The recording of deaths

In order to judge how severe an epidemic is, we need to know how big was the population in which it occurred. There was no official census of the population to provide this figure, and the best contemporary count comes from the work of John Graunt (1620-1674), who was one of the earliest Fellows of the Royal Society and one of the first demographers, bringing a scientific approach to the collection of statistics. In 1662 he estimated that 384,000 people lived in the City of London, the Liberties, Westminster and the out-parishes, based on figures in the bills of mortality published each week in the capital. These different districts with different administrations constituted the officially recognised extent of London as a whole. In 1665 he revised his estimate to 'not above 460,000'. Other contemporaries put the figure higher, (the French Ambassador, for example, suggested 600,000) but with no mathematical basis to support their estimates. The next largest city in the kingdom was Norwich, with population a mere 30,000.

Infected Oriental rat flea.Yersinia pestis bacteria appear as a dark mass in the gut. The bacteria block the flea's digestive system, leaving it hungry but unable to eat. Instead when it tries to feed it regurgitates yersinia into the wound.

There was no duty to report a death to anyone in authority. Instead, each parish appointed two or more 'searchers of the dead', whose duty was to inspect a corpse and determine the cause of death. A Searcher was entitled to charge a small fee from relatives for each death they reported, and so habitually the parish would appoint someone to the post who would otherwise be destitute and would be receiving support from the parish poor rate. Typically this meant searchers would be old women who were illiterate, might know little about identifying diseases and who would be open to dishonesty. Searchers would typically learn about a death either from the local sexton who had been asked to dig a grave, or from the tolling of a church bell. Anyone who did not report a death to their local church, such as Quakers, Jews, Anabaptists or other non-Christians, frequently did not get included in the official records. Searchers during times of plague were required to live apart from the community and stay indoors except when performing their duties, for fear of spreading the diseases. Outside they should avoid other people and always carry a white stick to warn of their occupation. Searchers reported to the Parish Clerk, who made a return each week to the Company of Parish Clerks in Brode Lane. Figures were then passed to the Lord Mayor and then to the Minister of State once plague became a matter of national concern.The reported figures were used to compile the Bills of Mortality, which listed total deaths in each parish and whether by plague. The system of Searchers to report the cause of death continued until 1836.

Graunt recorded the incompetence of the Searchers at identifying true causes of death, remarking on the frequent recording of 'consumption' rather than other diseases which were recognised then by physicians. He suggested a cup of ale and a doubling of their fee to two groats rather than one was sufficient for Searchers to change the cause of death to one more convenient for the householders. No one wished to be known as having had a death by plague in their household, and Parish Clerks, too, connived in covering up cases of plague in their official returns. Analysis of the Bills of Mortality during the months plague took hold shows a rise in deaths other than by plague well above the average death rate, which has been attributed to misrepresentation of the true cause of death. As plague spread a system of quarantine was introduced whereby any house where someone had died from plague would be locked up and no one allowed to enter or leave for 40 days. This frequently led to the deaths of the other inhabitants, by neglect if not from plague, and provided ample incentive not to report the disease. The official returns record 68,596 cases of plague, but a reasonable estimate suggests this figure is 30,000 short of the true total.A plague house was marked with a red cross on the door with the words "Lord have mercy upon us", and a watchman stood guard outside.

Sources of information: wikipedia.org, nationalarchives.gov.uk, historylearningsite.co.uk