William Alfred Brend

“ Many proposals were put forward to improve the Bills and to give them a more scientific character, but for various reasons these all came to naught. The fate of an attempt which was made in 1754 illustrates the kind of prejudice which was apt to be encountered. A group of physicians, in conjunction with the parish clerks, presented a Bill to Parliament requiring that all the parishes in England should be obliged to keep exact registers of births, deaths, and marriages, instead of christenings and burials only, and that an annual general Bill should be prepared for the whole country. ”

“ The unmarried ladies and gentlemen in this city of moderate fortunes, which are the great bulk, are unable to support the expense of a family with any magnificence, and therefore cannot intermarry together without retiring from high life, and submitting to relinquish those pleasures of the town to which their appetites have long been raised ”

“ Corbyn Morris, in 1751, made an analysis of the burials and christenings in his "Observations on the Past Growth and Present State of the City of London." His tone is pessimistic. He considers that the population is decreasing, and, among other reasons for this unhappy state, he gives the following:
"The discouragement to matrimony in London is a grand operating cause of the diminution of the christenings and consequently of the excess of the burials. ”

“ But in 1660 the Bills were remodelled, and henceforth only one Bill was issued. The list of casualties and diseases from the Bill for 1665—the year of the Great Plague—is here given as an illustration of the terminology in use at the time:
In 1728 the ages at death were included, and the Bills were embellished with an ornamental margin of skulls and crossbones, which was further elaborated in 1747 by the addition of hour glasses. ”

“ Persons also of inferior situation in London have their taste for pleasures inflamed, and avoid with caution the marriage state with their equals.... But above all the present increasing diminution of the christenings in London beneath the burials with many other evils is particularly to be attributed to the enormous use of spirituous liquors. ”

“ Marcus Aurelius ordained that all free persons should give notice of a birth within thirty days, and a record of these was kept in the temple of Saturn.
In medieval times, registers appear to have been kept in France as early as 1308, but not much can be learned about them. In Spain, Cardinal Ximenes in 1497 ordered registers to be kept in every parish, in order to terminate the disorders arising from the marriage of persons between whom there was spiritual affinity. ”

“ On Wednesday the general Accompt is made up and printed, and on Thursday publifhed and dispersed to the several Families who will pay four Shillings per annum for them":
A further picture of the searchers is afforded by the regulations issued by the Lord Mayor in 1666 to stay the progress of the plague, and quoted by De Foe in his "Journal of the Plague Year":
"That there be a special care to appoint women searchers in every parish such as are of honest reputation, and of the best sort as can be got in this kind ”

“ A later account of Bills of Mortality is given in Strype's "Stow." The christenings in 1729 were—of males, 8,736, and of females, 8,324; 28,000 die annually, of whom 10,000 are children under two years of age, and about 2,500 more under five years of age. The population of the city, including the out-parishes of Middlesex and Surrey and the City of Westminster, is estimated to be 1,045,075, and a description of the method of arriving at the figures from the annual mortality is given. Mention is also made of other attempts to estimate the population from the number of houses in the city. ”