ulcers finally close, leaving behind indelible scars. This entailed
alloy is often the source of bad health. Sometimes the eyes or eyelids
are particularly afflicted with scrofulous ophthalmy. In other cases
it excites tumours, deep seated abscess, anchylosis, and caries in
various joints of the elbow, fingers, knees, feet; or stubborn ulcers
in different parts: and still more deleterious consequences ensue from
scrofulous glands of the lungs or mesentery terminating in phthisis, or
hectick. Some nations more than others, are afflicted with scrofula. I
have read that it is not frequent in tropical climates; and it is not
contagious. The predisposing and occasional _causes_ are hereditary:
diseases of the lymphatic glands; consequence of small pox: whether it
is more prevalent in some countries than others from the air, water,
diet, or other causes, is not yet ascertained.
_Leprosy._ A considerable part of the Mosaical code, politically and
medicinally, is pointed against this disease. It is now, in a great
degree, eradicated and worn out of Europe. After the Crusades, in the
twelfth century, Europe was overspread with this hideous judaical
scurf, imported from Palestine. Lazarettoes for the confinement of the
unclean, were then numerous in many kingdoms: in France alone there
were two thousand. At present, in the cold northern island, Iceland, a
sort of leprosy is congenial to the natives, from their diet, climate,
and mode of life. And in the history of the late discoveries in the
Pacific Ocean, we read of a leprous scurf infesting the natives, from
their excessive indulgence in a hot spice amongst their food. In
our island, at this day, a considerable number are afflicted with a
disgusting cutaneous scurf; but greatly inferior in virulence to the
Asiatic leprosy. The absolute mortality in the London bills by this
disease, is almost undeserving of notice.
TO THE READER.
We must here abruptly, and with regret, but for obvious reasons,
the size to which this Publication is already swelled, cut off the
remainder of our comments, amounting to nearly one hundred pages more.
Those left behind unnoticed of the last group, comprehend most of the
chronic cutaneous diseases, the subjects, peculiarly, of the Cosmetic
Art. Through the last group of external accidents and diseases, I meant
to have persevered in my general plan. For instance, under Gangrene, I
should have discriminated the ages, mortality, cures; and at the same
time, that originating from external injuries, or surgical operations,
and that from spontaneous corruption. Under Fractures, I should have
gauged the success and miscarriage of amputation, both after sudden
accidents, and in consequence of chronic diseases. This is a most
important part of military surgery, and I believe, in a great measure,
unexplored. From the trepan and lithotomy, I should also have stated
the blanks and prizes. With the surgical group I am obliged to omit the
casualties of London: one alone of which I could not entirely postpone,
without introducing a few observations in this place, that is the
Executed.
_Executed._ Murder, robbery, sedition, and war, are amongst the
principal political casualties, chronic distempers, fevers, and
frenzies of every nation. In ascertaining the numbers executed,
particularly, the London bills of mortality are shamefully erroneous
and defective. As I thought it a casualty of infinite importance to
be exactly stated and recorded, I made numerous efforts to procure
authentic information, by successively and repeatedly waiting upon
the Keeper of Newgate, the Clerk of the Arraigns, the Clerk of the
Peace for the County, the Town-Clerk of London, the Sheriff’s office
of London, and the Secretary of State’s. Throughout this inquiry I was
every where treated with liberality and urbanity; and where there was
any prospect of information, was permitted access to the records. But,
to my astonishment and mortification, I could not find any vestige of
records of executions in London before 1754. These were in the Clerk of
Arraigns’ office, but were buried in a heap of extraneous law rubbish;
and to extract which, the Clerk of the Arraigns told me, it would
require three entire days for myself and one of his clerks. I called
twice at the Old Bailey, anxious to undertake this task, however
laborious; but it so happened, that at both times they were full of
business in the office, and could not spare time, nor even room, for my
inquiry. By other means, I have come near part of the truth. (_Vid._
CHART.)
