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John Graunt, the Hartlib circle and child mortality in mid-seventeenth-century London

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 December 2016

MARGARET PELLING
MARGARET PELLING*
Affiliation:
Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, University of Oxford.
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

John Graunt's pioneering study, Natural and Political Observations Made upon on the Bills of Mortality (1662) has been overlooked as a source for ideas about the importance of child mortality in an urban environment. Graunt seems to have been the first to arrive at an infant mortality rate (IMR), but this has been little explored. Graunt helped to define ‘the urban penalty’, but not in terms of the IMR. The article explains Graunt's focus on other aspects of urban mortality in relation to his need to reassure those in government, his methodology, and above all his gender. For context, the article looks at attitudes to childhood among members of the influential Hartlib circle of reformers, with which Graunt was connected. These male writers were greatly concerned about children, but seem to have shared with Graunt the traditional idea that children under the age of about seven were the responsibility of women.

John graunt, le cercle hartlib et la mortalité infantile à londres, mi-xviie siècle

L’étude pionnière de John Graunt, Natural and Political Observations Made upon on the Bills of Mortality (1662) a été fort négligée comme source d'idées sur l'importance de la mortalité infantile en contexte environnemental urbain. Graunt semble avoir été le premier à formuler un taux de mortalité infantile, mais le fait en a été peu exploré. Graunt a certes contribué à définir la ville ‘pénalisante’ comme mouroir, mais non en termes de mortalité infantile. L'article explique que Graunt a mis l'accent sur d'autres aspects de la mortalité en milieu urbain car il avait besoin de rassurer les membres du gouvernement, de conforter sa méthode, et surtout sa propre masculinité. Pour ce qui est du contexte, l'auteur observe comment les membres du cercle réformateur de Samuel Hartlib considéraient l'enfance: ils étaient fort influents et Graunt était en relation avec eux. Ces hommes de plume étaient assurément très préoccupés par les enfants, mais ils semblent avoir partagé avec Graunt l'idée alors traditionnelle que les enfants, jusqu’à l’âge de sept ans environ, demeuraient sous la responsabilité des femmes.

John graunt, der kreis um hartlib und kindersterblichkeit in london um die mitte des 17. jahrhunderts

John Graunt's Pionierwerk Natural and Political Observations Made upon on the Bills of Mortality (1662) ist bislang als Quelle für die Vorstellungen zur Bedeutung der Kindersterblichkeit im städtischen Umfeld übersehen worden. Graunt scheint erstmals zu einer Säuglingssterblichkeitsrate gelangt zu sein, aber das ist noch kaum erforscht. Graunt half auch dabei, den demographischen ‘Stadtnachteil’ (urban penalty) zu bestimmen, aber nicht im Zusammenhang mit der Säuglingssterblichkeitsrate. Der Beitrag erläutert Graunts Konzentration auf andere Aspekte der städtischen Sterblichkeit im Hinblick auf seinen Einfluss in Regierungskreisen, seine Methodologie und vor allem sein Geschlecht. Um diese Zusammenhänge zu verdeutlichen, werden die Einstellungen zur Kindheit unter den Mitgliedern des einflussreichen Kreises von Reformern um Hartlib beleuchtet, mit dem Graunt verbunden war. Diese männlichen Autoren waren ernsthaft um Kinder besorgt, scheinen aber mit Graunt die traditionelle Vorstellung geteilt zu haben, dass für Kinder im Alter von unter sieben Jahren allein Frauen verantwortlich seien.

Type
Research Article
Information
Continuity and Change , Volume 31 , Issue 3 , December 2016 , pp. 335 - 359
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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References

ENDNOTES

1 The foundational study of the Hartlib circle remains Webster, C., The great instauration: science, medicine and reform 1626–1660, 2nd edn (Oxford, 2002 [orig. pub. London, 1975])Google Scholar. Sections on Baconianism, education and ‘the prolongation of life’ are particularly relevant here. On Hartlib's London network see also Iliffe, R., ‘Hartlib's world’, in Davies, M. and Galloway, J. A. eds., London and beyond: essays in honour of Derek Keene (London, 2002), 103–22Google Scholar. The programmatic writings of Francis Bacon (1561–1626), lord chancellor, politician and philosopher, were published in the 1620s.

