Smallpox in the London Bills of Mortality, 1801-37.
| Smallpox deaths | All deaths | |||
| 1801 | 1461 | 19,374 | ||
| 1802 | 1579 | 19,379 | ||
| 1803 | 1202 | 19,582 | ||
| 1804 | 622 | 17,034 | ||
| 1805 | 1685 | 17,565 | ||
| 1806 | 1158 | 17,938 | ||
| 1807 | 1297 | 18,334 | ||
| 1808 | 1169 | 19,954 | ||
| 1809 | 1163 | 16,680 | ||
| 1810 | 1198 | 19,983 | ||
| 1811 | 751 | 17,043 | ||
| 1812 | 1287 | 18,295 | ||
| 1813 | 898 | 17,322 | ||
| 1814 | 638 | 19,283 | ||
| 1815 | 725 | 19,560 | ||
| 1816 | 653 | 20,316 | ||
| 1817 | 1051 | 19,968 | ||
| 1818 | 421 | 19,705 | ||
| 1819 | 712 | 19,928 | ||
| 1820 | 722 | 19,348 | ||
| 1821 | 508 | 18,451 | ||
| 1822 | 604 | 18,865 | ||
| 1823 | 774 | 20,587 | ||
| 1824 | 725 | 20,237 | ||
| 1825 | 1299 | 21,026 | ||
| 1826 | 503 | 20,758 | ||
| 1827 | 616 | 22,292 | ||
| 1828 | 598 | 21,709 | ||
| 1829 | 736 | 23,524 | ||
| 1830 | 627 | 21,645 | ||
| 1831 | 563 | 25,337 | ||
| 1832 | 771 | 28,606 | ||
| 1833 | 574 | 26,577 | ||
| 1834 | 334 | 21,679 | ||
| 1835 | 863 | 21,415 | ||
| 1836 | 536 | 18,229 | ||
| 1837 | 217 | 21,063 |
The 18th century had ended with a severe epidemic of smallpox (2409 deaths) in the year 1800; and excepting in the year 1804, the deaths kept at a somewhat high level for ten years longer. The rise at the end of the last century corresponded to a time of distress and a severe epidemic of typhus fever. The fever declined after 1803, and remained for a dozen years at so low a level that Bateman, in his quarterly reports on the practice of the Carey Street Dispensary, expresses surprise that there should have been so little of it. The same writer, however, has occasion to remark upon the fatality of smallpox; twice he mentions large mortalities from it in courts adjoining Shoe Lane[1087]. According to the figures, also, smallpox declined less than fever. This means that, in the same circumstances, adult lives fared better than infancy and childhood. But, on the whole, smallpox shared with fever the advantageous conditions for health which obtained in all parts of the kingdom (in Ireland as well as in Britain) from the decline of the epidemics of 1799-1803 until the rise of the next epidemics in 1816-19. This period of comparative freedom from smallpox and fever corresponded to the second period of the great French War from its resumption after the failure of the Peace of Amiens until its termination with the Peace of Paris. It may seem surprising that this should have been a time of comparatively good public health in Great Britain and Ireland, inasmuch as it was a time of dear food and heavy taxes. The amount of typhus or relapsing fever is the best test; and those diseases, by all accounts, were at a lower level in all parts of the United Kingdom from 1804 to 1817 than they had been for many years before or than they were for many years after. Again, if precedents count for anything, the same kind of lull in smallpox and fever together is shown in the London bills during the war of the Allies against Louis XIV., and during the Seven Years War.
In Glasgow the decline of smallpox deaths for a few years in the 19th century was perhaps more marked than elsewhere because it was a decline from an excessively high level in the end of the 18th century.
Glasgow Mortalities, 1801-12.
| Year | Smallpox deaths | Measles deaths | All deaths | |||
| 1801 | 245 | 8 | 1434 | |||
| 1802 | 156 | 168 | 1770 | |||
| 1803 | 194 | 45 | 1860 | |||
| 1804 | 213 | 52 | 1670 | |||
| 1805 | 56 | 90 | 1671 | |||
| 1806 | 28 | 56 | 1629 | |||
| 1807 | 97 | 16 | 1806 | |||
| 1808 | 51 | 787 | 2623 | |||
| 1809 | 159 | 44 | 2124 | |||
| 1810 | 28 | 19 | 2111 | |||
| 1811 | 109 | 267 | 2342 | |||
| 1812 | 78 | 304 | 2348 |
Here it is not until 1805 that a marked fall in the smallpox deaths takes place. In Norwich there was a clear interval from the last severe period in the end of the 18th century, until the year 1805, when smallpox, “after being for a time almost extinct,” became prevalent again. At the Whitehaven Dispensary, the contrast between the last years of the 18th century and first years of the 19th is not striking[1088]:
Smallpox at Whitehaven Dispensary.
| Cases | Deaths | |||
| 1795 | 8 | 0 | ||
| 1796 | 41 | 5 | ||
| 1797 | (no table) | |||
| 1798 | 51 | 3 | ||
| 1799 | 7 | 1 | ||
| 1800 | 120 | 11 | ||
| 1801 | 9 | 3 | ||
| 1802 | (no table) | |||
| 1803 | 67 | 16 | ||
| 1804 | 1 | 0 | ||
Carlisle, which used to share in smallpox as much as Whitehaven, seems to have been almost wholly free from it in the first twelve years of the century: at least Dr Heysham, who was no longer statistical, “had reason to believe” that no person died there of smallpox from the autumn of 1800 (when cowpox inoculation was introduced) until November, 1812[1089].