Plague mortality rates by age and sex in the parish of St. Botolph's without Bishopsgate, London, 1603

Abstract The Bills of Mortality for London were instituted at least as early as 1528 but only a few figures survive before the extant annual series that begins in 1603. Ages at death, even in broad groups of ages, are not generally available until 1728, which is more than 50 years too late to give us any inkling of the ages, if any, at which people were specially susceptible to plague. There are reports, it is true, that suggest that children suffered from plague more severely than adults, at least on certain occasions (as in 1361 or 1418 for example), but nothing more precise. The legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin may be a folk-memory of a plague (possibly in 1284) that killed mainly the children of the town, for the connection between infestation of rats and the loss of children suggests some kind of plague outbreak. Pollitzer concludes that no particular age group is specially liable to plague, and attributes all differences observed to different risks of exposure. The determinants of the severity of an outbreak would therefore be the environmental details and social customs.