-changing I think, thought it could be that due to scarcity they shrunk the size of the official loaf.
I don't see how they could have done rationing in the WW2 sense.

Original poster
TheScarlettPimpernel · 04/02/2012 12:03

I tell you what else is interesting. At the bottom of the Bill of Mortality there is a sort of declaration as to what a loaf of bread should weigh! It's either a ration, I think (though why would it be rationed, unless because of the vast mortality rate from the Plague, supplies were scarce?) or an official weight/size to prevent people being short changed?

ANyway it reads thus:

The Assize of Bread set forth by the Order of the Lord Mayor and Court of Aldermen, A penny Wheaten Loaf to contain Nine Ounces and a half, and three half-penny White Loaves the like weight.

OP posts:
dreamingbohemian · 04/02/2012 12:03

Yep plague rose up very quickly, and I think usually in the summer?

TunipTheVegemal · 04/02/2012 12:02

Isn't plague always much worse in the summer anyway?

Can anyone explain surfeit to me, please? The glossaries I have found say 'Vomiting from over eating or gluttony'.
Given that we live in an age of obesity it seems strange that if this were the case, 1. people don't vomit from overeating much now and 2. no-one ever dies from it.
I mean, people die of overeating but through a rather less direct mechanism IYSWIM.

choux · 04/02/2012 12:01

From Wikipedia - the plague arrive in London city in july 1665:
The dock areas outside of London, and the parish of St. Giles-in-the Fields where poor workers crowded into ill-kept structures, were the first areas struck by the plague. As records were not kept on the deaths of the very poor, the first recorded case was a Rebecca Andrews, on 12 April 1665. Another suspected source of the plague was cats and dogs, of which the Lord Mayor of London at the time had the majority exterminated.

By July 1665, plague was in the city of London itself.

Original poster
TheScarlettPimpernel · 04/02/2012 12:01

Aha, MN detective work at its best - Scouring = dysentery

In some ways this makes me regret Google - much more fun trying to work it out/dreaming up hideous 17th century ailments...

Really glad to hear it Monster :)

OP posts:
JoantheFennel · 04/02/2012 12:01

Fascinating.