The Forged by Fire project covers the period from around 1800 onwards, but there were, of course, instances of burns and scalds before that date, some of which you can read about in my recent book, Accidents and Violent Death in Early Modern London.
This blog post briefly reviews the circumstances of such injuries and deaths that were suffered by the inhabitants of early-modern London, from the mid-seventeenth to later-eighteenth centuries. Such incidents provide opportunities to explore specific hazards and risks encountered during that period, and to consider the medical and regulatory responses made to them. The associated narratives can also help us to understand something of contemporary social behaviours and living conditions across the extents of the metropolis. Evidence gathered from medical tracts, newspapers, burial registers and the London ‘Bills of Mortality’ stand witness to a wide range of injurious burns or scalds.
Drawing on my analysis of London’s weekly ‘Bills of Mortality’, it is possible to enumerate fatal burning and scalding events, specifically between 1654 and 1735. During that period at least 383 Londoners were fatally burned, while 154 endured similarly fatal scalds.[1] A total which places such deaths in sixth place in a hierarchy of hazards ranging from drowning to traffic accidents. Of course, these figures also suggest a much higher number of non-fatal injuries of this type, but those events are less frequently mentioned in contemporary records.
The list of ‘casualties’, in other words fatalities, on the reverse of the Bill of Mortality for the week commencing 28 February 1664. Note the individual reported to have been ‘Burnt by a fall into the fire in St Giles in the Fields’.
(‘Bills of Mortality Feb 28 – March 7th, 1664’. Wellcome Collection. CC BY.)
The reported burns-related fatalities provide a good indication of the seasonality of this particular hazard. Most of the deaths occurred during the winter months, particularly between November and March, with an absolute peak in December. Colder weather and shorter days, which encouraged a more intensive use of fire for heating and lighting, most likely explain this pattern. But whatever the time of year many of the everyday activities of the inhabitants of eighteenth-century London exposed them to the risk of suffering a burn. Setting aside those whose occupations drew them into direct contact with fires, ovens and furnaces, the universal use of naked flames for heating, cooking and lighting meant that the home presented an environment often of equal risk.
For example, in early March 1718 fifteen-year-old Sarah Fell was ‘Scorched and burnt on several parts of her body by the accidental taking fire of her wearing clothes.’ This proved a fatal encounter and her burial was subsequently recorded at St John Wapping on 13 March 1718.[2] While we cannot be sure, it is likely, given Sarah’s age and gender, that she was engaged in some sort of domestic work when she received her injuries. Her death was investigated through a coroner’s inquest and she was mourned by her parents John and Mary, and her 16-year-old sister Catherine.
Agility, or at least a good level of mobility, seems to have been a key factor in avoiding burns when confronted with building fires. In January 1766, at Lady Dacre’s Almshouses in the parish of St Margaret, Westminster, the room of one of the inhabitants, Ann Fitsall, was found to be on fire. Two neighbours, Thomas Lund and a Mrs Okey, went bravely into the smoke-filled room and opened a window to vent the space. Soon after some local firefighters arrived, ‘who threw several pails of water into the room’. They then entered and carried Ann’s extensively-burnt body, still seated in her chair, out of the building. Lund summarised the situation in a statement he made to the Westminster Coroner: ‘the deceased was burnt very much and then dead as [the] deponent believes, her cloathes being likewise all burnt, and this deponent says that the deceased was very old and weak and unable to move out of a chair herself.’[3]
A leather fire bucket typical of the type used by firefighters to extinguish fires like the one that occurred in Ann Fitsall’s room at Lady Dacre’s Almshouses in 1766.
(Science Museum Group. Old leather fire bucket, with the mark of the Sun. 1920-141/3. Science Museum Group Collection Online. Accessed 15 November 2019. https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co45179. CC BY. )
It is little surprise to find that those most susceptible to domestic burn injuries fell into one of three groups: infants and toddlers; women, often as a result of the ignition of their clothes; and the elderly, who were unable to flee. Returning to the Westminster coroner’s inquests for further evidence of this we find that between 1760 and 1771 there were eight burns-related inquests. Of these, two, including Ann Fitsall, related to elderly people while the remaining six considered the deaths of children aged from three to seven years old.