2 The term ‘statistician’ is used here for convenience. Kreager argues cogently for its inappropriateness in the seventeenth century: ‘The emergence of population’ (unpublished). I am grateful to Philip Kreager for allowing me to see this paper before publication.

3 On the uses of the Bills by Londoners before Graunt, see most recently Sullivan, E., ‘Physical and spiritual illness: narrative appropriations of the Bills of Mortality’, in Totaro, R. and Gilman, E. B. eds., Representing the plague in early modern London (New York and London, 2011), 76–94 Google Scholar.

4 This debate was sparked by the work of Philippe Ariès and became over-simplified and misrepresentative as it became influential. For an incisive assessment of Ariès, his sources and his critics, see Wilson, A., ‘The infancy of the history of childhood: an appraisal of Philippe Ariès’, History and Theory 19, 2 (1980), 132–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Schooling outside the family was a crucial element in Ariès's argument, but as Wilson points out, it has been largely ignored by his critics. See also Meckel, R. A., ‘Childhood and the historians’, Journal of Family History 9, 4 (1984), 415–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a more recent, indicative overview, see Stearns, P. N., Childhood in world history (New York, 2006), ch. 5Google Scholar.

5 See Newton, H., The sick child in early modern England, 1580–1720 (Oxford, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and references there cited.

6 James, M., Social problems and policy during the Puritan Revolution 1640–1660 (London, 1966 [orig. pub. 1930])Google Scholar; Pinchbeck, I. and Hewitt, M., Children in English society, 2 vols. (London, 1969–1973)Google Scholar; Pearl, V., ‘Puritans and poor relief: the London workhouse, 1649–1660’, in Pennington, D. and Thomas, K. eds., Puritans and revolutionaries (Oxford, 1978), 206–32Google Scholar. Griffiths, P., Youth and authority: formative experiences in England 1560–1640 (Oxford, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar adopts the framework of Tawney's century by ending in 1640.

7 Webster, Great instauration; Slack, P., From reformation to improvement: public welfare in early modern England (Oxford, 1999)Google Scholar.

8 Hull, C. H. ed., The economic writings of Sir William Petty together with the Observations on the Bills of Mortality more probably by Captain John Graunt, 2 vols. (New York, 1963–4 [orig. pub. 1899])Google Scholar, ii, 314–435. Hull reprints the 5th edition (1676) and this edition, which for present purposes is not materially different from the first of 1662, will be quoted here. Hull's edition includes the page references of the original.

9 Kargon, R. H., ‘John Graunt, Francis Bacon and the Royal Society: the reception of statistics’, Journal of the History of Medicine 18, 4 (1963), 337–48Google Scholar; Kreager, P., ‘New light on Graunt’, Population Studies 42, 1 (1988), 129–40CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Kreager, P., ‘Death and method: the rhetorical space of seventeenth-century vital measurement’, in Magnello, E. and Hardy, A. eds., The road to medical statistics, Clio Medica 67 (Amsterdam, 2002), 1–35 Google Scholar.

10 Graunt, Observations, ed. Hull, ii, 320, 369.

11 Pelling, M., ‘Far too many women? John Graunt, the sex ratio, and the cultural determination of number in seventeenth-century England’, The Historical Journal 59, 3 (2016), 695–719 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 On Graunt's life, see Aubrey, J., Aubrey's brief lives, ed. Dick, O. L. (Harmondsworth, 1972), 274Google Scholar; Hull ed., Economic writings of Petty, i, pp. xxxiv–viii, xli–lv; Glass, D. V., ‘John Graunt and his Natural and political observations ’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society 19, 1 (1964), 63–100 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The entry for Graunt by C. G. Lewin in the Oxford dictionary of national biography (hereafter OxDNB) requires amplification. Graunt's life is currently being investigated by Kristin Heitman.

