'Big Data' and Parish Registers: a Case Study of Mortality in Early Modern Non-Metropolitan Surrey

Abstract

This article uses aggregate analysis of parish registers to consider mortality in the early modern period. Based on a case study of the majority of the historical county of Surrey between about 1550 and 1750, it explores the nature and geographical distribution of mortality crises and seasonal patterns of mortality in normal, non-crisis, times. For the former it focusses mainly on two crises only a few years apart but with different causes, the dearth of the late 1590s and an outbreak of plague in 1603.