| Year | All Burials | Dead of Smallpox | Year | All Burials | Dead of Smallpox | ||||||
| 1744 | 1345 | 167 | 1754 | 1215 | 104 | ||||||
| 1745 | 1463 | 141 | 1755 | 1187 | 89 | ||||||
| 1746 | 1712 | 128 | 1756 | 1316 | 126 | ||||||
| 1747 | 1200 | 71 | 1757 | 1267 | 113 | ||||||
| 1748 | 1286 | 167 | 1758 | 1001 | 52 | ||||||
| 1749 | 1132 | 192 | 1759 | 1136 | 232 | ||||||
| 1750 | 1038 | 64 | 1760 | 1123 | 66 | ||||||
| 1751 | 1241 | 109 | 1761 | 903 | 6 | ||||||
| 1752 | 1187 | 147 | 1762 | 1305 | 274 | ||||||
| 1753 | 1105 | 70 | 1763 | 1160 | 123 | ||||||
| 12709 | 1256 | 11613 | 1185 | ||||||||
| or 1 in 9·6 | or 1 in 9·8 | ||||||||||
As in other epidemics, it was not until its second year that the smallpox reached Norwich. The mortality had been enormous in 1741, owing to the distress and the fever, 1456 burials to 851 baptisms; but in 1742 the burials were 1953 (to 825 baptisms), the excess over the previous year being ascribed, in general terms, to the smallpox[1002]. It is probable that the enormous excess of burials over baptisms at Newcastle in 1741 was due in great part to the same disease among the children; but the statistics do not show it.
Northampton is an instance of a town with very moderate mortality for the 18th century; for that and other reasons its bills were used by Price as the basis of a table of the expectation of life. It had certainly shared in the fever epidemic of 1741 and 1742, for in the latter of those years the annual bill shows the very high fever-mortality of 37 in 130 deaths from all causes in All Saints’ parish, which had fully one-half of the population. But in that year there are no smallpox deaths recorded, and only nine in the next four years. The great periodic outburst of smallpox came in 1747[1003]:
Smallpox in Northampton, 1747.
| Parish | Cases | Deaths | Percentage of Fatalities | ||||
| All Saints | 485 | 76 | 15·6 | ||||
| St Sepulchre | 175 | 21 | 12·0 | ||||
| St Giles | 131 | 23 | 17·5 | ||||
| St Peter | 30 | 6 | 20·0 | ||||
| 821 | 126 | 15·3 | or 1 in 6·5 | ||||
Of the 76 deaths in All Saints’ parish only 58 were buried there. The deaths from all causes in that parish were 189, of which 103, or 54 per cent., were under five years of age, and 10 between five and ten years. Next year, when things had improved much, although the mortality was still high, All Saints’ parish had 119 burials, of which 47, or 40 per cent., were under five years, and 4 from five to ten, only three of the deaths being from smallpox. Only a few smallpox deaths appear in the bills of All Saints’ parish until 1756 and 1757, when an epidemic occurred, part of it in each year, which produced in that greatest of the four parishes 85 burials, or half as many again as in the epidemic of ten years before. It is singular that the deaths under and over five are in a very different ratio in the two successive years of the epidemic:
All Saints’ Parish, Northampton.
| 1756 | 1757 | ||||
| All deaths | 140 | 135 | |||
| Smallpox deaths | 31 | 54 | |||
| All deaths | under 2 | 54 | 24 | ||
| "" | 2-5 | 12 | 18 | ||
| "" | 5-10 | 7 | 21 | ||
| "" | 10-20 | 5 | 6 | ||
| "" | 20-30 | 13 | 18 | ||
| "" | 30-40 | 7 | 12 | ||
| "" | 40-50 | 4 | 5 | ||
| "" | above 50 | 38 | 31 | ||
This looks as if a good many more had died of smallpox at the higher ages in the second year of its prevalence than in the first; but the great difference between the deaths under two in 1756 and 1757 is explained chiefly by the article “convulsions,” which is 28 in the former year and only 10 in the latter.
In Boston, Lincolnshire, a town almost as healthy as Northampton, the intervals between epidemics of smallpox were almost as long, and the effect in raising the mortality for the year nearly the same. The population in the last year but one of the table was 3470. The deaths averaged 104 in a year, the smallpox deaths 9·45, or one in eleven[1004].