A History of Epidemics in Britain, Volume 2 (of 2) / From the Extinction of Plague to the Present Time

by Charles Creighton

Fevers to the end of the 17th century.

The epidemical seasons of 1685-86 were the last that Sydenham recorded; he was shortly after laid aside from active work by gout, and died in 1689. Morton, who made notes of fevers and smallpox until 1694, is more a clinical observer than a student of “epidemic constitutions”; and although his writings are of value to the epidemiologist, he does not help us to understand the circumstances in which epidemic diseases prevailed more at one time than another. To the end of the century there is no other medical source of information, and little besides generalities to be collected from any source. It is known that the years from 1693 to 1699 were years of scarcity all over the kingdom, that the fever-deaths in London reached the high figure of 5036 in 1694, and that there was a high mortality in many country parishes and market towns during the scarcity. But there are few particular illustrations of the type of epidemic sickness. There is, therefore, little left to do but to give the figures, and to add some remarks.

Fever Deaths in the London Bills, 1687-1700.

Year		Fever deaths		Spotted fever deaths		Deaths from all causes
1687		2847		144		21460
1688		3196		139		22921
1689		3313		129		23502
1690		3350		203		21461
1691		3490		193		22691
1692		3205		161		20874
1693		3211		199		20959
1694		5036		423		24109
1695		3019		105		19047
1696		2775		102		18638
1697		3111		137		20292
1698		3343		274		20183
1699		3505		306		20795
1700		3675		189		19443

Tables from Short’s Abstracts of Parish Registers.

Year		Registers examined		Registers with excess of death		Deaths in them		Births in them
Country Parishes.
1689		144		27		828		692
1690		146		17		532		324
1691		147		16		336		180
1692		147		10		207		146
1693		146		27		650		426
1694		148		18		465		348
1695		149		23		649		492
1696		150		19		503		344
1697		150		21		559		409
1698		152		12		397		289
1699		151		20		433		318
1700		160		29		890		739
Market Towns.
1689		25		12		1965		1415
1693		25		5		417		338
1694		25		6		1307		681
1695		25		3		309		246
1696		26		4		1020		708
1697		26		2		109		80
1698		26		4		575		423
1699		26		7		1181		867
1700		27		4		726		587

In the London figures the year 1694 stands out conspicuous by its deaths from all causes, and by its high total of fevers. The fever-deaths began to rise from their steady weekly level a little before Christmas, 1693, and remained high all through the year 1694, with a good many deaths from “spotted fever” in the worst weeks. Among the victims in London in February was Sir William Phipps, Governor of New England: his illness appeared at first to be a cold, which obliged him to keep his chamber; but it proved “a sort of malignant fever, whereof many about this time died in the city[65].” Pepys, writing to Evelyn on 10 August, 1694, calls it “the fever of the season,” three being down with it at his house, but well advanced in their recovery. In that week and in the week following, the deaths in London from all causes touched the highest points of the year, the deaths from fever and spotted fever being a full quarter of them. Fever at its worst in London never made more than a quarter of the annual deaths from all causes; so that, if we take it to have been the successor of the plague, it operated in a very different way—with a greatly lessened fatality of all that were attacked, with only a reminder of the old special incidence upon the summer and autumn seasons, but with a steadiness from year to year, and throughout each year, that made the fever-deaths of a generation little short of one of those enormous totals of plague-deaths that were rapidly piled up during a few months, perhaps once or twice in a generation.

The following table from the London weekly Bills shows the progress of the fever from the end of April, 1694, with the number of deaths specially assigned to “spotted fever”:—

London: Weekly Mortalities from fever and all causes, epidemic of 1694.

