Weather influences on burials - LPR 1753 - 1776

 

The Weather and other outside influences

The first 3½ years worth of data that was processed had 'wearing' listed as a disorder only in the first year, mainly in the first half of that year. This prompted the thought that maybe particularly bad weather had played a part in these deaths and started a hunt for temperature and rainfall figures. Wrigley and Schofield [1981] gave references for some data which was not immediately available.

The internet was searched to see if such data existed in electronic form. This led to the Met. Office web site and the discovery that they expect payment even to download historical records. An e-mail led to the address of their library archives who very kindly supplied both rainfall, Table B-1, and temperature, Table B-2, statistics for the years in question. Each Table has an accompanying graph, Figures B-1 and B-2, to illustrate the totals. The Central England temperature figures were also found in Manley [1974 p394 &395] Prior to obtaining them from either source the temperature figures had been posted to an internet weather newsgroup in response to a plea for information as to where such information could be found.

The Met. Office also supplied some information on a handwritten journal which contained weather information and also contained agricultural prices, Records of the Seasons, Prices of Agricultural Produce, and Phenomena Observed in the British Isles, by Thomas Baker. The details of the journal led to the discovery that it had been published in 1883 and that the work had been incorporated into a more recent book [Stratton and Brown, 1969] As well as wheat prices, Table B-3, this book produced some information that brings the raw statistics to life.

1760 The series of fine years continued. summer dry and exceptionally hot.

Estimated to be 365,000 farmers and 200,000 agricultural day labourers in England and Wales.

1762 A year of great drought.

A blizzard in February lasted for 18 days, and snow in some places lay 10-12 feet deep.

In the drought and heat a heavy harvest was gathered, but fodder became exceedingly scarce.

The drought broke in exceptionally heavy rainfall from October 26th onwards, especially in the eastern counties. "Most of the cattle in the fields were carried off; likewise stacks of hay and wood, ......." London Magazine.

1763  Recorded as the wettest summer since 1756....
1767  Very severe frosts began in late December
1768   The year began with a very cold spell, lasting till January 16th. Spring cold and wet. From June 7th onwards torrential rain fell, and rainy weather continued till the end of harvest. Both hay and grain harvests were disappointing. A whirlwind of remarkable intensity devastated a moorland valley near Tavistock on August 22nd. Fogs in September and rain frequent for rest of autumn. Serious floods in November.

Food riots in many place.

1773  More food riots

[Stratton and Brown 1969 p79&80]

The book does, however, lack the variety and interest of the unpublished journal by Baker, which has a hand written entry saying:

1773 April 15. Between noon and 2pm. Two violent shocks of an earthquake in the Channel Islands and coast of Dorsetshire, and in Kerry Ireland.

May 26. A shock at Coalbrookdale Staffordshire. (Roper.)

[Baker]

An interesting relationship between the weather and bubonic plague is quoted below:

'The flea that transmits bubonic plague (Xenopsylla cheops) undergoes a speeding up of its life-cycle as temperatures rise in the range 20°-32°C (68°-90F). Breeding is speeded up, but the death of each generation of the insect also comes sooner, the higher the temperature. At relative humidities below 30 per cent of saturation the life of the flea is reduced to a quarter of what it is in near-saturated air.' [Lamb 1982 p302-303] A look at the weather conditions prevailing at the times of some of the major outbreaks could be interesting.

Shrewsbury quotes a supposed eyewitness account of the outbreak of plague in Leeds in 1645 as saying : 'the air was then very warm, and so infectious that dogs and cats, rats and mice died' [Shrewsbury 1970 p406] which would support Lambs' assertions.

The affect of the weather on agriculture is profound. Apart from years when crops don't ripen or are devastated by too much or too little rain or too high winds there are also conditions which permit certain pests to flourish. Again from Lamb:

'specific weather conditions promoting the development of potato blight (periods of forty-eight hours or more with temperatures continuously above 10°C and humidity above 90 per cent saturation), or favouring cattle diseases in temperate countries such as liver-fluke and gastro-enteritis (and their hosts or vectors at some vital stage of the development cycle), can be defined and are used to issue warnings and initiate preventive measures.' [Lamb 1982 p304-305]

So the Irish potato famine need not happen today.

The number of burials in Leeds did increase in 1762 and were at the highest level, up to that point, in 1763. 1768, a year of food riots, actually had a drop in the number of burials but 1773 was the year with the highest burial level in the whole sequence.