The two first columns, from 1732 to 1762, are formed from an average
of executions, during twenty-two years of that interval, by Sir
Theodore Jansen, Chamberlain of London. The last column, of fifteen
years, is formed from an average of the last seven years, with which
Mr. Akerman politely furnished me, from his books. In consequence of
the riots and conflagration in 1780, his records were all consumed,
and do not include that year, wherein there was a notorious glut of
executions. During the seven years, beginning with 1781, the executed
in Mr. Akerman’s books were 439. But every one knows that there are two
theatres, a great and a small one, appropriated for human slaughter in
this metropolis; these are Tyburn, now removed to Newgate; and for the
large Borough of Southwark, Kennington Common. I took a low average
of the executions in the latter, allotting three annually, to the
two first columns, and six to the last column, and added the whole
together. Amongst the London malefactors there are a few pirates, whose
crimes are cognizable in the Admiralty Court.
Two thirds, probably, of all those capitally condemned, are afterwards
pardoned. Few, comparatively, of the executed have committed murder,
not one in twenty; most of the rest are for robberies of various
kinds. Many more are reported as murdered in the bills of mortality:
but these are not cases of premeditated and malicious homicide, and
are softened into manslaughter on trial. Nineteen out of twenty of the
executed are males; and by far the greatest proportion between eighteen
and forty years of age. What is the proportion of London executions
to the whole nation, is a problem which perhaps our judges cannot
unravel. They possibly, like the generality of physicians, drive and
strut away, “secundum artem,” in the beaten rotine of their profession,
without ever attending to a plain political and mercantile axiom, to
state their transactions and accounts in numbers and figures. Vice and
executions are universally more prevalent in every metropolis: but
there is reason to believe, that at present the executions throughout
Britain and Ireland, are double or treble to those of London. The
comparative population is as nine million to six hundred and fifty
thousand. If they are treble, then 4000 are executed every fifteen
years in the two islands; and 26,000 in a century: and both the disease
and panacea are rapidly increasing. Five or six times this number are,
in the same period, transported to distant regions, and partly also
lost to the community, together with their blighted procreation.
We are struck with horror even on reading the history of savage
jurisprudence, customs, and butchery of mankind in ancient times;
such as the sanguinary codes of Draco and other regal monsters; the
sacrifices to idols; the martyrs to gloomy fanaticism; the brutal
spectacles of the Romans, wherein gladiators, lions and tygers, were
exposed to tear each other to pieces. But I doubt whether, in the most
flagitious and facinorous ages of Rome, the Tarpeian rock was besmeared
with the blood of such a multitude of human victims; or that in any
part of the globe, from London to the Antipodes, out of an equal
proportion of mankind, there are so many sacrifices annually made to
violated jurisprudence; and to the modern idol, property and money! I
meant to have contrasted the executed with those destroyed in wars,
by the sword of the enemy (exclusive of diseases) during the present
century; but the introduction would be here premature; nor could I
launch out in sufficient illustration.
Besides the political patients doomed to the radical cure, or
extermination, by the executioner, if we may credit one of our
best writers, they are a mere handful compared to those who are
consigned to a slow and lingering death. Dr. Johnson, in one of his
excellent essays in the Rambler, against perpetual imprisonment for
debt, calculates, that half a million of mankind are destroyed in a
century in the prisons of Great Britain, by the complicated horror of
confinement, sorrow, famine, filth, and disease; and to these I would
add suicide. I am inclined, however, to believe, that Dr. Johnson’s
computation is exaggerated, by at least four hundred thousand. By
far the largest proportion of these are unfortunate sacrifices to
poverty and misfortunes, and to the callous vindictiveness of avarice.
In the juridical pharmacopœia, this may be compared to the hot iron
and cautery of the coarse empiricks of antiquity; with which they
outrageously and indiscriminately tortured their patients. It would not
disgrace the christianity or humanity of our legislature and lawyers,
were they to revise their catechism and breviary of jurisprudence, both
as affecting life and liberty: or, throwing religion and humanity to
one side, let the question be tried by commercial scales; and, like the
Venetian Jew, human flesh estimated in ounces and pounds with brutes,
metals, and chattels!
