Statistics of the British Empire : mortality of the metropolis : a statistical view of the number of persons reported to have died, of each of more than 100 kinds of disease, and casualties, within the bills of mortality, in each of the two hundred and four years, 1629-1831 ... / by J. Marshall.

  • John Marshall
Date:
1837
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Statistics of the British Empire : mortality of the metropolis : a statistical view of the number of persons reported to have died, of each of more than 100 kinds of disease, and casualties, within the bills of mortality, in each of the two hundred and four years, 1629-1831 ... / by J. Marshall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    hundred years, people were to come with iron scourges, to destroy them; and this would now have been the case, had not these penitents been checked in their mad career, as has been related.” 33. On this chapter Mr. Johnes observes, “ Here endeth the additions. I cannot help supposing there must have been more, for Froissart would certainly have particularly mentioned this sad calamity of the plague, that afflicted all Europe, and he scarcely notices it. “ It began,” says Mr. Johnes, “ in the spring of the year 1348, and came from Asia. It destroyed in some parts the fourth, in others the third of their population; sometimes it left not the tenth part. It carried off in Paris from 40 to 50,000, and in the little town of St. Denis 1600. There were some- times, at Paris, 800 Burials in a day; and in the single church-yard of the Charter House, London, were buried 200 daily. It broke eveiy bond of attachment asunder ; servants fled from their masters, wives from their husbands, and children from their parents. There were no laws in force: the greatest excesses were committed, and when the contagion was at an end the morals were found corrupted.” Lord Hailes dates its ravages in 1349, and says, “The great Pestilence which had long desolated the Continent reached Scotland. The historians of all countries speak with horror of this pestilence. It took a wider range, and proved more destructive, than any calamity of that nature known in the annals of mankind.” 34. Holinshed, in his Chronicles, after treating of the-Peace between England and France effected by the intervention of Pope Clement VI., which followed the battle of Cressy and the surrender of Calais to the English in 1347—8, has the following passage, viz. “ But, now that there was a peace thus concluded betwixt the two kings, it seemed to the English people that the sun brake forth after a long cloudie season, by reason both of the great plentie of all things, and remembrance of the late glorious victories ; for there were few women that were housekeepers within this land but that they had some furniture of household that had been brought to them out of France as part of the spoile got in Caen, Calis, Carenton, or some other good towne. And, beside household stuffe, the English maides and matrones were bedecked and trimmed up in French women’s jewels and apparrell, so that as the French women lamented for the losse of those things, so our women rejoiced of the gaine. In this twenty- second Yeare [Edw. III., 1348] from Midsummer to Christmasse, for the more part it continually rained, so that there was not one day and night drie together, by reason whereof great flouds insued and the ground therewith was sore corrupted, and manie inconveniences insued, as great sicknes, and other, in so much that in the year following, in France, the people died wonderfullie in diverse places. In Italie also, and in manie other countries, as well in the lands of the infidels as in Christendome, this grievous mortalitie reigned to the great destruction of the people. About the end of August, the like death began in diverse places of England, and especially in London, continuing so for the space of twelve months following. And upon that insued great barrennesse, as well of the sea as the land, neither of them yielding such plentie of things as before they had done. Whereupon vittels and come became scant and hard to come by. “ Anno Reg. 24. About the end of August the Death in London ceased, which had bin so great and vehement within that citie, that over and beside the bodies buried in other accustomed burieing places, which for their infinite number cannot be reduced into account, there were buried that year dailie, from Candlemasse till Easter, in the Charterhouse yard of London, more than two hundred dead corpses.” 35. Mr. Johne’s Account, in Section 31, of the Number reported to have died in St. Denis, will be seen to differ greatly from the number stated in Section 26 : the greater number is, probably, the more correct; for, although Mr. Johnes calls it the little town of St. Denis; when reflecting on its richly endowed abbey of Benedictines, founded in the ninth century, and looking now at its magnificent Cathedral, and remains of other splendid edifices, it is impossible not to suppose but that it must, in past times, have been a place of far greater population and importance than at present; a discrepancy