13 On the issue of attribution, see Glass, ‘John Graunt’, 78–89; Hull, C. H., ‘Graunt or Petty? The authorship of the Observations upon the Bills of Mortality ’, Political Science Quarterly 11, 1 (1896), 105–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The most obvious comparison is between the Observations and Petty's Treatise of taxes and contributions (1662), also reprinted in Hull ed., Economic writings of Petty, but see also Petty, Observations upon the Dublin Bills of Mortality, 1681 (1683), reprinted by Hull.

14 One exception to this is Morel, M.-F. and Wall, R., ‘Reflections on some recent French literature on the history of childhood’, Continuity and Change 4, Special Issue 2 (1989), 332, 334CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 For some support for this view from other sources, see Clarke, E., ‘“A heart terrifying sorrow”: the deaths of children in seventeenth-century women's manuscript journals’, in Avery, G. and Reynolds, K. eds., Representations of childhood death (Basingstoke, 2000), 65–86 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Potter, U., ‘Cockering mothers and humanist pedagogy in two Tudor school plays’, in McBride, K. B. ed., Domestic arrangements in early modern England (Pittsburgh, 2002), 244–78, 317–21Google Scholar.

16 Graunt, Observations, ed. Hull, ii, 334 (Preface).

17 Ibid., ii, 320–1 (Epistle Dedicatory), 347, 396.

18 The searchers were women, usually poor and elderly, who were appointed by their parishes to follow up reports of a death, view the body, glean a cause of death, and then report their findings to the parish clerk. Such women were often already a charge on the parish, but were also seen as experienced and less susceptible to disease. See Munkhoff, R., ‘Searchers of the dead: authority, marginality and the interpretation of the plague in England, 1574–1665’, Gender and History 11, 1 (1999), 1–29 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Graunt, Observations, ed. Hull, ii, 348, with original spelling.

20 For a clinical-historical discussion of possible links between teething, worms, and convulsions in young children, see Rendle-Short, J., ‘The causes of infantile convulsions prior to 1900’, Journal of Pediatrics 47, 6 (1955), 733–9CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Rendle-Short, J., ‘The history of teething in infancy’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine 48, 2 (1955), 132–8Google ScholarPubMed. On convulsions, see also Haygarth, J., ‘Observations on the Bill of Mortality, in Chester, for the year 1772’, in Halley, E. et al. , Mortality in pre-industrial times: the contemporary verdict [facs.] (Farnborough, Hants, 1973), 72Google Scholar.

21 Graunt, Observations, ed. Hull, ii, 349. Hull's notes point to discrepancies between the totals in the text and those in the tables.

22 Smith, R. and Oeppen, J., ‘Place and status as determinants of infant mortality in England c. 1550–1837’, in Garrett, E. et al. eds., Infant mortality: a continuing social problem (Aldershot, 2007), 59Google Scholar; Newton, G., ‘Infant mortality variations, feeding practices and social status in London between 1550 and 1750’, Social History of Medicine 24, 2 (2011), 260–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Strictly speaking, Graunt is working in terms of ratios, not rates, but his calculation is an IMR in all but name. I am grateful to Philip Kreager for clarifying this point for me.

24 See, for example, Hull ed., Economic writings of Petty, i, p. lxxvi; Glass, ‘John Graunt and his Observations’, 69, 74, 88; and Kargon, ‘Graunt, Bacon’, 341, all of whom leave Graunt's priority in this respect unclear. Sutherland, ‘John Graunt’, 545, states clearly that Graunt ‘was the first to direct attention to the extremely high rates of mortality in infancy’; on the life table, which Sutherland calls ‘Graunt's masterpiece’, see 550–2. For an appreciation of Graunt's argument about different age groups, see R. Titmuss, Birth, poverty and wealth: a study of infant mortality (London, 1943), 94. I owe this last reference to John Stewart.

