Authority, autonomy and the first London Bills of Mortality

The Milano Sforza Registers of the Dead: Health Policies in Italian Renaissance

“…The clerk of the Parish Company had the task to send a copy to the Privy Council within the following day (Heitman 2020). The Bills reported for the first time a classification of the causes of death and the gender of deceased persons only in 1629, while the age at death was reported only from 1728 (Mazur 2016).…”

“…However, even if before the plague of 1592 the reports were available only to the Privy Council, the sovereign, and the London's Lord Mayor, thereafter the Worshipful Company of Parish Clerks began to produce a large-scale broadsheet and posting them in public areas. As a consequence, Bills of Mortality of London became the most renowned source of morbidity and mortality data, the primary source of information for public health sciences since its early origins (Heitman 2020). The identification by John Graunt, as early as 1661, of some fundamental demographic laws such as the numerical regularity of births and deaths, the relationship between the sexes at birth and death, the percentages of each cause of death relative to the total of deaths, and the consequent predictability of many biological phenomena, derives from the opportunity provided by access to the data of the Bills of Mortality (Sutherland 1963).…”

“…Such oblivion is also due to the strong international visibility of the Bills of Mortality of London, established in 1592 and maintained until the 19th century. The Bills are the most renown source of morbidity and mortality data on which public health sciences have been implemented since early origins (Heitman 2020). The most renown, but neither the first established nor the most exhaustive.…”

Pandemics and methodological developments in epidemiology history

“…Recurrent plague outbreaks between the 14th and the 17th centuries disrupted urban life and unsettled civic powers. In London, the pandemics of plague progressively led to the systematic collection of death counts [4]. Quantitative plague reports were introduced in 1518 and expanded to other individual causes of death in 1554 and 1555.…”

COVID-19 mortality prediction: A case study for İstanbul

“…Modelling a pandemic is very important since it may provides how to control the disease and how to reduce the mortality. For example, London mortality statistics were published weekly in Bills of Mortality from the 17th century to 1830s [3]. In 1662, Graunt studied mortality rates and causes in his book Natural and Political Observations Made Upon the Bills of Mortality [4].…”