Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Speaker 1: Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. So today's subject is
Speaker 1: a person who's been on my list for a minute,
Speaker 1: not a really commonly known name, but whose work is
Speaker 1: probably impacting the life of every single person listening in
Speaker 1: one way or another. He did this work nearly four
Speaker 1: hundred years ago, but it really changed the way that
Speaker 1: people perceived population and mortality by measuring it, because that
Speaker 1: changes the outcome. We are talking about John Grant, who
Speaker 1: was a shopkeeper in London who, through both personal connections
Speaker 1: and a desire to just kind of follow his own
Speaker 1: curiosity which I love to a rather grand result, became
Speaker 1: very well respected among the city's most revered intellectuals. Work
Speaker 1: gave rise to the field of demography and epidemiology, and
Speaker 1: his work could be categorized as statistical analysis, although the
Speaker 1: word statistics didn't even exist for another one hundred years
Speaker 1: after he died. But that's who we're talking about today.
Speaker 1: So John Grant was born April twenty fourth, sixteen twenty
Speaker 1: in London, England, to Henry and Mary Grant, who raised
Speaker 1: John and their other children. There may have been seven
Speaker 1: other children raised the mall As Puritans at the end
Speaker 1: of the seventeenth century. Antiquarian and philosopher John Aubrey included
Speaker 1: Grant in his book Brief Lives, which covered notable seventeenth
Speaker 1: century figures, and he quite charmingly describes the start of
Speaker 1: Grant's life this way quote was born twenty four d
Speaker 1: aprilis at the seven Stars in Burton Lane, London, in
Speaker 1: the parish of Saint Michael's Cornhill, an hour before eight
Speaker 1: o'clock on a Monday morning, the sign being in the
Speaker 1: nine degree of Gemini that day at twelve o'clock. Anno
Speaker 1: Domino sixteen twenty. Yeah, that Aubrey account will discuss a
Speaker 1: good bit throughout this journey. But reading it is very
Speaker 1: fun because it is, you know, old timy language. But
Speaker 1: also I don't know, he just has a flare for
Speaker 1: freezing that makes me chuckle. I like that the date
Speaker 1: of his birth was in Latin. The rest of it's
Speaker 1: not Latin, but just that part. That's kind of how
Speaker 1: all of Brief Lives go. There's a little Latin sprinkled throughout.
Speaker 1: For insussient flair. Although today Grant is pretty much always
Speaker 1: mentioned as being a statistician or something related, that is
Speaker 1: very far from where he started. This is going to
Speaker 1: get into holly pedantry just a little, so bear with me.
Speaker 1: He is described as a draper in some accounts and
Speaker 1: a haberdasher in others. These are similar roles, but they're
Speaker 1: actually different. A draper would have sold fabric for garment construction,
Speaker 1: whereas a haberdash would have sold sewing notions, so things
Speaker 1: like thread, buttons, et cetera. This is, of course also
Speaker 1: different from the way the word haberdasher is used today
Speaker 1: in North America, where it usually means somebody who sells
Speaker 1: men's wear. In this case, this would not have been
Speaker 1: a men'swear specific enterprise. So Grant, we know, would have
Speaker 1: been selling sewing supplies of some type intended for garment construction,
Speaker 1: but it's not one hundred percent clear if it was
Speaker 1: fabric or notions. The Aubrey biography calls him a haberdasher,
Speaker 1: noting he was quote haberdasher of small wares, but was
Speaker 1: free of the draper's company. That small amount of words
Speaker 1: just confuses things more because haberdashers and drapers in London
Speaker 1: at this time already had completely separate guilds. However, Aubrey
Speaker 1: seems to have been incorrect about Grant's guild status. John's father,
Speaker 1: Henry Grant, was a member of the Worshipful Company of Drapers,
Speaker 1: having been admitted in sixteen fourteen, and John apprenticed with
Speaker 1: his father. According to Henry Conner, writing for the Journal
Speaker 1: of Medical Biography in twenty twenty two, John Grant quote
Speaker 1: was admitted by patrimony to the freedom of the Draper's
Speaker 1: Company when twenty one, and granted the livery when thirty eight.