25 Graunt, Observations, ed. Hull, ii, 350, 352. Cf. 348, where he puts the aged as above 60.

26 See, for example, Finlay, R., ‘Gateways to death? London child mortality experience, 1570–1653’, Annales de démographie historique (1978), 105–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lewis, M., Urbanisation and child health in medieval and post-medieval England (Oxford, 2002)Google Scholar; Garrett et al. eds., Infant mortality; Newton, ‘Infant mortality variations’, esp. 268–9; Schellekens, J., ‘Economic change and infant mortality in England, 1580–1837’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 32, 1 (2001), 1–13 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Woods, R., Death before birth: fetal health and mortality in historical perspective (Oxford, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bideau, A., Desjardins, B. and Brignoli, H. P. eds., Infant and child mortality in the past (Oxford, 1997)Google Scholar.

27 Graunt, Observations, ed. Hull, ii, 373, 392.

28 Ibid., ii, 369

29 Ibid., ii, 347, 366, 368, 372–4, 383–94.

30 Ibid., ii, 363, 347–8.

31 Ibid., ii, 320, 351, 352. For a preceding protest about children starving in the streets as evidenced by the Bills, see M. S. [Sparke, Michael], The poor orphans court, or orphans cry (London, 1636)Google Scholar, Preface.

32 F. Glisson, De rachitide sive morbo puerili, qui vulgo the rickets dicitur (1650); Glisson, F., A treatise of the rickets, being a disease common to children, trans. P. Armin (London, 1651; enlgd and corrected by N. Culpeper, London, 1668)Google Scholar. On Glisson, see entry by G. Giglioni in OxDNB; entry by Temkin, O. in Dictionary of scientific biography, ed. Gillispie, C. C., 16 vols. (New York, 1970–80)Google Scholar, v, 425–7.

33 Note that this is not a measure of morbidity, or incidence. For cases, mainly post-1640, see Newton, The sick child, 176, 178 and passim.

34 For Graunt, even suicides, drownings and accidents bore a constant proportion to burials, but epidemic diseases did not: Observations, ed. Hull, ii, 352.

35 Ibid., ii, 357–8, emphasis added.

36 Ibid., ii, 358–9.

37 For reassessments and biography of Whistler see: Smerdon, G. T., ‘Daniel Whistler and the English disease: a translation and biographical note’, Journal of the History of Medicine 5, 4 (1950), 397–415 Google Scholar; Clarke, E., ‘Whistler and Glisson on rickets’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 36 (1962), 45–61 Google Scholar; Cooke, A. M., ‘Daniel Whistler, PRCP’, Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of London 1 (1967), 22–30 Google Scholar. These studies are omitted from the brief entry by R. L. Martensen in OxDNB. For Whistler as a Parliamentarian see also Webster, Great instauration, 82ff, 90, 95, 519.

38 Hull ed., Economic writings of Petty, i, p. xxxvi. Petty was a member of this committee; Glisson was not.

39 For more on Graunt's attitudes to women, including the searchers, see Pelling, ‘Far too many women’.

40 Smerdon, ‘Daniel Whistler’, 401.

41 Eccles, A., ‘The dissemination of medical thought in the seventeenth century – a case of rickets in Westmorland’, Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society 83, 2 (1983), 101–5Google Scholar; Fildes, V. A., ‘“The English disease”: infantile rickets and scurvy in pre-industrial England’, in Cule, J. and Turner, T. eds., Child care through the centuries (Cardiff, 1986), 121–34Google Scholar; Swinburne, L., ‘Rickets and the Fairfax family receipt books’, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 99, 8 (2006), 391–5, here 391, 392CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

42 Smerdon, ‘Daniel Whistler’, 401; Oxford English dictionary.

43 Swinburne, ‘Rickets and the Fairfax family’, 392; Smerdon, ‘Daniel Whistler’, 401.

44 Aubrey, Brief lives, 60. The Early Modern Medical Practitioners project, based at Exeter University, has so far been unable to identify a practitioner of this name. I thank Peter Elmer for searching the EMP database for me.