Lamb [1972 p 434] contains details of volcanic eruptions with an assessment of the amount of dust they threw into the atmosphere to affect the weather Table B-4. Volcanic dust is known to affect the weather for a number of years when the eruption is large enough.

None of these figures actually relate to the immediate area of Leeds, or even of Yorkshire, but are the closest we can come to understanding the climate in England at that time.

Temperature figures are available for Lancashire for the same period [Manley 1946 p15] but the years 1760 - 1765 are indicated as being based on more distant records so are unlikely to be more helpful than the Central England figures. Equally the Kew rainfall monthly figures [Wales-Smith 1971] are incorporated into the Central England totals.

Was it worth obtaining all this information? The Leeds burials actually look to be more closely related to the rainfall figures than to anything else. Table B-5 and Figure B-3 Even this is spurious though as shown by Figure B-4 where the rainfall figures have been sorted into an ascending sequence and plotted against the number of deaths. A further attempt was made by plotting both sets of figures compared to their own averages Figure B-5 but this still only showed the original relationship. Calculations also proved that there was not a linear relationship between the two sets of data, although this does not mean that there is not a more complicated relationship.

To make everything fit on to the same graph the burials from Wrigley and Schofield [1981 p516] were divided by 250 and the Central England temperatures were multiplied by 10. However at that scale the temperature figures still look almost like a straight line.

Figure B-2 shows that the monthly temperatures follow a general pattern with no more than 7°C between the highest and lowest for each month. In real terms 7°C can make a big difference to the comfort of living so all it really shows is the wide range of temperatures that are possible during the course of a year in England.

Stratton and Browns 'very severe frosts' [Stratton and Brown 1969 p79] in 1767 translate into an average Central England temperature for January of 0.10°C. However in February 1765, with an average of 0.40°C we have a cause of death of 'Drowned by scating' which would imply that at some point the temperatures were low enough to freeze a body of water of sufficient size to tempt children, at least, to try skating on it.

The discovery of Mitchells' Abstract of British Historical Statistics [Mitchell 1962]added even more additional factors to the equation, although it has to be noted that the wheat prices quoted by Mitchell are different to those quoted by Stratton and Brown.

Since wool prices were important to the region they were considered [Mitchell 1962 p494-495] although only the Lincoln Long covered the whole of our period of interest. [Table B-6] Cloth production figures in West Yorkshire [Wilson[1971 p40] can be found in Table G-1.

The Schumpeter-Gilboy Price indices for 1757 - 1776 can be found in Table B-7 but don't tell us much other than that prices were high in 1757 and 1758, fell slightly then rose steadily through the 1760s, peaking in 1767 and only 1 point less at the time of the food riots in 1768. A brief dip and then steadily rising again. It is interesting to note that only the index including cereals, beans and peas is consistently higher than the base year of 1701.

As with all the figures used in this study the time span in insufficient to be able to draw any conclusions. The picture produced is, however, very interesting.

 

Average Monthly rainfall - England and Wales (mm) supplied by the Met Office Library Dec 1998

Table B-1  

Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec total
1753 66 91 36 58 38 36 91 130 25 104 109 147 931
1754 51 38 58 51 53 86 109 84 5 58 66 142 801
1755 41 30 66 74 46 53 91 104 94 64 135 56 854
1756 71 28 66 142 43 102 84 150 66 43 48 36 879
1757 64 33 84 86 64 23 97 183 28 71 76 69 878
1758 51 94 53 38 33 56 185 84 94 48 51 86 873
1759 46 13 74 74 51 109 48 104 79 81 61 41 781
1760 51 102 25 18 43 86 41 112 112 122 107 89 908
1761 18 76 30 25 76 97 51 99 102 122 86 69 851
1762 91 58 56 36 28 23 58 114 102 152 61 30 809
1763 18 89 38 48 79 104 175 119 109 71 71 170 1091
1764 168 74 46 46 53 56 145 76 53 79 84 71 951
1765 64 36 109 89 18 46 18 102 53 152 61 41 789
1766 8 64 20 64 104 102 69 46 71 74 61 51 734
1767 74 117 71 30 69 28 147 69 64 86 81 28 864
1768 99 130 18 74 36 130 124 91 137 109 150 94 1192
1769 56 69 33 36 53 109 46 91 107 38 76 74 788
1770 48 53 69 61 53 104 58 48 81 99 175 107 956
1771 66 30 43 28 46 30 48 97 61 137 53 94 733
1772 66 89 84 33 48 107 58 74 140 97 127 41 964
1773 76 51 23 51 145 48 38 79 150 112 99 109 981
1774 97 86 61 51 66 71 91 89 140 36 46 64 898
1775 79 97 64 28 23 51 145 135 127 119 89 41 998
1776 56 114 46 23 38 79 86 130 107 48 81 51 859
Month Total 1525 1662 1273 1264 1306 1736 2103 2410 2107 2122 2054 1801
Mean 63.54 69.25 53.04 52.67 54.42 72.33 87.63 100.42 87.79 88.42 85.58 75.04 890.13
Median 64.00 71.50 54.50 49.50 49.50 75.00 85.00 98.00 94.00 83.50 78.50 69.00 875.50
St. Dev. 31.29 31.70 22.62 27.24 26.60 32.02 44.64 30.43 37.91 34.25 32.90 37.65 105.70
1941-70 long term average 86 65 59 58 67 61 73 90 83 83 97 90 912
1961-90 long term average 88 63 72 60 64 65 62 76 77 85 90 94 896

