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3 Finlay, R. A. P., ‘The accuracy of the London Parish Registers 1580–1653’, Population Studies 32, 1 (1978), 95–112Google ScholarPubMed.

4 The St Peter upon Cornhill series starts in March 1579 and extends, without interruption, until the end of March 1605, thus spanning the plague years 1593 and 1603. The All Hallows series extends from November 1578 to December 1598 and includes the plague year of 1593, while the St Botolph series extends from March 1579 until December 1752.

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6 Finlay, ‘The effect of plague on mortality experience’.

7 Champion, London's dreaded visitation.

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10 DeWitte, S. N., ‘Age patterns of mortality during the Black Death in London, A.D. 1349–1350’, Journal of Archaeological Science 37, 12 (2010), 3394–400CrossRefGoogle Scholar; DeWitte, S. N., ‘Sex differentials in frailty in medieval England’, American Journal of Physical Anthropology 143, 2 (2010), 285–97CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

11 This study focuses on the identification of groups of individuals who may be reasonably expected to live in close proximity, share the same facilities or touch each other. Such individuals are likely to be related to each other but might include servants, lodgers or families co-existing in the same house. The term ‘household’ is used here as a convenient ‘epidemiological unit’ implying the probability of close contact and may not match exactly similar definitions used by demographers investigating social structure. For instance, in demographic terms the ‘household’ may consist of one member only.

12 Schofield, R., ‘An anatomy of an epidemic: Colyton. November 1645 to November 1546’, in ‘The plague reconsidered: a new look at its origins and effects in 16^th and 17^th-century England’, Local Population Studies Supplement (1977), 95–132Google Scholar.

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16 See, for example, Cohn and Alfani, ‘Households and plague’.

17 For a thorough review of the debate that details the earlier studies, the evolution of methodology, problems and solutions, see Bolton, J. L., ‘Looking for Yersinia pestis: scientists, historians and the Black Death’, in Clark, L. and Rawcliffe, C. eds., The fifteenth century XII: society in an age of plague (Suffolk, 2013), 15–38Google Scholar.

18 Green, M. H., ‘Editor's introduction’, in Green, M. H. ed., Pandemic disease in the medieval world: rethinking the Black Death (Kalamazoo and Bradford, 2014), 27–62Google Scholar.

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21 See Nutton, V., ‘Pestilential complexities: understanding medieval plague’, Medical History Supplement 27 (2008), 1–16Google Scholar; S. Cohn, ‘The historian and the laboratory: the Black Death disease’, in Clark and Rawcliffe eds., The fifteenth century XII, 195–212. Samuel Cohn, arguably the most persuasive of a group of scientists and historians, who once argued that plagues of the second pandemic could not have been caused by Y. pestis, now appears to have accepted a role for this bacterium but, quite rightly, continues to argue ‘that ancient DNA and the construction of phylogenetic charts from laboratory samples may not be enough to resolve the problem of the extreme differences in plague from the Black Death to the present: isolation of the pathogen alone cannot resolve what was the Black Death disease.’ Cohn, ‘The historian and the laboratory’, 137.

22 Pollitzer, R., ‘A review of recent literature on plague’, Bulletin of the World Health Organisation 23, 2–3 (1960), 313–400Google ScholarPubMed.

23 Dai, R., Wei, B. and Xiong, H. et al. , ‘Human plague associated with Tibetan sheep originates in marmots’, Plos: Neglected Tropical Diseases 12, 8 (2018), 1–11Google ScholarPubMed; Gage, K. L., Dennis, D. T. and Orloski, K. A., ‘Cases of cat-associated human plague in western US, 1977–1998’, Clinical Infectious Diseases 30, 6 (2000), 893–900CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

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25 Martini, E., Petrie, G. F., Stanley, A. and Strong, R. P. eds., Report of the International Plague Conference held at Mukden, April 1911 (Manila, 1912)Google Scholar.

26 Evans, C. M., Egan, J. R. and Hall, I., ‘Pneumonic plague in Johannesburg, South Africa, 1904’, Emerging Infectious Diseases 24, 1 (2018), 95–102CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Stow, J., ‘A survey of London: reprinted from the text of 1603’, ed. Kingsford, C L (Oxford, 1908)Google Scholar, British History Online, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/survey-of-london-stow/1603.

28 Gower, G. W. G. Leveson ed., A register of all the christenings, burialles and weddings within the parish of Saint Peters upon Cornhill: beginning in the raine of our most Soueraigne Ladie Queen Elizabeth, Harleian Society (London, 1877)Google Scholar.