Speaker 1: So for context, freedom admission indicates that a tradesperson is
Speaker 1: set on the track to becoming a full member, and
Speaker 1: then when they are granted livery, they have met certain
Speaker 1: requirements and submitted a formal application. So it does appear
Speaker 1: that Grant was a full member in the Draper's Guild. Yeah,
Speaker 1: i e. Not a haberd usher. Tracy also pointed out
Speaker 1: that that wording of Aubrey's could be confusing and mean
Speaker 1: that he was a freeman within the Draper's Company. But
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem like that's what he's getting at. I
Speaker 1: could I'm wrong in my interpretation. We do know that
Speaker 1: Grant got married the same year that he was admitted
Speaker 1: to the Draper's Guild as a full member, so he
Speaker 1: married a seventeen year old named Mary Scott. We know
Speaker 1: very little about their marriage, although according to Aubrey, they
Speaker 1: had two children who lived to adulthood, a son and
Speaker 1: a daughter, and two other kids who died in infancy.
Speaker 1: Those children were also daughters. The only details we know
Speaker 1: about the surviving children also come from that Aubrey biography,
Speaker 1: so a little bit difficult to substantiate. He states that
Speaker 1: their son died as an adult in Persia and that
Speaker 1: the daughter became a nun. Grant became very active in
Speaker 1: his community and served in a number of civic roles,
Speaker 1: including on London's Common Council and his later years, he
Speaker 1: was also active in infrastructure projects like developing a canal
Speaker 1: that brought water into the city. As part of his
Speaker 1: standing as a citizen and a community leader, Grant was
Speaker 1: also a member of London's Trained Bands. This was a
Speaker 1: militia made up of homeowners within the city that served
Speaker 1: as a defense force serving under the Lord Mayor. Was
Speaker 1: often addressed as captain in various accounts of his life,
Speaker 1: suggesting he attained that rank in the militia. Aubrey, who
Speaker 1: knew Grant and was his friend, describes him as a
Speaker 1: man who was well liked, pleasant and smart. In addition
Speaker 1: to John Aubrey, a wide array of impressive friends clustered
Speaker 1: around Grant, and many of them are well known today.
Speaker 1: Samuel Peeps mentions Grant in his diaries, noting on April twentieth,
Speaker 1: sixteen sixty three, quote, So to my office the remaining
Speaker 1: part of the morning till towards noon, and then to
Speaker 1: mister Grant's. There saw his prints, which he showed me,
Speaker 1: and indeed are the best collection of any things almost
Speaker 1: that ever I saw there. Being the prince of most
Speaker 1: of the greatest houses, churches and antiquities in Italy and France,
Speaker 1: and brave cuts, I had not time to look them
Speaker 1: over as I ought, and which I will take time
Speaker 1: hereafter to do, and therefore left them and home to dinner.
Speaker 1: He became friendly with Sir Benjamin Rudyard, who was a
Speaker 1: poet and a politician in Parliament. Painter John Hales was
Speaker 1: another friend who would come to be known for his
Speaker 1: portraits of Lady Diana Russell, Duchess of Bedford Lady Anne Russell,
Speaker 1: Countess of Bedford, and Samuel Peeps, and several members of
Speaker 1: Peeps's family. Another artist friend was Samuel Cooper, considered to
Speaker 1: be maybe the best portrait miniature painter of the sixteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: But the most well known of Grant's friends was William Petty. Petty,
Speaker 1: who was three years younger than Grant, was a man
Speaker 1: of many interests and abilities. He was a doctor, a
Speaker 1: professor of both anatomy and music, and a surveyor, and
Speaker 1: alongside his good friend John Grant, he became interested in
Speaker 1: using available data to gain insight into the world around him.
Speaker 1: But before that the two men were already very close.
Speaker 1: Grant had helped Petty get his music professorship at Gresham College.
Speaker 1: Petty gave Grant his power of attorney. In sixteen sixty
Speaker 1: they purchased proper together on Lothbury Street, the short street
Speaker 1: in London that was popular with professionals. This land is
Speaker 1: now occupied by the Bank of England. Grant was, through
Speaker 1: various groups and friendships, tied to a lot of the
Speaker 1: city's intellectuals and leaders. Coming up, we will talk about
Speaker 1: how Grant's own curiosity led him to start looking at
Speaker 1: death statistics, but first we will pause for a sponsor break.
