This article applies the model developed in Charles Rosenberg's seminal article "What is an Epidemic?" to typhus outbreaks in eighteenth-century London. That framework remains valuable for understanding contagious disease in early modernity by helping to highlight the structure of responses to epidemics. So-called "Jail Fever" outbreaks are especially instructive, in part because the most notorious of these epidemics were small affairs when compared to the larger pandemics that Rosenberg explored. Considering that they accounted for relatively few deaths, historians must answer why they caused such a stir. Whereas the raw body count often drives development of narratives about epidemics, eighteenth-century typhus epidemics often hinged more on who died and where than how many. Typhus ravaged poor and working class communities throughout the period. However, even significant spikes in mortality occurring in poor neighborhoods often failed to trigger proclamations of epidemics. Some deaths mattered more than others in this regard, suggesting that qualitative criteria may have played a greater role than quantitative criteria when it came to identifying which events registered as epidemics in the eighteenth century.
...More
Article
Newton, Gill;
(2011)
Infant Mortality Variations, Feeding Practices and Social Status in London between 1550 and 1750
(/isis/citation/CBB001210674/)
Article
Katharina Kreuder-Sonnen;
(2019)
Epidemiological State-Building in Interwar Poland: Discourses and Paper Technologies
(/isis/citation/CBB786351803/)
Book
Jones, Greta;
Malcolm, Elizabeth;
(1999)
Medicine, disease, and the State in Ireland, 1650-1940
(/isis/citation/CBB000110599/)
Article
Siena, Kevin;
(2010)
Hospitals for the Excluded or Convalescent Homes? Workhouses, Medicalization and the Poor Law in Long Eighteenth-Century London and Pre-Confederation Toronto
(/isis/citation/CBB001024899/)
Chapter
Cinzia Recca;
(2021)
L’epidemia vaiolosa in Sicilia tra Sette e Ottocento. Aspetti assistenziali e organizzativi dell’emergenza sanitaria
(/isis/citation/CBB652275281/)
Chapter
Carmen Salvo;
(2021)
Governare le emergenze: politica, territori, diritti. L’emergenza sanitaria a Messina nel 1743 negli scritti di Orazio Turriano
(/isis/citation/CBB873117421/)
Book
Nelli-Elena Vanzan Marchini;
(2022)
Guardarsi da chi non si guarda. La Repubblica di Venezia e il controllo delle pandemie
(/isis/citation/CBB098126566/)
Article
Roberto Mazzola;
(2020)
Napoli 1764
(/isis/citation/CBB070432836/)
Book
Zinsser, Hans;
(2008)
Rats, Lice, and History
(/isis/citation/CBB000830471/)
Article
Roderick Bailey;
(2022)
Ends and Means: Typhus in Naples, 1943–1944
(/isis/citation/CBB858876231/)
Book
Mayhew, Henry;
Sabbagh, Karl;
(2011)
Voices of Victorian London: In Sickness and in Health
(/isis/citation/CBB001250951/)
Article
Kristin Heitman;
(2020)
Authority, Autonomy and the First London Bills of Mortality
(/isis/citation/CBB308070543/)
Article
Nunes, Everardo Duarte;
(2012)
Henry Mayhew: jornalista, investigador social e precursor da pesquisa qualitativa
(/isis/citation/CBB001420604/)
Book
Lancaster, Brian;
(2001)
The “Croydon Case”: Dirty Old Town to Model Town: The Making of the Croydon Board of Health and the Croydon Typhoid Epidemic of 1852-3
(/isis/citation/CBB000771195/)
Article
Jenner, Mark S. R.;
(2012)
Plague on a Page: Lord Have Mercy Upon Us in Early Modern London
(/isis/citation/CBB001200522/)
Chapter
Kevin Siena;
(2020)
Poor bodies and disease
(/isis/citation/CBB544298302/)
Article
Madeleine Mant;
(2020)
‘A Little Time Woud Compleat the Cure’: Broken Bones and Fracture Experiences of the Working Poor in London’s General Hospitals During the Long Eighteenth Century
(/isis/citation/CBB726530504/)
Article
Miller, Edgar;
(2013)
“Pauper Lunatics and their Treatment,” by Joshua Harrison Stallard (1870)
(/isis/citation/CBB001320339/)
Article
Hayes, Nick;
Doyle, Barry M.;
(2013)
Eggs, Rags and Whist Drives: Popular Munificence and the Development of Provincial Medical Voluntarism between the Wars
(/isis/citation/CBB001202086/)
Article
Mirko Traversari;
Diletta Biagini;
Giancarlo Cerasoli;
Raffaele Gaeta;
Donata Luiselli;
Giorgio Gruppioni;
Elisabetta Cilli;
(2019)
The Plague of 1630 in Modena (Italy) through the Study of Parish Registers
(/isis/citation/CBB664087657/)
Be the first to comment!