"Dumb Ways to Die began as an Australian rail safety campaign back in 2012. I heard the viral jingle recently, and it got me to thinking about a particular kind of printed ephemera. From about 1530, London began to publish Bills of Mortality. By the close of the same century, these lists of deaths and their causes were published weekly."
"Every time someone died, the parish church rang its bell, and the sexton, responsible for preparing graves, alerted 'searchers,' not doctors but typically older women whose job it was to determine cause of death.* They then passed on their findings to the Parish Clerks' Company Hall, whose job it was to collate and publish the data. With an estimated weekly circulation of 5000 to 6000 copies in the early seventeenth century, Bills of Mortality were pretty popular.*"
From about 1530, London produced Bills of Mortality that evolved into weekly lists of deaths and their causes by the late sixteenth century. Parish church bells signaled deaths; the sexton alerted 'searchers,' typically older women who determined causes of death and passed findings to the Parish Clerks' Company Hall for collation and publication. Early seventeenth-century circulation reached an estimated 5,000–6,000 copies weekly, and the lists were sold for a penny, indicating a market for mortality information. Disease terminology included dropsy (edema), tooth-related infections, and consumption (tuberculosis). Child mortality was high, with nearly half dying before age fifteen and about a quarter of infants dying before their first birthday. Printed ephemera rarely survive in large numbers.
Read at I Love Typography Ltd
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