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]: