| Year | Births | All deaths | Smallpox deaths | |||
| 1769 | 159 | 120 | 3 | |||
| 1770 | 140 | 166 | 78 | |||
| 1771 | 150 | 133 | 2 | |||
| 1772 | 138 | 130 | 6 | |||
| 1773 | 157 | 143 | 27 | |||
| 1774 | 160 | 112 | — | |||
| 1775 | 162 | 186 | 55 | |||
| 1776 | 165 | 176 | 7 | |||
| 1777 | 165 | 131 | 6 | |||
| 1778 | 166 | 174 | 18 | |||
| 1779 | 173 | 195 | 3 | |||
| 1780 | 137 | 247 | [1026] | — | ||
| 1781 | 136 | 193 | 19 | |||
| 1782 | 133 | 177 | — | |||
| 1783 | 162 | 149 | — | |||
| 1784 | 147 | 202 | 58 | |||
| 1785 | 168 | 124 | 4 | |||
| 1786 | 152 | 114 | — | |||
| 1787 | 168 | 130 | — | |||
| 1788 | 181 | 145 | — | |||
| 1789 | 184 | 185 | 27 | |||
| 1790 | 204 | 126 | — | |||
| 1791 | 218 | 93 | 2 | |||
| 1792 | 219 | 152 | — | |||
| 1793 | 195 | 141 | 1 | |||
| 1794 | 197 | 148 | — | |||
| 1795 | 217 | 161 | 1 | |||
| 1796 | 214 | 205 | 64 | |||
| 1797 | 240 | 166 | — | |||
| 1798 | 227 | 112 | — | |||
| 1799 | 229 | 133 | — | |||
| 1800 | [1027] | 225 | 147 | 1 |
The second division of the table covers the same years as the Glasgow table, but tells a very different tale. It shows a great excess of births over deaths, and smallpox coming at the same long and regular intervals as in the twenty-years period before 1769, but now causing only a fifteenth part of the whole annual average deaths, or about one-third as many of them as in Glasgow. Whether the other market towns and villages of England had improved equally cannot be proved, owing to the almost total absence of smallpox statistics from the country south of the Trent. It was partly an accident that the best statistics of smallpox all came from the northern half of the country, where population and industries were growing most; but it was in part also because there was more epidemic disease there than elsewhere in England.
Some particulars or generalities were recorded for the parishes of Scotland in the last ten years of the 18th century by parish ministers writing for the Statistical Account:
Some of the Highland parishes suffered greatly from time to time by epidemics of contagious fever and by smallpox. Kiltearn, in Eastern Ross, a parish in which “the greatest number of cottages are built of earth, and are usually razed to the ground once in five or seven years, when they are added to the dunghill,” was visited at intervals by infectious fever which spread from cottage to cottage, and by smallpox so disastrously in two successive years, 1777 and 1778, that above thirty children died in the first and no fewer than forty-seven in the second, owing, the minister thought, in part to improper management (Statistical Account of Scotland, I. 262). Something similar, although the numbers are not given, had happened in 1789 in the Western Ross parish of Applecross, which is now one vast deer-forest with two or three poor fishing hamlets. Of Kilmuir, in the extreme north-west of Skye, it is said, “In former times the smallpox prevailed to a very great extent, and sometimes almost depopulated the country.”
In the parish of Holywood, Dumfriesshire, the yearly average marriages were 5, the baptisms 16, and the burials 11; but in 1782, the burials rose to 20, “owing to an infectious fever in the west part of the parish” (said elsewhere to be “chiefly owing to poor living and bad accommodation during the winter season”); and in 1786 “the large number of deaths”—namely fourteen all told—“was owing to the ravages of the natural smallpox” (I. 22).
In Galston parish, Ayrshire, “smallpox makes frequent ravages.” In Eaglesham parish, near Glasgow, most of the infectious deaths are by fever, but smallpox also carries off great numbers (II. 118).
In the parish of Largs, Ayrshire, the number of deaths varied in different years “according as the smallpox or any species of dangerous fever prevailed”; in such cases the number of deaths were above forty, but in ordinary years between twenty and thirty, the mean annual average of births being about thirty. (II. 362.) But in Dunoon “we have commonly no sickness or fatal distemper except from old age and the complaints peculiar to children; and even these last are not in general fatal.” (II. 390.) In Forbes and Kearn, Aberdeenshire, “some children are lost by the smallpox, measles, and hooping-cough. But as the people in a great measure have got over their prejudices against inoculation, very few now die of the smallpox,” (IX. 193).
In Monquhitter, in the same county: “the chincough, measles and smallpox return periodically; but the virulence of these disorders is now greatly lessened by judicious management” (VI. 122). In Grange, Banffshire, “of late neither the smallpox nor any inflammatory disorders have been very prevalent or mortal; the complaints are principally nervous” (IX. 563). In Fyvie, Aberdeenshire, “there has been no prevalent distemper for some time except the putrid sore-throat” (IX. 461). But, in Dron, Perthshire, smallpox owing to the prejudice against inoculation, continues to carry off a great number of children; the hot regimen, and the keeping of the patients too long in their foul linen and clothes, are bad for the disease (IX. 468). In Fordyce, the ravages of the smallpox are very much abated by the practice of inoculation; the most prevalent distemper is fever (III. 48). In the sea-board parish of Rathen, smallpox occurred among the fishers (VI. 16). The fullest account is under the head of Thurso (XX. 502), supplied by John Williamson, surgeon: In December, 1796, the confluent smallpox became highly epidemic and fatal in the county of Caithness. In Thurso, more particularly, the epidemic was almost general, “and by my calculation one in four fell a victim.” The mortality became so general that a general inoculation was proposed, and more or less carried out in most parishes except Latheron.
The most exact record is for the parish of Torthorwald Dumfriesshire; in two ten-year periods and one of seven years the mortality was as follows (II. 12):
| All deaths | Smallpox | Measles | Chin-cough | Fevers | Infants under one, cause unknown | |||||||
| 1764-73 | 100 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 10 | 9 | ||||||
| 1774-83 | 100 | 5 | 0 | 3 | 7 | 14 | ||||||
| 1784-90 | 80 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 8 | 6 |