One of the skills I have been able to utilize during the course of this internship was my ability to absorb myself into history, something that is surprisingly easy when you surround yourself with primary source records. I found myself noticing statistical and mathematical trends that would have otherwise seemed invisible had I not spend so much time with the material. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Once the Laxton annual bills had all been completed, it was time to look towards the Laxton Weekly Bills. Unlike the annual or \u201cgeneral\u201d bills, the weekly documents not only catalogue the causes of death for that particular week of the year, but also include valuable information on the distribution of ages for those who died as well. This is extremely valuable information and it can help researchers evaluate trends and create models which are based on a much more precise timeline.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Ages for laxton bills are separated into distinct categories which are as follows; Under two years of age, two to five, five to ten, ten to twenty, twenty to thirty, thirty to forty, forty to fifty, fifty to sixty, sixty to seventy, seventy to eighty, eighty to ninety, over ninety, and ninety to a hundred. Each number following the age of one hundred is recorded separately such as 101, 102, 103 etc\u2026 Any ages over 110 are grouped together as well. Right from the start, these groupings can provide some valuable insight without even having to look at the numbers, such as the fact that deaths under the age of ten contain smaller group sizes than adults. This is of course due to the incredibly high infant and child mortality rates of 18th century England, and therefore more important to distinguish between age groups. As is unfortunately expected, the majority of deaths occur before the age of two with an average of about 2,000 each week. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the opposite end of the spectrum, the Laxton weekly bills provide a unique glimpse into the elderly population of London at the time. Initially I was surprised as I think most others would be at the number of people living into their 80s , 90s and 100s. The idea that people of the early modern period lived much shorter lives than we do today is part myth, and part truth. When calculating average lifespan, the high infant mortality will no doubt affect those numbers. However if these statistics are accounted for ahead of time we can see quite clearly that people who survived past childhood were quite likely to live well past their 60s. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is much harder to believe are the reports of individuals living past the age of 100. While I do not doubt that many people did in fact live to the age of 100 or beyond, the sheer number is frankly dubious at best and in some extreme cases simply impossible. The likelihood of living until the age of 111, 116, or 120 is astronomically rare today, let alone during a time without modern medicine, hospice care, or even basic sanitation and hygiene practices. In one instance, the Laxton weekly bills record a 132 year old. The age-old question, and one that will likely never be fully answered,\u00a0 is if these numbers are a case of individuals forgetting their own age or simply lying. This is just one of the differences between what is possible in theory 300 years ago, and what the actual reality was. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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One of the skills I have been able to utilize during the course of this internship was my ability to absorb myself into history, something that is surprisingly easy when you surround yourself with primary source records. I found myself noticing statistical and mathematical trends that would have otherwise seemed invisible had I not spend […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maximiliansmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maximiliansmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maximiliansmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maximiliansmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maximiliansmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=221"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/maximiliansmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":229,"href":"https:\/\/maximiliansmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221\/revisions\/229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maximiliansmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maximiliansmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maximiliansmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}