Accidents and Violent Death in Early Modern London
Regular price
€92.99
14 days return policy
Shipping & Delivery
A01=Craig Spence
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Author_Craig Spence
automatic-update
British History
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HBJD1
Category=HBLH
Category=HBTB
Category=JBF
Category=JFFU
Category=NHD
Category=NHTB
City life
COP=United Kingdom
Cultural History
Death
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
Dying
Early Modern England
Eighteenth Century
England
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
European History
Fatalities
History
History of Medicine
Language_English
London
PA=Available
Price_€50 to €100
Print Culture
PS=Active
Seventeenth Century
Social History
softlaunch
Urban
Product details
- ISBN 9781783271351
- Weight: 618g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 18 Nov 2016
- Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
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.
