Accidents and Violent Deaths in Early Modern London is a well-written book that attempts to place the phenomenon of accidents and violent deaths into a broader context of early modern society. At first glance, this book seems that it would be a “history buff’s” dream. About 200 pages of gruesome stories of the way people died. Not going to lie, that is what drew me to the book at first as well. However, the author pleasantly takes everything a step further to make this book impactful within the historiography of early modern England. The main purpose or goal of the book seems to be to use the records and primary sources collected about accidents and violent deaths, to help readers construct a view of early modern London. The author does address the problem that since accidents and violent deaths are rare by nature, it is contested whether we can use these sources to draw conclusions about society as a whole. The author counters by arguing that by looking at the response of society to enough accidents, one can start to see how society might have reacted to such traumatic events.
Chapter 1 starts out by giving a brief overview of what life was like in the city of London at this time, and by overviewing some of the main accidents and types of deaths that are to be discussed in the book. Chapter 1 also reviews some important social structures that interacted with each other around the theme of accidents and violent deaths. Chapter 2 goes more in-depth into the social structures and institutions whose responsibilities it was to manage the aftermath of accidents and violent deaths. The author argues that although rare occurrences, the people whose job it was to oversee these processes had a very organized and methodological way of working. Chapter 3 dives into the opposing forces of water and fire. Both resources are essential for human life, but can also end your life in the blink of an eye. Chapter 5 deals with the everyday accidents that are consequences of living in a city. Falling, being struck, horse accidents, cart accidents. All of these events happened quite frequently and were results of how the city of London was structured and built. Chapter 5 talks about more types of death that occurred in cities but were likely rarer. Often times it is debated whether these accidents were truly accidental or done on purpose. Due to the nature of the Bills of Mortality, it is often hard to tell. Chapter 6 analyzes the data in terms of seasonality, exploring what types of accidents happened during specific times of the year. This chapter also looks at death trends from 1654-to 1735, seeing if there are any significant trends that align with economic or political events within the region. Chapter 7 takes a look into the medical responses that happened after an accident had occurred. Depending on the type of injury, who provided care after an accident varied. Doctors were very limited in Early Modern London. In most cases, parishes would help to fund the healing of patients. And in other cases, companies or jobs would help to pay if the injury was obtained at work. Chapter 8 reviews some of the regulations that were put into place in order to prevent certain accidents from occurring again. Although at a higher level, not much was done, some localities did enforce regulations to keep cities a little bit safer. Finally, Chapter 9 deals with the narratives that were often constructed from accidents and violent deaths. By exploring newspapers, pamphlets, ballads, and personal journals, readers are able to see how early modern Londoners made sense of traumatic events that were happening around them.
As seen from the summary, this book gave a very comprehensive overview of the types of accidents and deaths that happened in early modern London, and how society reacted to make sense of them. I think the broad yet specific nature of this book is a strength. It takes a very niche topic and expands it in every way possible. This could have very easily been a book summarizing the trends from the Bills of Mortality. However, the author weaved in some aspects of cultural history which allowed readers to receive some first-hand accounts of this topic. Chapter 9 especially helped to pull the culture of Early Modern England into what could have otherwise been a very quantitative book. The organization of the book was also a strength. In three parts: an overview, empirical data, and social and cultural responses, there was truly something for everyone. Although, in part 2 of the book I felt that they were just restating the bills of mortality at times, and wished for more commentary on the goals of the book. Not necessarily a weakness but a source shortcoming, but it would have been nice to learn about accidents and violent deaths from other parts of England as well. Although, that might have made the book too long at that point.
Overall, this was a wonderfully written book that gave a very holistic view of different types of accidents and violent deaths. The goal of the book was to use the sources based on accidents and violent deaths to give readers a peek into early modern society by seeing how people reacted to and dealt with these traumatic events. After reading this book I am not sure if I am left with any new revelations as to how social structures of this time functioned surrounding accidents. However, I do feel that the author did something new by using the Bills of Mortality to look more into the social and cultural structures of early modern London.
