Bills of mortality were weekly mortality statistics in London from 1592 to 1595 and later continuously from 1603, aimed at monitoring burials. Significant for the year 1665, these bills revealed that 68,596 people died from the bubonic plague, a major health crisis at the time. The responsibility for these statistics was assigned to the Worshipful Company of Parish Clerks, who also played a key role in document registration and dissemination.

1. Bills of Mortality
Mahtab Alam
M.Sc Biostatistics & Demograhy
International Institiue of Population
Sciences, Mumbai

2. Bills of Mortality
Bills of mortality were the weekly mortality statistics in London,
designed to monitor burials from 1592 to 1595 and then
continuously from 1603.
The responsibility to produce the statistics was chartered in 1611
to the Worshipful Company of Parish Clerks.
Bills of Mortality - Plague, Disease and Casualties (1665)
Mortality rates and the causes of death in London during the week
of the 25th of April to the 2nd of May, 1665.
Bubonic plague caused by Yersinia pestis (bacteria) was a major
cause of death in 1665.
Also cause of black death.

3. This Bill of Mortality is a dense document, crammed with
facts and figures on death and disease in seventeenth-
century England.
The English started collecting data on numbers of births
and deaths and causes of death in the sixteenth century as
a way of tracking potential plague epidemics.
 This particular Bill is much reproduced because it is the
total Bill of Mortality for the year 1665, which was the year
London experienced a devastating plague epidemic.
According to the Bill, 68,596 people in London died of the
plague.
continued

4.  Bills of Mortality of the city of London, and the circum- stances
which gave rise to them.
 Bills issued in provincial cities, including the capitals of
Scotland and Ireland. Concerning these we may fairly direct
attention to York and to Oxford, each of which was an early
though temporary seat of the imperial Government : but to
neither of which can I trace any early Bill of Mortality.
 Bills of Mortality of the cities of continental Europe- for herein
it may be possible to trace a continuation of the practice of
ancient Rome.
 General conclusions. I shall treat the subject chronologically,
and must avail myself more or less copiously of materials which
I drew together a few years since for an article on Bills of
Mortality generally in the Insurance Cyclopedia.

6. Parochial registration and Bills of Mortality

8. While the Bills of Mortality do not provide causes of death cross-tabulated by age,
exceptional parish registers can yield both cause of death and age information.

9.  Parish Clerk (company in 1482) -worship in the parish church -
education of its children.
 Role- parish clerk changed after the Reformation as a layman. In
divine service -singing and the responses of the Congregation.
 New dispensation the Clerk had clearly become a Parochial
officer.
 The change was reflected- Fellowship and Company of Parish
Clerks of the City of London on 30th March 1582 gone are the
holy water sprinklers.

10.  It was the duty of the parish clerks of the City of London
to act as registration officers for the Lord Mayor and
Alderman and to complete ‘Bills of Mortality’.
 All information concerning Freemen, with children under
21 who died, had to be given to the Lord Mayor.
These ‘Bills of Mortality’ were for some time printed in the
Company’s hall on the Company’s own press.
After the returns had been made to those in authority the
Clerks were allowed to sell copies in order to raise money.