The Scriblerian and the Kit-Cats

As documented in well-known literary works of the eighteenth century such as Gay's Trivia; or, the Art of Walking the Streets of London (1716) and Johnson's [End Page 202] London (1738), the increasingly crowded metropolis presented an obstacle course of lethal hazards and pitfalls. There was really nothing "trivial" about these hazards. Accidental deaths accounted for some eighty percent of the deaths not linked to disease, outnumbering murders and suicides by four-to-one. Mr. Spence's study fills a significant gap in our understanding of daily life in Early Modern London, which was routinely overshadowed by more sensational events of crime and punishment. Though largely a work of diligent statistical research in archives, this book sheds significant light on changing attitudes toward accidental death, on the institutions that grew up in response to accidents, on perceptions of workers and low-ranking people most vulnerable to accidental death, and on the slow emergence of a more regulated and safer urban environment.

The "slow" emergence should be emphasized. In fact, the rate of accidental death in London between 1650 and 1750 remained relatively steady in proportion to the rising density of population and intensified trade and commerce. Certain hazards met with concerted official response. The Great Fire of 1666, notably, led not only to the Rebuilding Act of 1667, which required the replacement of wood with brick and stone, but also to the first fire insurance companies, which, to protect their profits, organized the original brigades of "firemen." Though fires still created a sensation in the public mind well into the eighteenth century, burning represented only a small proportion of the accidental deaths recorded in the weekly Bills of Mortality. A blaze was nonetheless a spectacular urban event whereas a sailor falling from a mast into the Thames or onto the deck was relatively common and unsensational, hardly worth reporting. Moreover, the people who worked on the water-ways—sailors, watermen, barge work-men—belonged to the lowest ranks of English society. Their deaths warranted a number in the Bills of Mortality, but nothing more.

The ordinary worker bore the brunt of accidental death—or hideous injury, a related topic touched only briefly in this book. The upper ranks faced the danger of being stabbed, especially in the West End where a higher proportion of men wore swords, but the humble laborer faced almost constant danger. Construction workers fell from the scaffolds or were hit with falling materials. Employees in breweries, potteries, and other manufactures were regularly asphyxiated, scalded, burned, or poisoned. The poor, who lived mostly in the streets, contended with the constant danger of being run over by carts, hackney carriages, horses, or herds of cattle. London was filled with packs of dogs that would turn on pedestrians especially in times of dearth, a danger that preoccupied Samuel Pepys.

The official response to these dangers was piecemeal and inadequate. Carts carrying commercial goods were increasingly licensed and limited, and a one-way street system was enforced by traffic wardens, as in the congested Thames Street area. On the whole, however, the dangers faced by workers were considered incidental, hazards that could not be avoided or even alleviated. Parish compensation for the injured or their widows was meager. Mr. Spence records a worker receiving £10 for a layoff of twenty weeks; a widow was granted £5 in compensation for her bread-winner's accidental demise.

The general premise held that a Londoner's fate lay in the hands of God, especially if he or she was poor. Even the first works on trade-related dangers, such as Bartolomo Ramazzini's Treatise of the [End Page 203] Diseases of Tradesmen (1700; trans. 1705), recommended prayer and fasting as the best preventative to premature death. Workers learned to avoid death or injury not through written instructions or statutes but through the proverbs of oral tradition ("the best cart may overturn") and street ballads. Officially, ordinary people were responsible for their...