45 Pelling, M., Medical conflicts in early modern London: patronage, physicians and irregular practitioners 1550–1640 (Oxford, 2003), 149–50Google Scholar; London, Royal College of Physicians (CPL), Annals, 28 January 1631; 23 December 1633.

46 Graunt, Observations, ed. Hull, ii, 349, 360, emphasis added; with original spelling.

47 Bird, J., Ostenta Carolina. Or the late calamities of England with the authors of them. The great happiness and happy government of K. Charles II ensuing, miraculously foreshewn by the finger of God in two wonderful diseases, the rekets and kings-evil (London, 1661)Google Scholar. See Hunter, R. A. and MacAlpine, I., ‘John Bird on “rekets” (London 1661)’, Journal of the History of Medicine 13, 4 (1958), 397–403 Google Scholar, here 401; this is probably the John Bird pursued for practising by the College of Physicians between 6 November 1629 and 6 December 1639 (402–3).

48 Bird, Ostenta Carolina, 52–69, 78–81. Bird cites his own experience in the person of his ‘little son’: 68–9.

49 Bird, Ostenta Carolina, 78; Graunt, Observations, ed. Hull, ii, 358. Gill Newton of CAMPOP is investigating the later recording of rickets as part of a project, ‘The age structure and meaning of causes of death in London and other English urban areas between 1583 and 1812’. My thanks to Dr Newton for allowing me to see her draft case study on rickets.

50 Graunt, Observations, ed. Hull, ii, 360–1.

51 On Cellier, see entry by H. King in OxDNB; King, H., ‘The politick midwife: models of midwifery in the work of Elizabeth Cellier’, in Marland, H. ed., The art of midwifery: early modern midwives in Europe (London, 1993), 115–30Google Scholar.

52 Celleor, Elizabeth [Cellier], To Dr. --- An answer to his queries, concerning the colledg of midwives (London, 1688), 6Google Scholar.

53 Evenden, D., The midwives of seventeenth-century London (Cambridge, 2000), 18Google Scholar. Cf. Forbes, T. R., ‘The regulation of English midwives in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’, Medical History 8, 3 (1964), 241CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

54 King, ‘The politick midwife’, 119–23.

55 Anon, ., An account of the general nursery, or colledg of infants, set up by the justices of the peace for the County of Middlesex (London, 1686)Google Scholar, with original spelling. This (p. 3) points to provisions for the maintenance and education of youth, and the contrasting lack of ‘convenience or education’ for poor infants. See Pinchbeck and Hewitt, Children in English society, i, 149–53.

56 Slack, From reformation to improvement, 100. King suggests Hugh Chamberlen senior, son of Dr Peter Chamberlen, as the most likely: ‘The politick midwife’, 120–1.

57 On Dr Peter Chamberlen and the Chamberlen family, see entries by H. King in OxDNB; Wilson, A., The making of man-midwifery: childbirth in England, 1660–1770 (London, 1995)Google Scholar.

58 See, for example, Chamberlen, P., A voice in Rhama: or, the crie of women and children (London, 1647)Google Scholar; Chamberlen, P., A vindication of publick artificiall baths and bath-stoves (London, 1648)Google Scholar; Chamberlen, P., The declaration and proclamation of the army of God … whereunto is annexed 17 necessary proposals for the enthro[nement] of Gods laws, 2nd edn (London, 1659)Google Scholar. On Dr Peter see also James, Social problems, 275ff; Webster, Great instauration, 261, 290–1, and passim; Katz, D. S., Sabbath and sectarianism in seventeenth-century England (Leiden, 1988), 48–89 Google Scholar.

59 Graunt, J. of Bucklersbury, The shipwrack of all false churches: and the immutable safety and stability of the true church of Christ. Occasioned: by Doctour Chamberlen his mistake of her (London, 1652)Google Scholar.