 

rainfall

 

Average monthly temperatures - kindly supplied by the Met. Office Library Archives

Table B-2

Year Jan Feb Mar Ar May Jun Jul Aug Se Oct Nov Dec Average
1757 0.30 4.00 4.90 8.10 10.70 14.00 18.40 15.20 13.30 8.20 7.10 3.20 8.95
1758 2.60 3.80 5.20 7.20 13.80 14.60 14.20 16.40 11.90 8.10 5.70 3.90 8.95
1759 5.90 5.80 6.10 8.60 12.10 15.00 18.20 16.30 13.50 10.90 5.10 2.50 10.00
1760 1.90 3.80 6.60 9.40 11.70 15.20 16.90 15.80 15.70 9.20 5.70 6.10 9.83
1761 5.40 5.80 6.80 9.40 11.90 14.30 15.80 16.40 14.20 9.40 6.20 4.40 10.00
1762 4.70 4.00 3.70 10.00 12.90 16.90 17.80 15.30 13.60 7.90 4.60 3.60 9.58
1763 -0.80 4.90 5.40 8.90 10.20 14.60 15.30 15.30 13.10 8.30 5.80 6.20 8.93
1764 3.70 3.80 3.90 7.20 12.20 13.90 16.10 15.20 12.50 8.90 4.40 2.80 8.72
1765 4.80 0.40 5.00 7.50 11.40 13.80 15.70 15.30 13.30 9.20 3.90 1.70 8.50
1766 0.70 1.70 4.20 8.10 9.70 13.70 15.70 16.60 13.30 9.30 7.20 3.30 8.63
1767 0.10 5.40 4.70 7.30 10.00 12.80 14.40 16.10 14.10 9.20 6.90 3.30 8.69
1768 0.80 4.80 4.70 8.10 12.20 13.90 15.60 16.00 11.70 9.20 5.60 4.60 8.93
1769 2.50 2.70 5.00 7.80 11.30 13.10 16.40 15.00 12.80 8.20 5.70 4.80 8.78
1770 3.70 4.60 2.50 5.40 10.00 13.10 15.30 15.80 13.90 8.90 5.30 3.60 8.51
1771 1.00 3.20 3.10 5.50 12.20 14.30 15.70 14.30 12.20 9.20 6.30 5.60 8.55
1772 1.20 1.90 4.40 6.40 10.10 16.10 16.90 16.10 13.00 11.70 7.20 4.80 9.15
1773 4.00 2.60 6.50 8.30 10.30 14.70 15.90 17.20 12.40 9.90 5.30 3.80 9.24
1774 0.60 4.30 6.40 8.60 10.90 14.70 16.10 16.10 12.50 10.30 4.80 3.50 9.07
1775 4.60 6.10 6.00 9.80 12.60 16.60 16.70 15.80 14.30 9.30 4.80 4.50 10.09
1776 -1.60 3.80 6.40 9.40 10.80 14.10 16.30 15.20 12.90 10.20 6.20 4.40 9.01

 

average monthly temperatures

Wheat Prices

Table B-3

Year Wheat (per qtr)
s   d
Wheat price converted into pence
1758 50 0 250.00
1759 39 10 199.17
1760 36 6 182.50
1761 30 3 151.25
1762 39 0 195.00
1763 40 9 203.75
1764 46 9 233.75
1765 48 0 240.00
1766 43 1 215.42
1767 47 4 236.67
1768 53 9 268.75
1769 40 7 202.92
1770 43 6 217.50
1771 47 2 235.83
1772 50 8 253.33
1773 51 0 255.00
1774 52 8 263.33
1775 48 4 241.67
1776 38 2 190.82