Week ending			Fever		Spotted fever		All deaths
April	24		90		15		427
May	1		77		10		369
	8		89		9		413
	15		80		5		395
	22		101		3		428
	29		72		8		430
June	5		112		12		469
	12		113		12		434
	19		113		11		430
	26		99		14		396
July	3		94		11		423
	17		86		10		445
	24		115		13		507
	31		84		13		484
Aug.	7		99		10		462
	14		110		20		530
	21		135		19		583
	28		111		20		510
Sept.	5		115		16		505
	12		112		12		462
	18		98		9		504
	25		106		4		490
Oct.	2		124		8		533
	9		125		10		553
	16		114		9		552
	23		104		3		511
	30		118		3		528
Nov.	6		70		3		439
	10		89		7		453
	13		106		2		471
	20		117		13		538
	27		79		6		456
Dec.	4		87		6		475
	11		87		3		407
	18		78		4		445
	25		66		3		394

The year 1694, to which the epidemic of malignant fever (as well as malignant smallpox) belongs, was one of the series of “seven ill years” at the end of the 17th century (1693-99). They were long noted, says Thorold Rogers, “for the distress of the people and for the exalted profits of the farmer.” The price of wheat in the autumn and winter of 1693 was the highest since the famine of 1661. In 1697-8 corn was again dear and much of it was spoilt. At Norwich in 1698 wheat was sold at 44s. a comb.

Harvests spoiled by wet weather or unseasonable cold appear to have been the most general cause of the high prices of food. In London there was no unusual sickness except in 1694; indeed the other years to the end of the century show a somewhat low mortality, the year 1696, which Macaulay marks as a time of severe distress among the common people owing to the calling in of the debased coinage[66], had the smallest number of deaths from all causes (18,638) since many years before, and for a century after allowing for the increase of population. But the deaths from “fever” were some three thousand every year, and the births, so far as registered, were, as usual, far below the deaths.

It was in the country at large that the effects of the “seven ill years” were chiefly felt. According to Short’s abstracts of parish registers, there was unusual mortality at the beginning of the period and at the end of it; in his Chronology he mentions spotted fever, bloody flux and agues in 1693 (besides an influenza or universal slight fever recorded by Molyneux of Dublin), and again in 1697 and 1698 “purples, quinsies, Hungarian and spotted fever, universal pestilential spotted fever,” from famine and bad food.

When we look for the evidence of this in England we shall have difficulty in finding it. Short’s own abstracts give almost no colour to it; but there are other figures from the parish registers, scattered through the county histories and statistical works, which prove that the seven ill years must have checked population. Thus at Sheffield in the ten years 1691-1700 there was the greatest excess of burials over baptisms in the whole history of the town from 1561—namely, 2856 burials to 2221 baptisms (688 marriages). At Minehead, Somerset, a parish of some 1200 people occupied in weaving, the deaths and births were as follows in four years of the decennium:

		Baptised.		Buried.
1691		57		75
1694		34		55
1695		47		48
1697		35		65

A glimpse of spotted or pestilential fever in Bristol during the years of distress at the end of the 17th century comes from Dr Dover, a man of no academical repute, but at all events an articulate voice. Passing from an account of the spotted pestilential fever at Guayaquil, “when I took it by storm,” he goes on[67]:

“About thirty-seven years since [written in 1732], this fever raged much in Bristol, so that I visited from twenty-five to thirty patients a day for a considerable time, besides their poor children taken into their workhouse, where I engaged myself, for the encouragement of so good and charitable an undertaking, to find them physick and give them advice at my own expense and trouble for the two first years. All these poor children in general had this fever, yet no more than one of them died of it of the whole number, which was near two hundred.”

—an experience of typhus in children which was strictly according to rule. This had clearly been the occasion of a memorial addressed to the Mayor and Aldermen of Bristol, in 1696, praying that a capacious workhouse should be erected for children and the aged, which “will prevent children from being smothered or starved by the neglect of the parish officers and poverty of their parents, which is now a great loss to the nation[68].”

The year 1698 was the climax of the seven ill years. The spring was the most backward for forty-seven years, the first wheat in the ear being seen near London on 16th June. For four months to the end of August the days were almost all rainy, except from the 18th to the 26th July. Whole fields of corn were spoilt. In Kent there was barley standing uncut on 29th September, and some lay in the swathe until December. Much of the corn in the north of England was not got in until Christmas, and in Scotland they were reaping the green empty corn in January[69].