Mortality in eighteenth-century London: a new look at the bills.

The London Bills of Mortality offer a tantalising challenge to historical demographers. Since they give the number of burials and baptisms, the causes of death, and the ages of those buried for various periods and combinations of parishes in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it has been tempting to use the data they provide as a basis for the estimation of mortality rates. This contribution focuses on the period 1728 to 1830 for which the age structure of burials is available. It employs the compendium of Bills material compiled by John Marshall and published in 1832 as Mortality of the Metropolis. The paper has little to say that is new about the considerable failings that have been recognised in the Bills as a demographic source, although it does not ignore their potentially distorting effects, rather it illustrates the way in which new estimates may be derived especially for early-age and overall mortality, and it examines the potential use of two distinctive cause of death categories: ‘Abortions & Stillbirths’ and deaths in ‘Childbed’. These data might allow versions of the stillbirth rate (SBR) and the maternal mortality rate (MMR) to be derived for the general London population (that is, background mortality measures) against which rates from other sources, such as the lying-in hospitals, could be compared.