_Of the Institution of the London Bills of Births, Mortality, and
Diseases; their Defects, besides those already pointed out; important
and easy Improvements recommended._
We shall now, with all possible brevity, enquire into the degrees
of credibility and stability of the mathematical and medical data,
furnished from the bills of mortality. The births, genealogies,
procreation, multiplication, and deaths, of those few miracles of
longevity, from Adam to Noah; from Noah’s descendants down to Abraham,
Moses, and Christ, are recorded in scripture: some chapters of Genesis
are plain registers of births and mortality. The male Israelites, above
twenty years of age, were, at distant intervals, mustered and numbered
by Moses and his successors; and in a few uncommon pestilences, the
devastation is ascertained in the Jewish history. The descent and
pedigree of kings, and other great men, have also been kept in most
nations, who had made any progress in civilization: but general annual
registers of births, diseases, and deaths, are modern establishments,
and were unknown to the ancients.
On the continent of Europe, registers were instituted fifty or a
hundred years before their introduction into England. In 1538, exact
records of weddings, christenings, and burials, were first ordered by
the King and council, to be kept in every parish church of England, by
either the vicar or curate. But this order was very negligently obeyed
in many parishes, until 1559, when, to prevent registers from rotting
in damp churches, they were directed to be written on parchment. At
first, they seem, both in Germany and England, to have been designed
to prove the birth, death, and descent of individuals, and the right
of inheritance in property or lands. In 1592, a year of pestilence,
bills of mortality for London were instituted; but were discontinued
until 1603, another year of pestilential desolation; which was the only
distemper then taken notice of in the printed reports. In 1626, the
different diseases and casualties of those who died in London, together
with the distinction of the sexes, were added and published; and in
1728, the different ages of the dead were ordered to be specified in
the London bills. Upon first establishing the distinction of diseases
and casualties in the bills of the British metropolis, the primary
intention seems to have been, to distinguish the numbers destroyed by
the plague, and to detect concealed murders.
Public records of births and mortality are now partly become the rules
of political arithmetic: but unfortunately for politicians, calculators
of annuities, and medical men, they are yet every where far too
incorrect and incomplete. Registers of diseases and deaths in London
are entrusted to old women, two of whom are nominated in each parish,
and called Parish Searchers, and who consider, the ultimatum of their
commission is merely to prevent private funerals and concealed murder.
The whole business in London is conducted in the following manner: Upon
either being sent for to inspect a corpse, or on hearing the bell toll,
and inspecting the books kept in the different churches, the searchers
are apprised from whence notice has been sent of a death, in order
that a grave may be opened. The two parochial matrons then, whose
industry is stimulated by a small fee on each corpse, and whose report
is necessary previous to interment, set out to examine that no violence
is committed upon the dead, of which they have taken an official oath
to make true declaration, and afterwards negligently enquire from the
relations the name of the disease, adding the age and sex: or sometimes
they are stopped in the hall, and dismissed without any scrutiny.
These records, together with the christenings, in the latter of which
the searchers have no concern, are deposited with the respective
clerks of each parish church, and by the clerks the christenings of
the established church, and the burials in their respective parochial
church-yards alone, are carried once every week to a general hall in
the city: on the following day the weekly bill, comprehending these
partial returns, is printed and published; and at the end of the year a
general bill, in which all the weekly returns are consolidated.
The law ordains, that every person who dies in the registered parishes
of London, Westminster, and Southwark, is to be inspected by two
parish searchers, and reported to the parish clerk, who then grants his
certificate for the interment: or, if the corpse is carried away to a
different parish of the metropolis for interment, the searchers report,
and the clerk’s certificate, are equally necessary; otherwise that
parish where the corpse is buried is liable to a fine. This process
was originally intended to detect the plague, and concealed murders;
in both which respects, during the present century, the parish clerks
and the searchers have been almost useless. There is now no plague to
detect; there are very few murders, and they are always proclaimed by
some other means. Even in the preceding century, when the plague raged
in London, the searchers report was rarely trusted without a physician
or surgeon attending, to prevent mistakes.
