Leonard Schwarz

The Decline of Adult Smallpox in Eighteenth‐Century London

Smallpox was probably the single most lethal disease in eighteenth-century Britain, but was a minor cause of death by the mid-nineteenth century. Although vaccination was crucial to the decline of smallpox, especially in urban areas, from the beginning of the nineteenth century, it remains disputed the extent to which smallpox mortality declined before vaccination. Analysis of age-specific changes in smallpox burials within the large west London parish of St Martin-in-the-Fields revealed a precipitous reduction in adult smallpox risk from the 1770s, and this pattern was duplicated in the east London parish of St Dunstans. Most adult smallpox victims were rural migrants, and such a drop in their susceptibility is consistent with a sudden increase in exposure to smallpox in rural areas. We investigated whether this was due to the spread of inoculation, or an increase in smallpox transmission, using changes in the age patterns of child smallpox burials. Smallpox mortality rose among infants, and smallpox burials became concentrated at the youngest ages, suggesting a sudden increase in infectiousness of the smallpox virus. Such a change intensified the process of smallpox endemicization in the English population, but also made cities substantially safer for young adult migrants.

Leisure, luxury and urban specialization in the eighteenth century

This article forms a contribution to the ongoing debate about the nature of an English urban renaissance. We draw on Schwarz’s designation of residential leisure towns to explore the spread of leisure and luxury through a broad range of towns. Our analysis reveals that leisure facilities and luxury service and retail provision were widespread, but that residential leisure towns appear as qualitatively different places, the status of which was contingent upon social profile and cultural-economy, rather than demographic, political or socio-economic make up. We conclude by arguing that urban typologies based on specialization should be tempered with older-established and more subjective categorizations based on the status of the town.

Residential leisure towns in England towards the end of the eighteenth century

Apart from a few obvious exceptions, the definition of a ‘leisure town’ in eighteenth-century England remains problematic. Using a list of the employers of manservants registered for taxation in 1780 this paper isolates the fifty-three ‘residential leisure towns’ outside Middlesex and Surrey where there were thirty or more such employers. It is suggested that the employment of manservants is, within limits, a useful indicator of a certain type of gentility and that the spread of such towns outside the Home Counties was very limited at this time.

Urban Inoculation and the Decline of Smallpox Mortality in Eighteenth‐Century Cities - A Reply to Razzell

Smallpox was probably the single most lethal disease in eighteenth‐century Britain but was reduced to a minor cause of death by the mid‐nineteenth century due to vaccination programmes post‐1798. While the success of vaccination is unquestionable, it remains disputed to what extent the prophylactic precursor of vaccination, inoculation, reduced smallpox mortality in the eighteenth century. Smallpox was most lethal in urban populations, but most researchers have judged inoculation to have been unpopular in large towns. Recently, however, Razzell argued that inoculation significantly reduced smallpox mortality of adults and older children in London in the last third of the eighteenth century. This article uses demographic evidence from London and Manchester to confirm previous findings of a sudden fall in adult smallpox mortality and a rise in the importance of smallpox in early childhood c. 1770. The nature of these changes is consistent with an increase in smallpox transmission in London and Manchester after 1770 and indicates that smallpox inoculation was insufficient to reduce smallpox mortality in large towns. It remains unclear whether inoculation could have operated to enhance smallpox transmission or whether changes in the properties of the smallpox virus drove the intensification of smallpox mortality among young children post‐1770.

‘The Comforts of a Private Fireside’? The Workhouse, the Elderly and the Poor Law in Georgian Westminster: St Martin-in-the-Fields, 1725–1824

The history of the elderly has received a good deal of treatment recently. Susannah Ottaway, Margaret Pelling, David Thomson, Richard Smith, Lynn Botelho, Pat Thane and others have explored, often in great detail, the historical experience of growing old.1 Ottaway’s contribution in her book, The Decline of Life, in particular, has shed much valuable light on the history of old age in rural and provincial communities in the eighteenth century, on how age was defined and written about, what provision was made for the care and maintenance of the elderly and so on.2