The winter of 1683-84 was one of intense frost; an ice-carnival was held on the Thames during the whole of January. The long dry frost of winter was followed by an excessively hot and dry summer, the drought being such as Evelyn did not remember, and as “no man in England had known.” For eight or nine months there had not been above one or two considerable showers, which came in storms. The winter of 1684-85 set in early, and became “a long and cruel frost,” more interrupted, however, than that of the year before. The spring was again dry, and it was not until the end of May 1685 that “we had plentiful rain after two years’ excessive drought and severe winters[36].”

The two years of excessive drought, with severe winters, had their effect upon the public health, as will appear from Short’s abstracts of parish registers in town and country[37]; the years 1683-85 being conspicuous for the excess of burials over baptisms:

Country Parishes.

Year Registers
examined		 Registers with
excess of death		 Deaths in
them		 Births in
them
1683 140 37 923 685
1684 140 31 900 629
1685 140 19 574 478
1686 140 16 419 301
1687 143 19 522 427
1688 143 11 327 267
Towns.
1683 25 8 1398 1169
1684 25 8 1243 865
1685 25 4 1191 741
1686 25 2 555 418
1687 25 1 313 269
1688 25 2 191 146

There is no clue to the forms of sickness that caused the excessive mortality in country parishes and provincial towns. But in London it appears from the Bills that the one great cause of the unusual excess of deaths in 1684 was an enormous mortality from infantile diarrhoea, from the end of July to the middle of September, during the weather which Evelyn describes as excessively hot and dry with occasional storms of rain.

It was in the second year of the long drought, February, 1685, that Sydenham dated the beginning of his new febrile constitutions. The mortality of 1685 was just twenty deaths more than in 1684 (23,222); but fever (with spotted fever) and smallpox had each a thousand more out of the total than in the year before. Sydenham says that the fever did not spare children, which might be alleged of typhus at all times; but a fever of the kind, even if it ran through the children of a household, seldom cut off the very young, the mortality being in greatest part of adults and adolescents. Excepting smallpox for the year 1685, infantile and children’s maladies were not prominent during the constitution of the “new fever;” the usual items of high infantile mortality, such as convulsions and “griping in the guts” or infantile diarrhoea, were moderate and even low. Hence, although the weekly fever-deaths in the following Table may not appear sufficient for the professional and other interest that they excited, it is to be kept in mind that they had been mostly of adult lives. It is probable also that a good many of them had been among the well-to-do, and perhaps at first in the West End; for there is nothing in the height of the weekly bills for all London to bear out the remark of the letter of 12 March, already quoted, “A fever rages that proves very mortal and gives apprehensions of a plague.”

Weekly Mortalities in London.

1685.

Week
ending		 Dead Of fever Of spotted
fever		 Of
smallpox		 Of griping
in the guts
March3 376 49 0 11 35
10 458 73 2 30 31
17 367 53 1 25 17
24 441 63 3 33 27
31 366 53 5 24 36
April7 421 47 10 28 30
14 433 64 8 32 27
21 473 66 6 47 45
28 470 68 3 49 45
May5 385 50 6 35 39
12 447 75 3 59 41
19 437 79 4 58 43
26 452 61 2 74 39
June2 469 65 8 65 36
9 521 88 14 62 41
16 499 91 9 66 34
23 478 76 12 71 53
30 526 82 13 84 45
July7 497 81 8 87 53
14 478 82 11 78 51
21 464 79 11 87 47
28 488 62 6 68 54
Aug.4 493 82 5 86 51
11 529 109 13 89 47
18 580 74 13 99 71
25 536 91 7 67 85
Sept.1 556 94 13 53 104
8 539 82 10 81 77
15 485 90 7 63 70
22 459 90 10 37 51
29 502 114 3 58 53
Oct.6 444 108 11 40 54
13 445 89 13 61 38
20 369 86 5 40 28
27 379 73 7 29 45
Nov.3 443 96 8 55 43
10 410 84 7 26 35
17 432 103 8 35 39
24 471 107 6 56 31
Dec.1 384 87 4 36 24
8 452 98 8 49 24
15 403 69 3 29 47
22 438 99 2 34 27
29 432 80 9 28 28