Chronicle From Aldgate: Life and Death in Shakespeare's London

Abstract

The short lease and failing mansion of the Elizabethan Londoner described metaphorically by Shakespeare is documented by Dr. Forbes from Parish records of St. Botolph without Aldgate. In these unpublished records dating from 1558 to 1625, the clerks included, along with christenings, marriages, and burials, much information on causes of deaths, ages at death, occupations as well as considerable editorializing on the good deeds and the frailties of the parish members. Dr. Forbes, professor of anatomy at Yale University School of Medicine, describes in the first three chapters the records and the clerks who kept them, the population of the parish by age, occupation, and life span. Three more chapters are devoted to describing and analyzing causes of death: disease, accident and violence, and the plague. Con, meaning convulsion or consumption, is the frustrating reference to the most common cause of death after the plague. He shows society's method of