Speaker 1: For some reason which remains unclear, Grant became really interested
Speaker 1: in London's death records. They would have been commonly available,
Speaker 1: and as a merchant, information about the shifts in the
Speaker 1: city's population would have been important to John Grant and
Speaker 1: to others. These accounts of the deaths in the city
Speaker 1: have their own interesting stories. So we're gonna jump backwards
Speaker 1: a little bit to the fifteen twenties. Starting in fifteen
Speaker 1: twenty seven, the bills of mortality, which were simply lists
Speaker 1: of the dead, began to be collected in London. The
Speaker 1: oldest surviving bill of mortality that we know of is
Speaker 1: from fifteen thirty two, and the gathering of this information
Speaker 1: was done for the most part by elderly women of
Speaker 1: the various parishes of the city. They were called searchers.
Speaker 1: When someone died, allowed bell was rung to summon the searchers,
Speaker 1: and a pair of them would go to the house
Speaker 1: where the bell had come from to observe the body.
Speaker 1: They would note each death, collect those names into lists,
Speaker 1: which were submitted to the parish clerks, who then entered
Speaker 1: them into the official record and also publish the list.
Speaker 1: The names were not included in the list. The publicly
Speaker 1: available records normally listed the parish and just the number
Speaker 1: of deaths. And initially this job was really just to
Speaker 1: determine if people had died of the plague so that
Speaker 1: they could track that, But over time the searchers started
Speaker 1: to include causes of death other than the plague, even
Speaker 1: though they didn't really have medical trainings. They were kind
Speaker 1: of going on a combo of common sense and vibes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if I remember correctly, we talked about these searchers in
Speaker 1: our episode on Rickets. Yes, Rickets will come up later. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was one of the reasons that it was like,
Speaker 1: we have these references to Rickets in these lists, but
Speaker 1: we don't really know for sure if that was actually Ricketts.
Speaker 1: So for a long time these lists were submitted on
Speaker 1: kind of a random basis, but toward the end of
Speaker 1: the sixteenth century, in fifteen ninety two, a set schedule
Speaker 1: was established for their regular submission. At the time, the
Speaker 1: cause of death also started to be recorded, with a
Speaker 1: summary count of how many people in a given parish
Speaker 1: died from it. This was because London experienced a high
Speaker 1: death rate starting that year, as the city struggled through
Speaker 1: a plague outbreak that shut down the theaters and the
Speaker 1: public houses. When the plague began, the city had an
Speaker 1: estimated one hundred and fifty thousand people. Roughly ten percent
Speaker 1: of the population died during this outbreak, but once death
Speaker 1: numbers started to drop, the bills of mortality became less frequent.
Speaker 1: Over time, they did add in christenings, and they tracked
Speaker 1: population growth through surviving infants. Then another plague hit the
Speaker 1: city in sixteen oh three, just as James the sixth
Speaker 1: of Scotland was taking on the additional title of James
Speaker 1: the First of England and Ireland, and the newly established monarch,
Speaker 1: in an effort to get the city through this plague crisis,
Speaker 1: put out a book of orders regarding how various aspects
Speaker 1: of the plague were to be dealt with. Some of
Speaker 1: this we're going to talk about on Friday, and he
Speaker 1: reinstated a regular schedule for the bills of mortality. Under
Speaker 1: the new orders, searchers had to submit their lists on
Speaker 1: Tuesdays and on Thursday mornings. The complete lists were made
Speaker 1: available to the public, with copies available for a penny,
Speaker 1: or people could get an annual subscription for four pennies,
Speaker 1: which seems like a great deal. There was also an
Speaker 1: annual report made that compiled the entire year's data that
Speaker 1: was always published on the Thursday before Christmas every year.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until sixteen twenty nine that the report separated
Speaker 1: out deaths by male and female members of the population,
Speaker 1: so for some example numbers, the report for all of
Speaker 1: sixteen twenty five noted that the parish of Bennett's Grace
Speaker 1: Church had forty eight deaths, sixteen from plague. The parish
Speaker 1: of Martin's a Ludgate had two hundred and fifty four
Speaker 1: deaths one hundred and sixty four from plague, et cetera.
