Article ID: CBB600466447

On Courtroom Dramas and Plot Twists: Typhus in Eighteenth-Century London (2020)

unapi

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.

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Authors & Contributors
Siena, Kevin P.
Cilli, Elisabetta
Traversari, Mirko
Mazzola, Roberto
Mant, Madeleine
Biagini, Diletta
Concepts
Public health
Medicine and society
Epidemics
Disease and diseases
Social class
Medicine
Time Periods
18th century
19th century
17th century
20th century, early
16th century
Republic of Venice (697–1797)
Places
London (England)
England
Italy
Great Britain
Sicily
Naples (Italy)
Institutions
Catholic University of Ireland (Dublin)
Royal Belfast Academical Institution
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