| Week ending | Griping in the guts | Convulsions | All deaths | Births | ||||||
| 1718 | ||||||||||
| Aug. | 12 | 34 | 226 | 653 | 355 | |||||
| 19 | 23 | 239 | 645 | 383 | ||||||
| 26 | 25 | 256 | 693 | 347 | ||||||
| Sept. | 2 | 28 | 265 | 668 | 350 | |||||
| 9 | 27 | 245 | 725 | 388 | ||||||
| 16 | 26 | 221 | 653 | 336 | ||||||
| 23 | 27 | 213 | 639 | 367 | ||||||
| 30 | 24 | 182 | 632 | 361 | ||||||
| 1719 | ||||||||||
| Aug. | 11 | 32 | 215 | 688 | 354 | |||||
| 18 | 29 | 243 | 670 | 342 | ||||||
| 25 | 28 | 245 | 755 | 371 | ||||||
| Sept. | 1 | 27 | 233 | 726 | 362 | |||||
| 8 | 17 | 229 | 735 | 393 | ||||||
| 15 | 22 | 218 | 728 | 379 | ||||||
| 22 | 14 | 202 | 663 | 360 | ||||||
| 29 | 17 | 161 | 639 | 372 | ||||||
If these two tables be compared with the tables already given for the summers and autumns of 1669 and 1670, it will be found that the figures under “griping in the guts” and under “convulsions” have exactly changed places, the hundreds of the former in 1669-70 becoming tens in 1718-19, and the tens of the latter in 1669-70 becoming hundreds in 1718-19.
In those two years the article of fever was very high, contributing largely to the weekly totals of deaths from all causes, especially in the summer and autumn. In 1720 “fever” and “convulsions” again reached a maximum in September, the deaths from all causes in the week ending 20th September being 592. The winter of 1721 (February) is the first of a series when the weekly deaths of the cold season reach the enormous height of the most unwholesome summers, the causes being “fever,” “aged,” “consumption,” “dropsy,” and the like, with a due proportion of infantile deaths. The fatal winters following are 1723 (January), 1726 (Jan.-March), 1728 (Feb.-March, the end of a great epidemic of fever), 1729 (Nov.-Dec., still fever), 1732-33 (Dec.-Feb.) and 1738 (November). This was the great period of spirit-drinking, crime, and general demoralization in London. In the week ending 30th Jan. 1733, the deaths from “dropsy” were 64: it was in the midst of an influenza.
The next characteristic weekly bills of autumn are found in the year 1723, when the following enormous mortalities occurred in three successive weeks:
1723
| Week ending | Griping in the guts | Convulsions | All deaths | Births | |||||
| Sept. | 3 | 23 | 308 | 761 | 396 | ||||
| 10 | 32 | 251 | 705 | 339 | |||||
| 17 | 33 | 262 | 768 | 390 | |||||
Then comes a succession of four summers and autumns, 1726-29, in which the weekly mortalities are of the same kind—high totals from all causes and high “convulsions,” while “fevers” are high in several seasons of the period, perhaps from influenzas. Strother, writing in the summer of 1728, says there was much diarrhoea in London “last autumn [1727] and this summer,” the effects of which upon the bills of mortality are nowhere visible except under the enormous weekly totals of “convulsions.”
I shall take one more example of a season fatal to infants, the autumn of 1734, by which time we find recorded the ages at death:
London Weekly Mortalities, with the numbers under five years.
1734