Ways of Dying in 1665

[TheScarlettPimpernel]

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 - 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 )
Winde - 3 (Oh yeah. FARTED TO DEATH)

I realise I am a bit morbid

missmiss, did you read the first review of that book on Amazon: "This is by far the best book in the world!" That's a ringing endorsement if ever I saw one!

Julia how awful.

My dad told me the other day that his mum had a stillborn daughter before she had him. She was left alone in labour - in hospital - and obviously my granddad wasn't allowed in the room. By the time the doctor went in she'd had the baby and it was dead. Just awful. Apparently my granddad insisted to my dad he had to be present at his children's births after that.

Sorry, not quite on topic but I was just thinking how sad it is.

Children of Winter is about the Black Death - even more devastating than the 1665 plague.

Children of Winter is a wonderful title - I'm putting it on my Amazon list, thanks!

I've remembered that a friend of mine had a stillbirth in the late 80s that was buried by the hospital, presumably in a communal grave.

Jericho/Tunip/Thumbwitch - yes I think it may well be right abut the grave of unbaptised child. It may also be the parents were too poor? The gravestone was very old and had fallen over and I tried to stand it up one day to 'put things right' but I just couldn't lift it on my own.

I mentioned it to the vicar a few times but he didn't seem interested. I sort of felt it should have at least had a blessing. It was quite poigniant and sad so obviously an innocent child buried in a lonely grave. Religion!!!

Black Death was bubonic plague, wasn't it?

Yes it was, but the Black Death was the name given to the epidemic which swept across Europe in the mid 14th Century and killed a third or even a half of its population. It was a massive catalyst for social change e.g. it ultimately improved the lot of the serfs because there were fewer of them to e expoited.

@TheScarlettPimpernel: "Of course we now know that George 3 probably had porphyria (because his urine was blue), and what was extraordinary was that the doctors weren't interested when his footmen pointed this out."

Well, it's funny - there was a paper a couple of years ago insisting that he didn't have porphyria, he was actually bipolar. I was a bit surprised at this because I thought the evidence for porphyria was pretty overwhelming (I saw a tv programme about it that showed how it ran through the generations).

Someone mentioned Jill Paton Walsh's book about Eyam - there's also a great novel by Geraldine Brooks called (iirc) Year of Wonders. It's loosely based on Eyam, so there's lots of embroidery of the bare facts, but it's a terrific read.

Thanks, Ariel! And :( for the serfs.
The 1918 flu pandemic, coupled with WW2 (the flu killed more than the war) had a similar effect on the British class system, for similar reasons. Not enough of an affect, though.

Bugger. WW1, obv, and effect

Just going back a little to the plants thing, I always found the 'sympathetic' treatment really interesting. Like lungwort being used for chest complaints, because it looks a bit like lungs or belladonna protecting against scarlet fever because it gives the same rash.

Cupping doesn't hurt (well I had it done without the cut obviously), but it feels very strange! I had it done when we were learning about the Romans, but it's probably very similar. They put a lit little bit of match into the bowl and then put it against my arm. The match went out and the vacuum keeps the bowl on the skin.

Beta - I agree with you. It is possible your vicar is being cautious though. Not the same I know, but there was a terrific fuss a while back when Catholic priests were saying prayers for the souls of aborted foetuses outside an abortion clinic near where my mate lives in the US. The vicar might worry that if he gave a C of E blessing, maybe people would think it was presumptuous?

Not sure really, just thinking.

Speaking of Black Death, some libraries insist you can only look at certain manuscripts under glass - would it really be an issue or are they just being paranoid? I've never had this problem myself, just heard of it so I hope I'm remembering rightly it was Black Death they were worried about.

hackmum - that is interesting! But I also though the whole purplish wee thing was pretty cut and dried? And porphyria does induce mental disturbances, of course.

Re. sympathetic treatment - people thought walnuts were good for the brain because they look like little brains, and they genuinely are thought to protect against dementia!

Year of Wonders is an excellent book.

I find the Spanish Flu epidemic fascinating too.

Another recommendation for 'The Year of Wonders',I'm bookmarking the others too.

Our village church has a chapel dedicated to the family who own the estate,and there are some spectacular [and spooky]14th century tombs in there,one of which has the couple concerned lying on a bed with all of their children surrounding the base,and another who was a notorious robber baron,whose efigy has had it's face hacked off.There is a lepers window too.

For the past few years the PCC have said that the graveyard needs to be assessed to see how many more burial plots can be fitted in.The oldest gravestones date from the late 1600's but obviously many more people were interred before then.Apparently this is done by walking around the graveyard with a rod and prodding it down into the ground to see if there is anything there or not.I'd love to see that done.

A churchwarden said that in 2010 they had dug down into the grave of someone burried in the 1960's,so that is wife could be buried there,but there was absolutely nothing left of the previous occupant,and neither was there any trace of the metal coffin fittings either.We have a high water table,but I would have thought that something would remain.

Fiction, but this is a brilliant book about the Black Death.

I enjoyed Year of Wonders and remember reading the Eyam book when I was younger.

Was another interesting thing in the cholera outbreaks that the brewery workers didn't get it. Because they didn't drink water, only beer. Beer was much safer.

Can I also recommend this:

www.amazon.co.uk/Years-Rice-Salt-Stanley-Robinson/dp/0006511481/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1328452637&sr=8-1

History rewritten - if the plague had wiped out the whole of Europe rather than just a third or so, what would the world be like?

Inbetweener, not that it matters, but in the 80s I was a) 9 years old at the absolute most, and b) was brought up without a television. I hope that puts your mind at rest as to a potential case of plagiarism

Mirage - I suspect you may have acid soil and that is what makles everything disappear. I read that is why they bury Royalty in lead coffins. Nothing in the coffin escapes as lead does not rot away.

oh and thanks for all the book recommendations - have any folk here read the superb Katherine by Anya Seton? There is a fair bit in it on the Black Death; it being Anya Seton I think it was probably well researched. There's an account of a kind of descent into anarchy and chaos - black masses, orgies, all that. You can't blame 'em really.

Ooooo That Dooms Day book is on Kindle...

I'm off on holiday in a few days - I have some gloriously macabre holiday reading lined up

I am studyng epidemiology and the books all statr with the John Snow story as that was the first (known) epidemiological study. However I read in a thread on here that it wasn't all quite as it seemed!