The London fever of 1709-10.

The “seven ill years” were followed by the fine summer and abundant harvest (although hardly more than half the breadth was sown) of 1699. Scarcity was not a cause of excessive sickness again until 1709-10; although the harvest of 1703 was unfavourable. The price of wheat in 1702 was 25s. 6d. per quarter, and continued low for a number of years, notwithstanding the war with France. In Marlborough’s wars there were no war-prices for farmers, as in the corresponding circumstances a century after; on the contrary, corn and produce of all kinds were so cheap that farmers had difficulty in paying their rents. The bounty of five shillings per quarter on exported wheat had given a great impulse to corn-growing, so that the acreage of wheat sown was much more than the country in an ordinary year required, partly, no doubt, because the bread of the poorer classes was largely made from the coarser cereals. The period of abundance was broken by the excessively severe winter of 1708-9, one of three memorable winters in the 18th century. The frost lasted all over Europe from October to March, and was followed by a greatly deficient crop in 1709. The following shows the rise of the price of the quarter of wheat in England:

s. d.
1708Lady-day 27 3
"Michaelmas 46 3
1709Lady-day 57 6
"Michaelmas 81 9
1710Lady-day 81 9

The export of corn was prohibited in 1709 and again in 1710.

An epidemic of fever began in London in the autumn of 1709 and continued throughout 1710, in which year the fever-deaths reached the highest total since 1694. But it was not altogether a fever of starvation or distress among the poor, and perhaps not mainly so. There is always the dual question in connexion with fever following bad seasons and high prices: how much of it was due to the scarcity, and how much to those states of soil and atmosphere upon which the failure of the crop itself depended. An authentic case of the malignant fever which began to rage in London in the autumn of 1709 will both serve to show the remarkable type of at least a portion, if not the whole of the epidemic, and to prove its incidence upon the houses of the rich.

The case is recorded by Sir David Hamilton[86]:

“About the 5th of October, 1709, the son of that worthy gentleman, William Morison, esquire, was seized with a fever; at which time, and for some weeks before, a malignant fever raged in London.” He had a quick and weak pulse, great difficulty or hindrance of speech, and a stupidity; “whereto were added tremors, and startings of the tendons, a dry and blackish tongue, a high-coloured but transparent urine and coming away for the most part involuntarily, and a hot and dry skin.” Dr Grew was called in, and prescribed alexipharmac remedies (cordials, sudorifics, etc.) “A few days after the patient’s skin was stained or marked with red and purple spots, and especially upon his breast, legs and thighs. These symptoms, although a little milder now and then, prevailed for fourteen days; after that the spots vanished, and the convulsive motions so increased that the young gentleman seemed ready to sink under them for several days together.” He was treated with the application of blisters, and with doses of bark. His strength and flesh were so wasted that the hip whereon he lay was seized with a gangrene. For ten or twelve days before his death, “he breathed and perspired so offensive a smell that they were obliged to smoke his chamber with perfumes; and even myself, whilst I inclined my body a little too near him, was, by receiving his breath into my mouth, seized all on a sudden with such a sickness and faintness that I was obliged to take the air in the open fields, and returning thence to drink plentifully of mountain wine at dinner.” The examination after death was made by the celebrated anatomist Dr Douglas. There was still a heap of brown-coloured spots visible on the breast; “there was nothing contained in the more conspicuous vessels of the abdomen but grumes or clots of blackish blood, without any serum in the interstices.” Hamilton adds: “We too seldom dissect the bodies of those dying in fevers.”

The tremors, offensive sweats and offensive breath are distinctive of a form of typhus that became common towards the middle of the century, and was called putrid fever (not in the sense of Willis) or miliary fever from the watery vesicles of the skin that often attended it. But although Hamilton was writing on miliary fever (of the factitious variety) this case is not given as an example, but is appended to his sixteen cases of the latter, as an example of “a deadly fever with loss of speech from the beginning.” Among earlier cases, those belonging to the epidemic of 1661 as described by Willis correspond closely with this case, which we may take as representing part of the malignant fever that then raged in London. We have an anatomical record from each; but in neither was there sloughing of the lymph-follicles of the intestine, or of the mesenteric glands, as in the enteric fever of our own time; while in both there were red or purple spots on the breast or neck, and on the limbs. The “loss of speech from the beginning” suggests Sydenham’s “absolute aphonia” in the comatose fever of 1673-76, which resembled in other respects Willis’s fever of the brain and nervous stock (mostly of children) in 1661. One of the synonyms of “infantile remittent” was “an acute fever with dumbness[87].” This seems to have been a common type of fever in the latter part of the 17th century and early part of the 18th. Some likeness to enteric fever may be found in it, but there is no warrant for identifying it with that fever. Its main features may be said to have been its incidence upon the earlier years of life, but not to the exclusion of adult cases, its remarkable ataxic symptoms, which led Willis to refer it to “the brain and nervous stock” (spinal cord), its comatose character, its spots, occasional miliary eruption, ill-smelling sweats and other foetid evacuations, its protracted course, and its hectic sequelae.

The weekly bills of mortality in London bear little evidence of unusual prevalence of fever in 1709, except in the weeks ending 13 and 20 September, when the fever-deaths were 96 and 75 (including “spotted fever”). But the unusual entry of “malignant fever” appears in three weekly bills, 19 July, 9 August and 23 August, one death being referred to it on each occasion. It was in the summer and autumn of 1710 that the fever reached a height in London, being attended with a very fatal smallpox. An essay on the London epidemic of 1710[88] is interesting chiefly for recording a probable case of relapsing fever, a form which was almost certainly part of the great febrile epidemic in London in 1727-29.