Speaker 1: The sixteen thirty two report that compiled the numbers by
Speaker 1: cause of death listed six hundred and twenty eight deaths
Speaker 1: from old age, one thousand, seven hundred ninety seven from consumption,
Speaker 1: thirty eight executions of which thirteen were pressed to death,
Speaker 1: thirty eight from purples and spotted fever, and six as
Speaker 1: quotes dead in the street and starved. There are of
Speaker 1: course more entries in both of these sample lists, as
Speaker 1: well as other lists, but this gifts just a sense
Speaker 1: of how basic these numbers were and in addition to
Speaker 1: that simplicity, there was also a question regarding the accuracy
Speaker 1: of the numbers. Yeah, we'll talk about that qu a
Speaker 1: bit more. When Grant decided that he wanted to make
Speaker 1: an earnest study of this material, he only worked with
Speaker 1: the consistently published list from late sixteen oh three on.
Speaker 1: There might actually be a minor bit of scandal regarding
Speaker 1: his work with these records. According to Robert Cargan, writing
Speaker 1: for the Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied
Speaker 1: Sciences in nineteen sixty three, quote, it is unknown how
Speaker 1: the publication of the bills fared under the Commonwealth. The
Speaker 1: parish clerk's registers before sixteen sixty four are missing, having
Speaker 1: been loaned to Grant for his studies and never returned.
Speaker 1: I will say there is also a chunk kind of
Speaker 1: in the middle of that sixteen o three to sixteen
Speaker 1: sixty when he was working, that he discarded because there
Speaker 1: was some inconsistency and irregularity in him. But in sixteen
Speaker 1: sixty two Grant published his assessment of all of this information,
Speaker 1: of which there's a lot. We read a tiny smattering,
Speaker 1: but like pages and pages and pages of lists. The
Speaker 1: book that he created out of all of this was
Speaker 1: natural and political observations made upon the Bills of Mortality.
Speaker 1: It was the only book he ever published, but it
Speaker 1: became the foundation of a really significant shift in the
Speaker 1: way that people thought about population statistics. The inspiration for
Speaker 1: this effort has been a matter of debate for centuries.
Speaker 1: Often William Petty is credited with giving Grant the idea,
Speaker 1: but every source that says so seems to be pulling
Speaker 1: from that John Aubrey biography, which we know might not
Speaker 1: always be accurate. Grant himself gave the reason he started
Speaker 1: examining all the data in the preface to his book, quote,
Speaker 1: having been born and bred in the city of London,
Speaker 1: and having always observed the most of them who constantly
Speaker 1: took in the weekly Bills of Mortality, made little other
Speaker 1: use of them than to look at the foot how
Speaker 1: the burials increased or decreased, and among the casualties, what
Speaker 1: had happened rare and extraordinary in the week of the current,
Speaker 1: so they might take the same as a text to
Speaker 1: talk about in the next company and withal in the
Speaker 1: plague time, how the sickness increased or decreased, That so
Speaker 1: the rich might judge of the necessity of their removal,
Speaker 1: and tradesmen might conjecture what doings they were like to
Speaker 1: have in their respective dealings. Now I thought that the
Speaker 1: wisdom of our city had certainly designed the laudable practice
Speaker 1: of taking and distributing these accompts for other and greater
Speaker 1: uses than those above mentioned, or at least that some
Speaker 1: other uses might be made of them. And thereupon, I,
Speaker 1: casting mine eye upon so many of the general bills
Speaker 1: as next came to hand, I found encouragement from them
Speaker 1: to look out all the bills I could, and to
Speaker 1: be short to furnish myself with as much matter of
Speaker 1: that kind, even as the hall of the parish clerks
Speaker 1: could afford me the which when I had reduced to
Speaker 1: into tables, so as to have a view of the
Speaker 1: whole together, in order to the more ready comparing of
Speaker 1: one year season perish or other division of the city
Speaker 1: with another. So to translate that somewhat stilted and run
Speaker 1: on passage which Tracy just good naturedly worked her way through,
Speaker 1: uh Grant realized even people who read those reports every
Speaker 1: week were kind of just doing so. To look at
Speaker 1: the death totals so that they'd have something to talk
Speaker 1: about or to see if they should get out of
Speaker 1: town because things were getting dire with something. He had
Speaker 1: thought that the city government might be using that information
Speaker 1: in some way, but realized no one was really tracking
Speaker 1: the data in ways that might show patterns or change
Speaker 1: over time, so he just decided to do that himself.
Speaker 1: He does not mention his friend, Sir William Petty giving
Speaker 1: him the idea, or in fact mention him at all.