Notwithstanding this ceremony of inspection by the searchers, and
of making their reports to the parish clerk, it does not hence
follow, that the clerk makes the return of the death to the general
hall, _unless the corpse is buried in his own ground, or parochial
church-yard_. If the corpse is carried to any dissenting ground, and
to various other places of sepulture not within the bills, the death
and disease is so much waste paper, and is never heard of amongst the
burials. But if the corpse is carried to a different parish, together
with a certificate, and such burying ground is registered within the
bills, then the death and disease is returned to the hall by the clerk
of that parish where the corpse is interred.
I made it my business to visit, and to converse with a variety of
parish clerks in this metropolis, most of whom agreed with me, that,
besides radical defects in the christenings and burials, there were
many other gross omissions. One instance I shall mention, and many
more might be collected. The parish clerk of Bethnal-green, in which
are also three private madhouses, made no return to the general hall,
during the year 1780, of either births or burials, and in the preceding
year he returned only four burials: whereas in former years, this
parish alone annually returned from three to five hundred burials.
I was assured, that the company of parish clerks in their corporate
capacity, even if willing, have no power of compulsion over any of
their refractory and negligent members, to make regular and correct
returns: it seems almost optional. It is obvious what flagrant
discordance and error this must occasion in various calculations.
Exclusive of gross mismanagement and error from searchers and parish
clerks, there are other inherent defects in the London registers,
both of burials and births. They comprehend the births alone of those
belonging to the established church, and the burials of such only who
are interred in the registered parochial church-yards. Jews, Quakers,
Papists, Protestant Dissenters of various sects, are not included in
the annual christenings; and great numbers of their burials, and of
the burying-places not only of the dissenting, but likewise of the
established church, are omitted: of the former 32, and of the latter
35, according to Short’s list. Maitland, 1729, (see his History of
London) discovered 181 religious congregations, whose christenings
were not published, and 63 burying-places in and contiguous to the
metropolis, wherein 3038 were annually buried, but excluded from the
registers. The large modern and populous parishes of Pancras and
Mary-le-bone, in one of which also stands the Foundling Hospital, are
omitted in the annual bills. Six hundred abortive and stillborn, who
have arrived at an age thought deserving of funeral, are added to the
annual deaths, but omitted in the list of births; as are also many
young infants who die before baptism.
I said, very few of the christenings of the dissenting sects in London
were included in the public registers; but several of them are buried
according to the formalities, or at least in the cemeteries of the
established church; which must unnaturally magnify the comparative
list of deaths. Another defect in the burials is, that numbers are
carried into the country who are not accounted for: it is agreed, that
several hundreds more are annually carried out of than are brought into
London for interment. Most of the nobility and gentry are removed from
London, after death, to their family seats. Dr. Price calculates the
present annual deficiency in the London burials at 6000; and of the
births somewhat greater; neither of which are brought to account in the
registers.
The following is an average, which I have formed from the London bills
of christenings and burials:
London bills at a medium annually.
Years. Christenings. Burials.
From 1671 to 1681 12,325 19,144
1681 to 1691 14,439 22,363
1691 to 1700 14,938 20,770
1700 to 1710 15,623 21,461
1711 to 1720 17,111 23,990
1721 to 1730 18,203 27,522
1731 to 1740 16,831 26,492
1741 to 1750 14,457 25,351
1751 to 1756 15,119 21,080
1759 to 1768 15,710 22,956
1770 to 1780 17,218 21,000
The parishes, but not all the burial grounds in these parishes, now
included within the London bills of mortality, amount to 147: of which
there are 97 within the old city walls; 17 without the walls, but
within the city liberties; 23 out parishes in Middlesex and Surry; and
10 out parishes in the city and liberties of Westminster. All the 97
parishes within the walls have not, for many years past, at a medium,
buried 2000 annually: some of them do not make a return of a single
burial in several years. We may name several parishes without the
walls, any two of which united, return a number of annual deaths equal
to the 97 parishes within the walls. In collecting and conducting the
bills of these parishes, there is a rabble of 294 female searchers, and
147 parish clerks.