[Stratton and Brown 1969 p252&253]

Volcanic Dust Index

Table B-4

Year Volcano Situation Dust Veil Index
1755 Katla, Iceland 63½°N 19°W 400
1759 Jorulla, Mexico 19°N 102°W 300
1760 Makjan, Moluccas ½°N 127½°W 250
1763 'Molucca Is.' 2°N-3°S 125-131°E 600 (?)
1766 Hekla, Iceland 64°N 19½°W 200
1766 Mayon, Luzon, Phillippines 13½°N 123½°E 2300 (?)
1768 Cotopaxi, Ecuador 1°S 78°W 900
1772 Gunung Papandayan, Java 7½°S 108°E 250
1775 Pacaya, Guatemala 14°N 91°W 1000(?)

Comparison of factors that might be involved with Deaths

Table B-5

Wheat Temp Rain Burials Baptisms W&S Burials Real Wage Index
1758 250.00 8.95 873 472 404 165150 634
1759 199.17 10.00 781 424 464 165550 669
1760 182.50 9.83 908 483 476 161100 706
1761 151.25 10.00 851 405 430 162678 684
1762 195.00 9.58 809 467 442 193250 672
1763 203.75 8.93 1091 614 443 199535 672
1764 233.75 8.72 951 430 482 168347 605
1765 240.00 8.50 789 440 509 163163 602
1766 215.42 8.63 734 504 499 188088 574
1767 236.67 8.69 864 623 485 185804 585
1768 268.75 8.93 1192 543 482 175724 641
1769 202.92 8.78 788 458 559 172708 649
1770 217.50 8.51 956 571 552 182994 602
1771 235.83 8.55 733 520 611 175401 548
1772 253.33 9.15 964 529 585 177662 554
1773 255.00 9.24 981 647 613 180825 552
1774 263.33 9.07 898 466 554 163994 589
1775 241.67 10.09 998 558 611 173041 606
1776 190.82 9.01 859 464 636 165654 616

comparison of burials with other factors

To allow all the figures to co-exist on one graph the temperatures were multiplied by 10 and the figures for the 404 parishes used by Wrigley and Schofield [1981 p516] were divided by 250.

 

burials against rainfall with each series compared to its average

Raw Wool Prices

converted to pence /lb

Table B-6

Lincoln Long South Down Kent Long
1757 3.21
1758 3.57
1759 3.57 3.54 3.13
1760 3.30 3.54 3.13
1761 3.21 2.71 2.50
1762 3.04 2.71 2.50
1763 3.57 3.33 2.92
1764 3.57 3.33 3.33
1765 3.75 3.13 2.92
1766 3.84 3.33 3.33
1767 3.57 3.75 3.13
1768 2.86 2.92 2.71
1769 2.72 2.92 2.71
1770 2.50 3.13 2.92
1771 2.68 3.33 3.13
1772 2.77 2.92 2.71
1773 2.77 2.92 2.92
1774 3.13 3.33 2.92
1775 3.30 3.75 3.33
1776 3.30 3.54 3.33

 

Schumpeter-Gilboy Price Indices

Table B-7

Consumer Goods

(a)

other than cereals

(b)

Producers Goods (c)
1757 109 92 94
1758 106 94 101
1759 100 96 101
1760 98 97 102
1761 94 91 101
1762 94 90 102
1763 100 92 102
1764 102 94 101
1765 106 97 99
1766 107 96 99
1767 109 93 99
1768 108 92 98
1769 99 92 92
1770 100 92 94
1771 107 96 94
1772 117 103 98
1773 119 102 99
1774 116 101 98
1775 113 96 98
1776 114 102 101

(a) Viz. Barley, beans, biscuiits, break, flour, oats, peas, rye, wheat, beef for salting, butter, cheese, pork, ale, beer, cider, hops, malt, pepper, raisins, sugar, tea, tallow candles, coal, broadcloth, hair, felt hats, kersey, leather, leather backs, Brussels linen, Irish linen, blue yarn stockings.

(b) Viz. all items after wheat in footnote (a).

(c) Viz. bricks, coal, lead, pantiles, plain tiles, hemp, leather backs, train oil, tallow, lime, glue and copper.

Reproduced, complete with footnotes, from Mitchell [1962 p469]

 

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