Speaker 1: In the dedication of the book, Grant states that quote, now,
Speaker 1: having I know not by what accident engaged my thoughts
Speaker 1: upon the Bills of Mortality, I have presumed to sacrifice
Speaker 1: these my small but first published labors unto your lordship.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about who that dedication is addressed
Speaker 1: to in a bit, but the important thing is that
Speaker 1: Grant characterizes his interest in the bills as an accident
Speaker 1: that he doesn't even remember. Grant also made it clear
Speaker 1: in his writing that he didn't want to go through
Speaker 1: this exercise if it was not actually helpful in some way.
Speaker 1: Quote moreover, finding some truths and not commonly believed opinions
Speaker 1: to arise from my meditations upon these neglected papers. I
Speaker 1: proceeded further to consider what benefit the knowledge of the
Speaker 1: fame would bring to the world, that I might not
Speaker 1: engage myself in idle and useless speculations, but present the
Speaker 1: world with some real fruit from those airy blossoms. So
Speaker 1: Grant really did want there to be some real world
Speaker 1: benefit from this whole exercise. And Grant lays out some
Speaker 1: of the accuracy problems that we mentioned a few moments
Speaker 1: ago in his writing, noting that the searchers who collected
Speaker 1: this information may be quote, perhaps ignorant and careless in
Speaker 1: their work, which apparently was a known problem. There was
Speaker 1: not really a system of fact checking their numbers or
Speaker 1: what information they included in their reports. Additionally, Grant notes
Speaker 1: that these women would sometimes take favors or bribes to
Speaker 1: record a cause of death as a less embarrassing or
Speaker 1: scandalous one than the deceased family may have found it.
Speaker 1: A significant example for this was syphilis that was recorded
Speaker 1: in the bills under the title French pox, but according
Speaker 1: to Grant, the searchers, after quote the mist of a
Speaker 1: cup of ale and the bribe of a two grin fee,
Speaker 1: would record that death instead as consumption. Another problem was
Speaker 1: that the way these numbers were laid out left a
Speaker 1: lot of information to just be assumed or interpreted. Grant
Speaker 1: noted that when a person was said to have died
Speaker 1: of old age, it doesn't give information regarding what that
Speaker 1: age was or whether there may have been some specific
Speaker 1: condition involved. There are also no specifics of what qualifies
Speaker 1: a child to be categorized as an infant. But Grant
Speaker 1: seems to have come to the conclusion that the records
Speaker 1: submitted by the searchers are probably relatively accurate in terms
Speaker 1: of cause of death because he believes they consulted physicians
Speaker 1: and also use their own judgment. But he also notes
Speaker 1: that not all diseases present in obvious ways, so said
Speaker 1: deaths might be difficult to report accurately regarding their cause.
Speaker 1: He lays all this out to explain the way he's
Speaker 1: approaching these numbers for comparisons. He's clear that there are
Speaker 1: places where he has to operate on assumption and that
Speaker 1: he welcomes criticism. Yeah. I was reading a modern take
Speaker 1: on some of it, and they put it very gingerly
Speaker 1: by saying like he does a bit too much smoothing
Speaker 1: at times. I was like, that's a perfect way to
Speaker 1: put it, we are going to get into the various
Speaker 1: conclusions that Grant drew from analyzing the Bills of Mortality,
Speaker 1: as well as talk about the later part of his life,
Speaker 1: and we'll do that after we hear from the sponsors
Speaker 1: that keep the show going. In his writing, John Grant
Speaker 1: draws some conclusions outside of just crunching numbers, some of
Speaker 1: which are debatable but show that he is thinking about
Speaker 1: ways of applying all of this information. For instance, he
Speaker 1: notes that there are very few deaths from starvation, but
Speaker 1: that London has a lot of people panhandling and begging
Speaker 1: for food, and he wonders quote that it were better
Speaker 1: to maintain all beggars at the public charge, though earning nothing,
Speaker 1: than to let them beg about the streets, and that
Speaker 1: employing them without discretion may do more harm than good.
