Spin the 17th-Century Death Roulette Wheel & Find Out What Would Have Killed You in 1665

A com­mon his­tor­i­cal mis­con­cep­tion holds that, up until a few cen­turies ago, every­one died when they were about 40. In fact, even in antiq­ui­ty, one could well make it to what would be con­sid­ered an advanced age today — assum­ing one sur­vived the great mor­tal per­il of child­hood, and then all the dan­gers that could befall one in all the stages of life there­after. In the mid-sev­en­teenth cen­tu­ry, with the Dark Ages past and the Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion just ahead, these threats to life includ­ed con­sump­tion, drop­sy, “grip­ing in the guts,” sci­at­i­ca, “stop­ping of the stom­ach,” and of course, plague.

This infor­ma­tion comes from the Lon­don “mor­tal­i­ty bill” seen below, which “rep­re­sents the death tal­ly of all city parish­es for the week of Aug. 15–22, 1665, when the plague had infect­ed 96 of the 130 parish­es report­ing.”

So writes Rebec­ca Onion at Slate, who cites Shakespeare’s Rest­less World author Neil Mac­Gre­gor as say­ing that “the bills cost about a pen­ny, and were pub­lished in large print runs.” But “if med­i­cine was still some­what uncer­tain about the caus­es of death, those in charge of tot­ing up deaths for the bills of mor­tal­i­ty were even more so,” result­ing in vague cat­e­go­riza­tions like “bedrid­den,” “fright­ened,” “lethar­gy,” and “sur­feit.”

You may receive one of those fates when you spin the wheel of 17th-Cen­tu­ry Death Roulette, a web appli­ca­tion that cycles rapid­ly through mor­tal­i­ty bills and the types of death list­ed there­in. “In the week of July 11th, 1665 you died from Palsie.” “In the week of Feb­ru­ary 14th, 1665 you died from Kild acci­den­tal­ly with a Car­bine, at St. Michael Wood Street.” “In the week of Decem­ber 12th, 1665 you died from Winde.” Your results may not reflect the actu­ar­i­al prob­a­bil­i­ty of what might have killed a giv­en Lon­don­er in that year, but all this death does, per­haps iron­i­cal­ly, give a vivid impres­sion of life at the time. Per­son­al­ly, I’m curi­ous how dan­ger­ous those stairs at St Thomas the Apos­tle real­ly were, but giv­en that the whole church burned down in the Great Fire of the very next year, I sup­pose we’ll nev­er know. Play the 17th-Cen­tu­ry Death Roulette here.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed con­tent:

The His­to­ry of the Plague: Every Major Epi­dem­ic in an Ani­mat­ed Map

A 1665 Adver­tise­ment Promis­es a “Famous and Effec­tu­al” Cure for the Great Plague

The Strange Cos­tumes of the Plague Doc­tors Who Treat­ed 17th Cen­tu­ry Vic­tims of the Bubon­ic Plague

Isaac New­ton Con­ceived of His Most Ground­break­ing Ideas Dur­ing the Great Plague of 1665

74 Ways Char­ac­ters Die in Shakespeare’s Plays Shown in a Handy Info­graph­ic: From Snakebites to Lack of Sleep

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.