Weekly Mortalities in London (by the old Bills).
1837
| Week ending | Influenza | All causes | |||
| Jan. | 10 | 0 | 284 | ||
| 17 | 13 | 477 | |||
| 24 | 106 | 871 | |||
| 31 | 99 | 860 | |||
| Feb. | 7 | 63 | 589 | ||
| 14 | 35 | 558 | |||
| 21 | 20 | 350 | |||
| 28 | 8 | 321 | |||
| March | 7 | 4 | 262 | ||
This sudden rise in the deaths from all causes is a characteristic influenza bill, comparable with those already given from 1580 onwards. But the bill is far from showing the whole of the mortality in London in 1837. The London bills of mortality compiled by the Parish Clerks’ Company had fallen into the last stage of inadequacy, and were on the eve of being superseded by the general system of registration for all England and Wales[726].
The London bills, so long as they existed, never took in the great parishes of St Pancras, Marylebone, Kensington and Chelsea. The area “within the bills of mortality” was that of London about the middle of the 18th century. But, instead of becoming more and more crowded as time went on, it had actually become much less populous, especially in the old City and Liberties, owing to the erection of warehouses, workshops, counting-houses and other non-residential buildings where dwelling houses used to be; so that the decrease of mortality “within the bills” in the 19th century is in part due to the decrease of population within the same area. This has to be kept in mind when the above table is compared with one of those for former influenzas, such as that of 1737, exactly a hundred years before.
It was thought that the 1837 influenza in London was worse than that of 1833, but the figures show the contrary as regards the number of deaths from all causes[727]. Both of them, however, were in the first rank of severity, finding their nearest parallels in the three great influenzas of the 18th century, in 1733, 1737 and 1743, when the deaths from all causes during the influenza rose, indeed, to a much larger total within the bills, but rose from a much higher mean level.
In Dublin the great increase of burials from the influenza of 1837 fell at the same time as in London, according to the following comparison with the year before for Glasnevin Cemetery[728]:
| 1835-36 | 1836-37 | ||||||||
| Dec. | 1835 | 355 | Dec. | 1836 | 413 | ||||
| Jan. | 1836 | 392 | Jan. | 1837 | 821 | ||||
| Feb. | " | 362 | Feb. | " | 537 | ||||
| Mar. | " | 392 | Mar. | " | 477 | ||||
| 1501 | 2248 | ||||||||
At Glasgow the deaths from influenza were as follows[729]:
1837