Burial Seasonality and Causes of Death in London 1670-1819.

This article focuses on burial seasonality and causes of death in London from 1670-1819. The levels of mortality prevailing in the metropolitan centres of early modern Europe have been the subject of recent debate among demographic historians. The traditional, "naturalistic," treatment of metropolitan demography accords mortality a powerful and independent influence on urban society, but one whose historical evolution is largely restricted to the axis of sanitary reform and whose sole action on the surrounding population is that of a demographic drain. Smallpox appears to have been a universal childhood affliction in the capital and was particularly prevalent during the third quarter of the century when it accounted for ten percent of all recorded burials, but from the 1780s this proportion began to decline substantially and smallpox accounted for only 5.4 per cent of burials in the years 1800-24. The recorded deaths, however, probably understate the full toll of the disease. The term "typhus," was not used until mid-century.