Scalding incidents followed a generally similar pattern: infants, toddlers and children were at particular risk, but among adults the danger was mostly associated with domestic servants and brewery workers. While dyers and others who used heated liquids in their employment were at some risk of suffering a scald, by far the most dangerous occupation was that of brewing. Workers in breweries and distilleries accounted for a third of all scalding deaths between 1654 and 1735 (forty-nine in total). In January 1657 for example, Thomas Turner, a brewer’s servant, was scalded to death accidentally while at work in a brewhouse in St Giles Cripplegate.[4] In a similar incident in the closing days of 1719, John Austin, a worker at a brewery near Billingsgate, was ‘getting over a boiling copper of liquor to reach something he wanted, at which time his foot unhappily slipping, he fell into the copper, and was scalded to death immediately, before anybody came to his assistance’.[5] Working in close proximity to large-scale vats of heated liquids was obviously a hazard in itself. However, the routine consumption of beer by such workers, leading to varying levels of intoxication, was undoubtedly a contributory factor in a number of incidents.
Workers engaged in a range of routinely hazardous activities in a late 18th century brewery. (Four brewers at work. Engraving, c. 1805. Wellcome Collection. CC BY.)
The above examples have demonstrated some of the more dramatic, and clearly fatal, incidents of burns and scalds encountered in early-modern London. Medical intervention in such serious cases was limited in scope, yet lesser burns were amenable to a range of cures.
Some contemporaries were guided in their domestic responses to burns injuries by a number of published works. Most significant were the earliest first-aid style manuals published by Stephen Bradwell and Richard Hawes. Bradwell’s Helps for Suddain Accidents Endangering Life was first published in 1633, Hawes’ The Poor-mans Plaster-box followed a year later. Typical of the suggestions by Bradwell was to wrap a scald injury in ‘fine rags’ dipped in a mixture of egg white beaten with ‘oyel of roses, or else of sallet oyle’. The rags were not be removed ‘till it be well’ although readers were directed to re-wet the ‘rags’ with the mixture three or four times each day (p. 120). For a burn, Bradwell recommended the application of a butter-based ointment. The butter was to be unsalted and prepared by being beaten with a quantity of spring water, to which was also added ‘twelve ounces of the fine powder of brimstone, the seeds of cucumbers made into a fine powder and camphor also in fine powder of each half an ounce’ (p. 121). He also reports a somewhat less appealing preparation concocted by his grandfather based on a boiled mixture of fresh butter and goose dung. Although he claimed that it would ‘taketh away pain presently, and healeth with as little blemish as may be’ (p. 124).
The evidence suggests that burns and scalds caused numerous injuries and deaths in the early modern metropolis, both in the home and at work. As the eighteenth century progressed, steps were often taken to regulate and manage the underlying hazards, and to improve fire-fighting methods, yet medical responses remained rudimentary at best.
Dr Craig Spence is an independent researcher and was previously Senior Lecturer in History at Bishop Grosseteste University, Lincoln. He is author of Accidents and Violent Death in Early Modern London: 1650-1750 (2016). He also runs a blog focused on early modern accidents and risk at http://www.billsofmortality.org (craigspence.historian@gmail.com).
[1] See, Craig Spence, Accidents and Violent Death in Early Modern London: 1650–1750, Boydell & Brewer, 2016. https://boydellandbrewer.com/accidents-and-violent-death-in-early-modern-london.html
[2] Bill of Mortality, 12 March 1718; London Metropolitan Archives P93/JN2/024.
[3] Westminster Coroners Inquests, Westminster Abbey Muniments Room (27 January 1766); also see http://www.londonlives.org.
[4] London Metropolitan Archives, P69/GIS/A/002/MS06419/005.
[5] Bill of Mortality, 29 December 1719; London Metropolitan Archives, P71/MMG/006; Original Weekly Journal, 9 January 1720.
Forged by fire: burns injury and identity in britain, c.1800-2000 
Great article Craig!
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