60 Greengrass, M., Leslie, M. and Hannon, M. eds., The Hartlib papers (HRI Online Publications, Sheffield, 2013)Google Scholar http://www.hrionline.ac.uk/hartlib (hereafter HP), recipe in Hartlib's hand, 55/4/12A.

61 Slack, From reformation to improvement, 83.

62 HP, Ephemerides 1649 Pt 2, 28/1/16B.

63 HP, Ephemerides 1652 Pt 2, 28/2/43A-B; ibid., 1653 Pt 2, 28/2/55A, 28/2/56B (on utopias); HP, letter from Petty to Hartlib, 23 October 1652, and letter from Petty to Hartlib, 1 March 1653, both from James Marshal and Marie-Louise Osborn Collection, Beinecke Library, Yale University, Docs. 23 and 24. Graunt is given as Grant in these sources.

64 HP, Ephemerides 1649 Pt 1, 28/1/8A; Ephemerides 1635 Pt 5, 29/3/55A, with original spelling. See James, R. R., ‘Dr. Thomas Grent, Sen. and Jun.’, Janus 42 (1938), 131–6Google Scholar.

65 See Webster, Great instauration, 41, 100–15, 210ff; Webster, C. ed., Samuel Hartlib and the advancement of learning (Cambridge, 1970)Google Scholar.

66 See, for example, S. H. [Hartlib, Samuel], The parliaments reformation (London, 1646)Google Scholar, 6; S. H., Londons charitie, stilling the poore orphans cry (London, 1649)Google Scholar; S. H., London's charity inlarged (London, 1650)Google Scholar. The image of the poor used for both editions of Hartlib's London's charity, which includes some rather enigmatic childlike figures, is a simplified version of the frontispiece of Sparke, Poore orphans court.

67 Slack, From reformation to improvement, 77, 82, 87.

68 R[ice] B[ush], The poor mans friend (London, 1649), esp. A3v, 2–3, 9ff, 18 (the starving in the Bills of Mortality); HP, 57/4/11/1A-14B; entry for Bush by P. Slack in OxDNB; Pelling, M., ‘Child health as a social value in early modern England’, Social History of Medicine 1, 2 (1988), 135–64CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. See also Sparke, Poore orphans court, esp. Preface.

69 HP, Ephemerides 1634 Pt 2, 29/2/14A-14B; ibid., 1635 Pt 5, 29/3/60A. Hartlib seems to have heard this story from the ambassador Sir Thomas Roe, one of his patrons.

70 See, for example, HP, letter from John Dury to Hartlib, 18 August 1646, 3/3/25A; Ephemerides 1641, 30/4/70A-B.

71 HP, ?copy of sermon on Matthew 12:31, n.d., 27/26/3B.

72 For Beale, see Webster, Great instauration; entry by P. Woodland in OxDNB. For recent scholarship on Beale's ‘dauntingly broad intellectual life’, see Lewis, R., ‘“The best mnemonicall expedient”: John Beale's art of memory and its uses’, The Seventeenth Century 20, 1 (2005), 113–44Google Scholar, here 116.

73 HP, Hartlib to John Worthington, 10 August 1661, from Diary and correspondence of Dr John Worthington, ed. J. Crossley, Volume I, Chetham Soc. Volume XIII (Manchester, 1847), 352–3. See: Rendle-Short, J., ‘Worms in history with special reference to children’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine 50, 12 (1957), 1013–18Google Scholar. For cases, see Newton, The sick child, 45, 46 and passim. On the ominousness of worms as a punishment inflicted on tyrants and enemies of God, see Africa, T., ‘Worms and the death of kings: a cautionary note on disease and history’, Classical Antiquity 1, 1 (1982), 1–17 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

74 HP, receipt for rickets in Hartlib's hand, Arnold Boate, n.d., 65/10/1A. See van Andel, M. A., ‘Arnoldus Boot, author of one of the first descriptions of rickets (1649)’, Janus 31 (1927), 346–58Google Scholar; Webster, Great instauration; Bird, Ostenta Carolina, 64.

