THE THIRD ESSAY.
Proofs that the number of people in the 134 parishes of the London
bills of mortality, without reference to other cities, is about
696,000, viz. -
I know but three ways of finding the same.
1. By the houses, and families, and heads living in each.
2. By the number of burials in healthful times, and by the
proportion of those that live, to those that die.
3. By the number of those who die of the plague in pestilential
years, in proportion to those that escape.
The First Way.
To know the number of houses, I used three methods, viz. -
1. The number of houses which were burnt A.D. 1666, which by
authentic report was 13,200; next what proportion the people who
died out of those houses, bore to the whole; which I find A.D. 1686,
to be but one seventh part, but A.D. 1666 to be almost one-fifth,
from whence I infer the whole housing of London A.D. 1666 to have
been 66,000, then finding the burials A.D. 1666 to be to those of
1686 as 3 to 4,I pitch upon 88,000 to be the number of housing A.D.
1686.
2. Those who have been employed in making the general map of
London, set forth in the year 1682, told me that in that year they
had found above 84,000 houses to be in London, wherefore A.D. 1686,
or in four years more, there might be one-tenth or 8,400 houses more
(London doubling in forty years) so as the whole, A.D. 1686 might be
92,400.
3. I found that A.
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