Speaker 1: He doesn't elaborate, so it's unclear if he means to
Speaker 1: make these people wards of the state or provide for
Speaker 1: them in some other way, but he's basically saying like,
Speaker 1: you can't just hire them into jobs because they might
Speaker 1: not know what they're doing and it could cause a
Speaker 1: lot of problems. He also noted that Ricketts as Tracy
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier had risen over the years, seemingly popping up
Speaker 1: out of nowhere, asking in his work quote now, the
Speaker 1: question is whether that disease did first appear about that time,
Speaker 1: or whether a disease which had been long before did
Speaker 1: then first receive its name. Then identified other diseases like
Speaker 1: liver grown that were dropping off the list in frequency
Speaker 1: and that had probably been rickets before that disease had
Speaker 1: been better understood and more consistently diagnosed. There were a
Speaker 1: number of ways in which the way John Grant looked
Speaker 1: at the numbers the bills of mortality that contradicted a
Speaker 1: lot of commonly held beliefs. If you had asked most
Speaker 1: Londoners in sixteen sixty how the population was divided between
Speaker 1: men and women, most probably would have told you there
Speaker 1: were three women to every man. This is something that
Speaker 1: was routinely stated. But when Grant actually looked at the
Speaker 1: numbers of male and female babies born, combined with the
Speaker 1: mortality rates, he discovered that more male babies than female
Speaker 1: babies were born, they also had a higher mortality rate,
Speaker 1: and that when comparing that information to adult deaths, the
Speaker 1: population was actually divided almost evenly, but slightly skewed higher
Speaker 1: in men in the country, with sixteen men to every
Speaker 1: fifteen women. In the city proper, there were thirteen women
Speaker 1: for every fourteen men. He also calculated the population of London,
Speaker 1: creating a piece of data that had been elusive for
Speaker 1: a long time due to rudimentary reporting practices. There were
Speaker 1: rumors that he talks about that there were as many
Speaker 1: as two million people in London, and he didn't think
Speaker 1: that was right, so he really wanted to focus on this.
Speaker 1: Based on available death and household numbers, which were not
Speaker 1: comprehensive for the entire city but were in some areas,
Speaker 1: Grant calculated that for every eleven families in London, there
Speaker 1: were three deaths per year. Using those numbers, he looked
Speaker 1: at the total average of deaths per year in the
Speaker 1: city according to the Bill's immortality that was thirteen thousand,
Speaker 1: and then using those numbers, he could calculate that there
Speaker 1: were forty six thousand, six hundred sixty seven households in
Speaker 1: the city. He used the assumption of eight members per
Speaker 1: household based on averages plus the rate of population increased
Speaker 1: through average number of people moving into the city to
Speaker 1: land at a total of three hundred eighty four thousand people,
Speaker 1: one hundred ninety nine thousand, one hundred twelve male, one
Speaker 1: hundred eighty four thousand, eight hundred eighty six female. He
Speaker 1: then cross checked his own work by using different numbers
Speaker 1: from the table to calculate the population in multiple different ways.
Speaker 1: He also noted that death rates were higher in the
Speaker 1: city than in the more rural parishes, with more people
Speaker 1: per one hundred surviving past the age of seventy in
Speaker 1: the country. This led him to conclude that the country
Speaker 1: was quote more healthful than the city. His research noted
Speaker 1: that chronic diseases tended to have stable rates of death,
Speaker 1: whereas contagious diseases had greater fluctuation by season and location.
Speaker 1: As for the city being a more dangerous place, Grant
Speaker 1: identified one of the big problems, which was overcrowding. He wrote,
Speaker 1: quote London, the metropolis of England is perhaps head too
Speaker 1: big for the body, and possibly too strong. That this
Speaker 1: head grows three times as fast as the body unto
Speaker 1: which it belongs, that is, it doubles its people in
Speaker 1: third part of the time. He notes that the street
Speaker 1: were not big or stable enough for the many carriages
Speaker 1: that passed through them, and that the way that that
Speaker 1: he had been organized in its earlier years just did
Speaker 1: not suit its needs anymore. Yeah, at this point it
Speaker 1: was still very much laid out in its medieval form,
Speaker 1: and it was becoming like it was just on the
Speaker 1: cusp of getting into industrialization, and like I was not
Speaker 1: cutting it. He also came up with a life table
Speaker 1: that showed the statistics of deaths based on age over time.
