Accidents and violent death in early modern London, 1650-1750
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Bibliographic Information
Accidents and violent death in early modern London, 1650-1750
（Studies in early modern cultural, political and social history / series editors, David Armitage, Tim Harris, Stephen Taylor, v. 25）
Boydell Press, 2016
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Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. 247-264) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Between the mid-seventeenth and mid-eighteenth century more than 15,000 Londoners suffered sudden violent deaths. In the early modern period, accidental and 'disorderly' deaths - from drowning, falls, stabbing, shooting, fires, explosions, suffocation, and animals and vehicles, among others - were a regular feature of urban life.
Between the mid-seventeenth and mid-eighteenth centuries more than 15,000 Londoners suffered sudden violent deaths. While this figure includes around 3,000 who were murdered or committed suicide, the vast majority of fatalities resulted from accidents. In the early modern period, accidental and 'disorderly' deaths - from drowning, falls, stabbing, shooting, fires, explosions, suffocation, animals and vehicles, among other causes - were a regular feature ofurban life and left a significant mark in the archival records of the period.
This book provides the first substantive critical study of the early modern accident, revealing and chronicling the lives - and deaths - of hundreds of otherwise unknown Londoners. Drawing on the weekly London Bills of Mortality, parish burial registers, newspapers and other related documents, it examines accidents and other forms of violent death in the city with a view tounderstanding who among its residents encountered such events, how the bureaucracy recorded and elaborated their circumstances and why they did so, and what practical responses might follow. Through a systematic review of the character of accidents, medical and social interventions, and changing attitudes toward the regulation of hazards across the metropolis, it establishes the historical significance of the accident and shows how, as the eighteenth century progressed, providential explanations gave way to a more rational viewpoint that saw certain accident events as threats to be managed rather than misfortunes to be explained. Additionally, the book explores how knowledge of such incidents was transformed to become a recurring cultural trope in oral, textual and visual narratives of metropolitan life, thereby opening a window to the way in which sudden death and violent injury was understood by early modern mentalities.
CRAIG SPENCE is Senior Lecturer in History at Bishop Grosseteste University.
Table of Contents
Introduction
'Here Falling Houses Thunder on your Head': Sudden Violent Death and the Metropolis
'I told my Neighbours, who sent for the Searchers': From Personal Trauma to Public Knowledge
'Good Servants, but Bad Masters': Fire and Water
'Much Mischief Happeneth to Persons in the Street': Everyday Urban Accidents
'Death Hath Ten Thousand Several Doors': Rare and Unfortunate Events
'Thro' Freezing Snows, and Rains, and Soaking Sleet': A Time to Die
'She was Lame Long After': Medical and Social Response
'To the Great Hazard of Peoples Lives': Bringing Order to Chaos
'Telling Pretty Stories': Constructing Accident Event Narratives
Conclusion
Bibliography
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