Table 1.
Percentage age distribution of burials from smallpox in St Martin-in-the-Fields
| Age | 1752–66 | 1775–99 |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | 13.7 | 23.3 |
| 1–4 | 54.5 | 61.5 |
| 5–9 | 10.9 | 9.4 |
| 10–19 | 4.6 | 1.8 |
| 20–49 | 15.6 | 3.5 |
| 50+ | 0.7 | 0.6 |
| Mean age at death (years) | 7.8 | 3.9 |
| N | 1,083 | 2,022 |
Notes: The periods include only years where burials without exact ages formed less than 5% of the total. Both age and cause of death were poorly recorded in the period 1767–74. Years after 1799 were excluded, to exclude effects of vaccination. Cause of death was given for 99% of burials in the period 1752–66, and 92% of burials in the years 1775–99, partly as a consequence of the inclusion of exported burials (see below, n. 66). Smallpox burials were adjusted for burials of unknown age and cause. Most burials without exact age were designated as child (‘C’) or adult (‘M’ or ‘F’) in the sextons' books, and almost all child burials were aged under 10, where exact age was given. Where cause was given but not exact age, burials were distributed to exact ages using the cause-specific distribution of burials by age for age groups under 10 or 10 and over. Burials with no cause of death given were first distributed to exact ages, and then distributed according to the age-specific ratio of smallpox burials to other causes. Almost all smallpox burials included exact age, and there was little age bias among burials with no given cause. Therefore the patterns produced by the redistribution of burials of unknown age and cause did not differ significantly from those of unadjusted smallpox burials. This is in contrast to Landers's analysis of London Quakers, where the redistribution of deaths of unknown cause caused large changes in the age patterns of smallpox burials especially at younger ages; Landers, Death, pp. 153–4. Both Landers's and the current analysis assumed that the risk of omission of cause of death was independent of the cause. This assumption is not critical in the case of St Martin's, because the adjusted series is not very different from the unadjusted (using only burials explicitly described as smallpox victims). However, if smallpox were more likely to be recorded than other causes, this may invalidate some of Landers's conclusions.
Source: CWAC, London, Accession 419/123, 233–244, F2469, St Martin-in-the-Fields, sextons' day books.