London Bills of Mortality, 1660-1700

Introduction
The London Bills of Mortality were devised in the early sixteenth century in London, essentially as a sort of early warning system against the onset of bubonic plague. The information was collected by the Parish Clerk's Company of London, and published weekly. Monthly and Yearly digests were also issued. Over time the detail provided by the bills increased. Initially they contained only burials, but by the 1570s the total number of baptisms was also returned. In 1629 cause of death information was given and in the early eighteenth century the returns began supplying a distribution of the ages at which Londoners died. The areas covered by the bills also expanded as London grew. Until 1603 the Bills covered only the City within the Walls and its 'Liberties', the area governed directly by the Lord Mayor. The so-called suburban 'out-parishes' were included in 1604 and in 1636, in the last addition, the 'distant' parishes in Westminster, Stepney and south London were also included.
Londoners bought copies of the bills and scanned them for signs of impending disease, sometimes entering the numbers in personal memoranda or diaries. The Bills were used by one of the fathers of today's historical demography, John Graunt, a Londoner who published a statistical analysis of the Bills as Natural and political observations made upon the bills of mortality in 1662.
The Bills are famous for the statistical details they give to the regular and ferocious outbreaks of bubonic plague in London. Fearsome epidemics of this disease killed between 20 and 25% of all Londoners in 1563, 1603, 1625 and 1665. The 1665 epidemic described famously in Samuel Pepy's Diary, was, therefore, only the last 'Great Plague'.

Table: Annual burials in London, 1660-1700

Years

Total Burials in London

1660

15118
166119771
166216545
166315356
166418297
166597147
166612697
166715841
166817278
166919446
167020198
167115732
167218230
167317504
167421202
167517244
167618732
167719067
167820678
167921730
168021053
168123971
168220691
168320587
168423102
168523215
168622608
168721460
168822921
168923502
169021461
169122691
169220874
169320959
169424000
169519046
169618638
169720974
169820183
169920795
170019443