To render the returns of births, christenings, weddings, and burials
in London complete, the clergyman of every religious sect should
be compelled by law to make, every three months, a return of their
christenings and weddings to the nearest parochial church. All the
church-yards and burying grounds hitherto excluded from the bills,
together with the parishes of Pancras, Mary-le-bone, and all the
other modern additions and population to London, should likewise be
comprehended in the registers; together with the numerous villages
and excrescences of the metropolis, within seven miles of its
circumference. The christenings should specify the name, sex, twins or
tergemini, illegitimate if known, and the religious sect. The weddings
should discriminate the place of abode, of the parties, the names and
ages of each pair; whether first, second, or third marriages, and on
which side; whether natives or foreigners, and the religious sect.
There appears at present no necessity to return weekly bills from the
different parishes. This was originally intended to warn the London
inhabitants of the numbers destroyed by the plague, and the infected
parishes. Quarterly returns to the general hall would be sufficient;
and one general annual bill, in which the quarterly mortality should
be distinguished; in order to point out the seasons most noxious,
and the reigning diseases; or to mark the hurricanes and monsoons of
mortality. In infancy, and the early part of life, when the tide of
devastation is strong and rapid, the mortality should be measured in
shorter intervals. The first year from birth should be divided into
interstices, from birth to six months, when teething commences; from
six months to one year; from one to two; two to three; three to four;
four to five; five to ten; ten to twenty; and so on to one hundred
and upwards. Exclusive of abortions and stillborn, those who die
in the first month before baptism, and of course cannot be included
in the christenings, should be distinguished, in order to determine
more accurately the amount of the births. Separate columns should be
assigned for the name of the disease or casualty; for the cause, if
known; and the duration of the affliction. Annexed to each disease
should be the numbers dying at different ages of that malady. Males
grown up to maturity who die, should be distinguished either as
married, widowers, or bachelors; and females also of this description,
either as married, widows, or virgins. Those carried out of London,
or into it, for interment; the parochial children who die at nurse
in the vicinity of the metropolis; the rank, profession, or trade;
whether native or foreigner; should all appear in the general annual
report in separate columns. The annual reports of all the hospitals,
dispensaries, and prisons, and of the executed, should also be made to
the hall, and included in the general annual register.
There are often objections and scruples to apply effectual remedies,
or radical cures, to ancient institutions, however defective and
inadequate. There certainly is no necessity for such a cumbrous complex
machinery, or multitude of parish searchers and clerks, for conducting
the London bills. Indeed they might probably be all dispensed with. The
reports of the relations of the deceased, or of the parish officers,
to the curate of the different churches, would perhaps answer every
purpose; and the perquisites would be a considerable addition to the
clerical pittance. I mean, however, only to offer a simple, easy,
and unexceptionable palliative; which is, to appoint a physician to
superintend the general hall, and the reports of births, burials,
and diseases: and the whole to be subjected to the inspection of a
committee of the Medical College, or of the Royal or Medical Societies.
This would give authenticity, credibility, and respectability to the
registers. From such a rich mine, and an authentic magazine, the most
important and beneficial information would be derived; the increase
or decrease of deaths, marriages, and births; the annual waste of
the metropolis; the health, mortality, the diseases most fatal,
their growth or declension; the effects of diet, drink, and medical
practice. Calculators of annuities, reversions, survivorships, and
insurances, would then be supplied with certain, instead of conjectural
data: at present this alone is a prodigious article of traffick and
commerce in this country: much litigation and expence respecting births
and deaths, and the right to inheritance, would also be prevented.
In a word, a vast variety of most interesting medical and political
propositions, which are entangled in intricacy and obscurity, would, by
this means, be evolved, and indisputably demonstrated.