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.
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