Speaker 1: This is something that is like the foundation of demography,
Speaker 1: and though these exact numbers aren't used all the time,
Speaker 1: the concept is this was very basic. It gave the
Speaker 1: information that out of one hundred berths, which he called
Speaker 1: quick conceptions, thirty six people will have died before the
Speaker 1: age of six, then twenty four more in the decade
Speaker 1: that follows, fifteen more in the decade after that, and
Speaker 1: so on and so on. In his estimation, only one
Speaker 1: could reasonably be expected to survive to the age of
Speaker 1: seventy six. But though this was interesting and he developed
Speaker 1: a distribution formula to arrive at these numbers, it was
Speaker 1: also a good bit of guesswork. It was in reference
Speaker 1: to this that I saw someone in right Lake. He
Speaker 1: did a bit too much smoothing. He also noted that
Speaker 1: this isn't a precise model, but quote that the numbers
Speaker 1: following are practically near enough to the truth. Men do
Speaker 1: not die in exact proportion nor infractions. Working from that table,
Speaker 1: he described the population in percentages, stating that quote it
Speaker 1: follows also that of all which have been conceived, there
Speaker 1: are now alive forty percent above sixteen years old, twenty
Speaker 1: five above twenty six years old, et ce. Grant's book,
Speaker 1: relaying all this information and the ways he had used
Speaker 1: the basic bills of mortality to extrapolate a numerical assessment
Speaker 1: of London, was only ninety seven pages long, but it
Speaker 1: had a massive impact. He submitted fifty copies of his
Speaker 1: book to the Royal Society for members to read. He
Speaker 1: had also dedicated the book to the President of the
Speaker 1: Royal Society, Sir Robert Moray, which was a really a
Speaker 1: stup move. Physician doctor Daniel Whistler nominated Grant for membership
Speaker 1: in the Society. This was a pretty unusual situation and
Speaker 1: it shows just how important the Society thought his work was.
Speaker 1: Grant wasn't a scientist, and he wasn't from the aristocracy.
Speaker 1: He was a tradesman who hadn't attended a university, so
Speaker 1: not at all the kind of person who was expected
Speaker 1: to be a member of the Royal Society. But the
Speaker 1: Royal Society was also quite new, having been founded in
Speaker 1: sixteen sixty, so it wasn't as though his nomination broke
Speaker 1: decades of tradition. King Charles the Scond supported his application
Speaker 1: and made a statement that if the Royal Society found
Speaker 1: any more tradesmen like Grant, they should admit them as well.
Speaker 1: Grant was indeed made a fellow. He published several editions
Speaker 1: in the following years, updating the tables each time he
Speaker 1: learned new information that led to refined numbers. He notated
Speaker 1: the ways he had estimated things incorrectly in earlier versions,
Speaker 1: like supposing that households had an average of eight people
Speaker 1: when five was really more accurate. Because of all of
Speaker 1: this work, Grant is frequently called the father of demography,
Speaker 1: so anytime someone is referencing demographics, they're referencing his work,
Speaker 1: at least indirectly. Other prominent thinkers of Grant's day were
Speaker 1: influenced by his work and continued it or adapted it
Speaker 1: into their own fields. France began its own similar record keeping.
Speaker 1: After Grant's work became known and his friend Sir William
Speaker 1: Petty used the example Grant had set to start looking
Speaker 1: at the ways that death related to economic loss within
Speaker 1: a community. He published his work Essays in Political Arithmetic
Speaker 1: and Political Survey or Anatomy of Ireland in sixteen seventy two,
Speaker 1: after building on the work that Grant had done in London.
Speaker 1: That work launched a wave of probability mathematic and while
Speaker 1: its flaws are recognized, the concepts of it are still
Speaker 1: in use today. Just three years after Grant's book was
Speaker 1: first published, London experienced a surgeon plague, which is commonly
Speaker 1: known as the Great Plague of sixteen sixty five. Grant's
Speaker 1: updated numbers regarding the size of the population that year,
Speaker 1: which he thought maxed out at four hundred and sixty thousand,
Speaker 1: is one of the only ways to really know today
Speaker 1: just how impactful the death toll was that is usually
Speaker 1: estimated to be around one hundred thousand people over the
Speaker 1: course of a year and a half. In sixteen sixty six,
Speaker 1: London experienced the Great Fire and Grant was hit very
Speaker 1: hard by it. His house in a shop burned down.