29 The register confirms the birth of Margery Averell ‘my 17th childe, born the 14th day’ in January 1596 although an entry dated 4 December 1597 records the birth ‘of Elizabeth Averell daughter of William Averell his 18^th childe’, which was after Gillian's death. However, there is no record of a re-marriage in this parish's records and Leveson Gower does not comment on this. There is also a record of the burial of ‘Margarett Averell daughter of W^m Averell … she was 16 years old’ on 7 August 1603. The baptismal records, however, do not reveal the birth of a child with that name in the years immediately preceding or following 1587. Gillian Averell gave birth to a child every year from 1585 to 1591 inclusive, but no birth was recorded between 5 September 1587 and 30 August 1589, leaving a short window of opportunity. It is not clear why this birth would have not been recorded unless it took place outside of the parish. It would have increased William Averell's brood to 19 children.

30 T. C. Dale, The inhabitants of London in 1638 (London, 1931), British History Online, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/london-inhabitants/1638.

31 See, for example, Baer, W. C., ‘Stuart London's standard of living: re-examining the Settlement of Tithes of 1638 for rents, income, and poverty’, Economic History Review 63, 3 (2010), 612–37CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

32 Baer, W. C., ‘Housing for the lesser sort in Stuart London: findings from certificates and returns of divided houses’, The London Journal 33, 1 (2008), 61–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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34 See Sutherland, I., ‘When was the Great Plague? Mortality in London 1563 to 1665’, in Glass, D. V. and Revelle, R. eds., Population and social change (1972), 287–320Google Scholar; R. A. P. Finlay, ‘The general growth of population in London’, in Population and metropolis. For a critical review of such methods, see Harding, V., ‘The population of London, 1550–1700: a review of the published evidence’, London Journal 15, 2 (1990), 111–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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39 Although baptism and burial lists over time provide some indication of the demographic progression of a London parish, the number of marriages provides little useful information since, as Finlay explained, ‘under the widespread use of the licence system, marriages frequently occurred in parishes in which neither partner lived nor where the couple subsequently settled’.

40 Finlay argues that the continuous supply of migrants from the countryside replenished the population rapidly; see Finlay, ‘The effect of plague on mortality experience’.

41 Finlay, The general growth of population in London.

42 We need to move forward to the plague year of 1625 before burials in the New Churchyard at Bedlam are recorded in the St Peter upon Cornhill records. However, only seven such burials can be found, which is a tiny minority for this parish in that year. In 1665 a further ten burials in the New Church Yard are recorded.

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46 The sex of 23 individual burials over the 12 years under consideration could not be determined because they were either stillbirths or ‘Chrisoms’ (in this sense meaning a child born but dying prior to baptism). They were unnamed with no indication of sex given.

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50 Finlay, ‘The effect of plague on mortality experience’.

51 Note that a small number of the deceased were characterised as ‘son of’ or ‘daughter of’ even though they fell into the 20–24 age group (and even one in the 55–59 age group), as evidenced in Figure 5.

52 The St Peter upon Cornhill records employ the term ‘servant’, which is taken to include both apprentices and individuals in service, but it is not possible to determine the relative proportion. A comprehensive study of London's City Livery Company records from 1600–1749 shows that the typical London apprentices had no identifiable tie to their master through kin or place of origin, as explained by Leunig, T., Minns, C. and Wallis, P., ‘Networks in the premodern economy: the market for London apprenticeships, 1600–1749’, Journal of Economic History 7, 2 (2011), 413–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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55 G. Newton, ‘Family reconstitution in an urban context: some observations and methods’, Cambridge Working Papers in Economic and Social History, 12 (Cambridge, 2013).

56 R. A. P. Finlay, ‘London social structure in 1638’, in Population and metropolis.

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58 Although family/household groups can be identified in this way, it should be borne in mind that there is no way of discovering close relationships between friends and business partners, the identities of carers outside the family group and of single people or small groups of people, lodging with families, unless these are specifically mentioned in the records. Thus, a more complete list of probable contacts, which would prove so valuable to the epidemiologist, is generally unobtainable from parish records.

59 Schofield, ‘An anatomy of an epidemic: Colyton’.

60 The average name group size was 4.1, which was slightly larger than the average household group size of 3.6.

61 Finlay, ‘The effect of plague on mortality experience’.

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64 Migliani, R., Chanteau, S. and Rahlison, L. et al. , ‘Epidemiological trends for human plague in Madagascar during the second half of the 20th century: a survey of 20,900 notified cases’, Tropical Medicine and International Health 11, 8 (2006), 1228–37CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

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67 C. A. Gill, ‘A note on the epidemiology of pneumonic plague’, The Indian Medical Gazette, April (1906), 135–7.

68 Whittles and Didelot, ‘Epidemiological analysis of the Eyam plague outbreak’.

69 For a brief discussion of these possibilities, see Drancourt, M. and Raoult, D., ‘Investigation of pneumonic plague, Madagascar’, Emerging Infectious Diseases 24, 1 (2018), 183CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; and Evans, C. M., ‘Spread of plague by respiratory droplets or ectoparasites’, Emerging Infectious Disease 24, 5 (2018), 952CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

70 Evans, Egan and Hall, ‘Pneumonic plague in Johannesburg’.