75 HP, receipt for rickets in scribal hand?, n.d., 65/10/2A-3B. See also HP, Ephemerides 1651 Pt 2, 28/2/13A, where Hartlib records receiving ‘a rare Receipt against the Rickets’ imparted by a Mrs Slingsbey. But for Boate, note also his mourning of the death in pregnancy of his young wife, and his sense of responsibility towards their only surviving child: The character of a trulie virtuous and pious woman, As it hath been acted by Mistris Margaret Dungan (wife to Dr Arnold Boate) (Paris, 1651)Google Scholar.

76 HP, Ephemerides 1648 Pt 1, 31/23/5A.

77 Garencières, Theophilus, Angliae flagellum, seu tabes anglica (London, 1647)Google Scholar. For Garencières, see entry by N. Moore, rev'd M. Bevan, in OxDNB.

78 Bird, Ostenta Carolina, 66; Barlow, T., ‘On cases described as “acute rickets” which are probably a combination of scurvy and rickets’ (1883), repr. in Archives of Disease in Childhood 10 (1935), 223–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

79 See, for example, Bush, Poor mans friend, 9 (age six); Petty, Treatise of taxes, 29 (ages eight or ten); HP, letter from Ralph Austen to Hartlib, 18 February 1655, 41/1/80A (ages six to seven); HP, Anon., Memo on poor relief and saltpetre, n.d., 53/26/2A-B (age seven); Webster ed., Samuel Hartlib, 52, 57, 60.

80 Burrow, J. A., The ages of man (Oxford, 1988), 39–54 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This traditional notion was recognised in Ariès’ distinction between mignotage, or coddling (by women) and the later sentiment de l'enfance: Wilson, ‘The infancy of the history of childhood’, 134–5.

81 See, for example, Pinchbeck and Hewitt, Children in English society, i, 7; cf. 10 (boys over age seven to be taught archery), 23–4 (ages for education and training), 92 (Vives on hospital ‘mothers’ for children under seven), 95, 101 (vagrant poor children, seven and over).

82 See Newton, The sick child, esp. ch. 3.

83 J. S. [physician, of Oundle. J. Starsmare?], Paidon nosemata or childrens diseases both outward and inward (London, 1664)Google Scholar; Webster, Great instauration, 104, note.

84 Rusnock, A., Vital accounts: quantifying health and population in eighteenth-century England and France (Cambridge, 2002), 29, 137CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Rusnock's first chapter deals with Graunt and Petty and she valuably traces the later history of Graunt's findings.

85 For an account of later writers, see J. Milne, ‘Treatises on the law of mortality, and on annuities’, esp. 527, in Halley et al., Mortality in pre-industrial times. Cf. also Haygarth, ‘Observations on the Bill of Mortality … 1772’, 70–1.

86 On Graunt's commitment to proportionality, see Kreager, ‘Death and method’, 12, 17ff; Kreager, P., ‘Histories of demography: a review article’, Population Studies 47, 3 (1993), 532CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

87 Wittowsky, G., ‘Swift's Modest Proposal: the biography of an early Georgian pamphlet’, Journal of the History of Ideas 4 (1943), 75–104 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Briggs, P. M., ‘John Graunt, Sir William Petty, and Swift's Modest Proposal ’, Eighteenth-Century Life 29, 2 (2005), 3–24 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

88 G. Avery, ‘Intimations of mortality: the Puritan and Evangelical message to children’, in Avery and Reynolds eds., Representations of childhood death, 87; Houlbrooke, R., ‘Death in childhood: the practice of the “good death” in James Janeway's A Token for Children ’, in Fletcher, A. and Hussey, S eds., Childhood in question: children, parents and the state (Manchester, 1999), 37–56 Google Scholar.