Mrs Simon, aged 20, had a burning fever, stifling of her breath, frequent vomiting and looseness, foul tongue, loss of sleep, restlessness, intermitting, low and irregular pulse. This terrible fever disappeared on the fourth day, and she thought herself recovered. But on the seventh day from her being taken ill the fever returned, she was light-headed, did not know her relatives, and was fevered in the highest degree. It looked like a malignant fever, but there were no spots.

The following table shows the very high mortality from fever (as well as from smallpox) in the epidemic to which the above case belonged.

London: Weekly deaths from fever, smallpox and all causes.

1710.

Week
ending		 Dead of
fever		 Dead of
spotted fever		 Dead of
smallpox		 Dead of
all diseases
May2 103 [illegible] 99 571
9 90 6 60 517
16 84 7 71 502
23 93 15 71 503
30 106 11 83 550
June6 93 2 98 508
13 79 8 84 509
20 106 12 99 574
27 105 15 86 503
July4 106 7 99 482
11 107 13 97 467
18 126 16 89 509
25 109 13 105 562
Aug.1 91 12 79 444
8 92 11 72 463
15 98 10 58 459
22 105 10 63 463
29 111 16 71 495
Sept.5 76 4 63 414
12[89]107 12 57 520
19 115 9 83 548
26 81 11 46 456
Oct.3 98 9 45 469
10 79 10 49 480
17 90 5 41 477
24 107 5 45 470
31 106 14 51 421
Nov.7 71 6 55 425
14 92 2 41 390
21 70 4 25 345

Throughout England, in country parishes and in towns, the first ten years of the 18th century were on the whole a period of good public health. In Short’s abstracts of the parish registers to show the excess of deaths over the births, those years are as little conspicuous as any in the long series. It was a time when there was a great lull in smallpox, and probably also in fevers. The figures for Sheffield may serve as an example[90]. It will be seen from the Table that the burials exceeded the baptisms in every decade from the Restoration to the end of the century; after that for twenty years the baptisms exceeded the burials, the marriages having increased greatly.

Vital Statistics of Sheffield.

Ten-year
periods		 Marriages Baptisms Burials
1661-70 585 2086 2266
1671-80 537 2240 2387
1681-90 540 2595 2856
1691-1700 688 2221 2856
1701-10 942 3033 2613
1711-20 991 3304 2765

Of particular epidemics, we hear of a malignant fever at Harwich in 1709. Harwich was then an important naval station, and the fever may have arisen in connexion with the transport of troops to and from the seat of war, just as camp- and war-fevers appeared at various ports in the next war, 1742-48.

There were rumours of a plague at Newcastle in 1710, which were contradicted by advertisement in the London Gazette[91]. But, as there was so much plague in the Baltic ports in 1710 it is possible that the Newcastle rumour may have been one of plague imported, and not a rumour suggested by the mortality from some other disease.

To the same period of epidemic fever in London, about 1709-10, belongs also a curiously localized epidemic in an Oxford college, which reminds one somewhat of the circumstances of enteric fever in our time. It was told to Dr Rogers of Cork twenty-five or twenty-six years before the date of his writing (1734), by one who was a student at Oxford then: “There broke out amongst the scholars of Wadham College a fever very malignant, that swept away great numbers, whilst the rest of the colleges remained unvisited. All agreed that the contagious infection arose from the putrefaction of a vast quantity of cabbages thrown into a heap out of the several gardens near Wadham College[92].”

The next epidemic of fever in London was in 1714. Like that of 1710, it followed a great rise in the price of wheat, or perhaps it followed the unseasonable weather which caused the deficient harvest. Before the Peace of Utrecht wheat in England was as low as 33s. 9d. per quarter, in 1712, the peace next year sending it no lower than 30s. But at Michaelmas, 1713, it rose with a bound to 56s. 11d., doubtless owing to a bad harvest. The fever-deaths in London began to rise in the spring of 1714, reaching a weekly total of 103 in the week ending 20 April. All through the summer and autumn they continued very high, the weekly totals exceeding, on an average, those of the year 1710, as in the foregoing table, and having corresponding large additions of “spotted fever.” The deaths from all causes in 1714 were a quarter more than those of the year before, the epidemic of fever being the chief contributor to the rise. This happened to be a very slack time in medical writing[93]; but, even in the absence of such testimony as we have for earlier and later epidemics of fever in London, we may safely conclude that the fever of 1714 was of the type of pestilential or malignant typhus, beginning in early summer and reaching a height in the old plague season of autumn.

A singular instance of what may be considered war-typhus belongs to the winter of 1715-16. The political intrigues preceding and following the death of Queen Anne in 1714 culminated in the Jacobite rising in Scotland and the North of England in 1715. The Jacobites having been defeated at Preston on 13 November, prisoners to the number of 450 were brought to Chester Castle on the Sunday night before December 1st. A fortnight later (December 15th), Lady Otway writes of the 450 prisoners in the Castle:

“They all lie upon straw, the better and the worse alike. The king’s allowance is a groat a day for each man for meat, but they are almost starved for want of some covering, though many persons are charitable to the sick.” The winter was unusually severe, the snow lying “a yard deep.” Many prisoners died in the Castle by “the severity of the season,” many were carried off by “a very malignant fever.” On February 16th Lady Otway writes again:—“So much sickness now in our Castle that they dye in droves like rotten sheep, and be 4 or 5 in a night throne into the Castle ditch ffor ther graves. The feavour and sickness increaseth dayly, is begun to spread much into the citty, and many of the guard solidyers is sick, it is thought by inffection. The Lord preserve us ffrom plague and pestilence[94]!”