Speaker 1: Petty helped finance the rebuilding of Grant's home, but he
Speaker 1: never really financially recovered and he had to sell his
Speaker 1: remaining property, some of it to Petty, and he may
Speaker 1: have declared bankruptcy. This is another thing that the Aubrey
Speaker 1: account says, but there's no documentation to back it up. However,
Speaker 1: a lot of documents were destroyed in that fire, and
Speaker 1: Grant's work is some of the only way that we
Speaker 1: know about numbers in London at the time, because everything
Speaker 1: else burned. But Grant and Petty started to have some
Speaker 1: disagreements over money that really shifted the dynamic of their
Speaker 1: friendship at this time. During this time of uncertainty, Grant
Speaker 1: became a Roman Catholic, and this was an unusual and
Speaker 1: unpopular move during this time in England. Refusing to attend
Speaker 1: Anglican services was considered a statutory offense. The conversion really
Speaker 1: took a toll on what was left of his friendship
Speaker 1: with Petty. Petty wrote to Grant in January of sixteen
Speaker 1: seventy three, quote, as for differences in religion, you have
Speaker 1: done a miss in sundry particulars which I need not mention,
Speaker 1: because yourself may easily conjecture my meetings. However, we leave
Speaker 1: these things to God and be mindful of what is
Speaker 1: the sum of all religion, and of what is and
Speaker 1: ever was true religion all the world over. Petty also
Speaker 1: confided in a letter to a friend soon after, quote,
Speaker 1: Captain Grant is now an open and zealous champion for popery.
Speaker 1: Wherefore I have not so much intimacy with him as formerly.
Speaker 1: We mentioned earlier in the episode that Grant was part
Speaker 1: of an infrastructure project that brought water into the city.
Speaker 1: That work was done by the New River Company, at
Speaker 1: which Grant was in a managerial position. His Catholicism caused
Speaker 1: so many problems and was so despised by many Londoners
Speaker 1: that a rumor started that he had been, perhaps somehow
Speaker 1: to blame for the Great Fire, and that he had
Speaker 1: prevented water from reaching the city to douse the flames
Speaker 1: as part of being in this role, and this actually
Speaker 1: got him in legal trouble, although he was ultimately found
Speaker 1: to have done no such thing. He actually was not
Speaker 1: in that managerial position until after the fire had taken place.
Speaker 1: Although his innocence on that matter had been proven, his
Speaker 1: status as a Catholic continued to isolate him professionally and socially.
Speaker 1: He was called before the court twice on the charge
Speaker 1: of recusancy failing to attend Anglican church, and he pled
Speaker 1: not guilty. His case was scheduled for trial and if
Speaker 1: he was found guilty, his property would be seized by
Speaker 1: the Crown, but that trial never happened. In the early
Speaker 1: sixteen seventies, Grant developed liver disease. He died on April eighteenth,
Speaker 1: seventeen sixty four before his trial date. His cause of
Speaker 1: death is given as jaundice. He was buried at Saint
Speaker 1: Dunstan's Church in Fleet Street. Although their relationship had suffered,
Speaker 1: Petty attended his funeral and was deeply upset. Petty took
Speaker 1: care of Grant's widow Mary financially in the years after this,
Speaker 1: and now today we have actuaries. Yeah, thanks John Grant.
Speaker 1: John Grant is mentioned in the episode that you wrote
Speaker 1: about actuarial science. Yes, we love all of the actuaries.
Speaker 1: We love it. I have a very fun listener mail
Speaker 1: which also mentions and shares flowers. We'll get to it.
Speaker 1: This from our listener, Jamie, who writes, Hi, Holly and Tracy,
Speaker 1: I just finished your episode on James Braid and wanted
Speaker 1: to share my experience with hypnotism. After graduating my high school,
Speaker 1: at a party where, among other things, a hypnotist performed,
Speaker 1: I was chosen as one of the participants. It was
Speaker 1: an interesting experience. I remember a few things. It was
Speaker 1: more than a few years ago now for me. I
Speaker 1: was aware the whole time, but I just did exactly
Speaker 1: what I thought. Like when we were told it was
Speaker 1: very cold, I cuddled to the person next to me.
Speaker 1: I was told to give a different name every time
Speaker 1: the hypnotist asked my name, and it was going good
Speaker 1: until he asked my name after someone else's who had
Speaker 1: responded sam. My brain supplied the same name. But then
Speaker 1: I thought I can't be Sam he is, and so
Speaker 1: I said Samantha. My hesitation obviously showed that I was
Speaker 1: coming out of it, so that was the end of
Speaker 1: my part. While I was open to suggestion, I also
Speaker 1: couldn't overcome my own strongly held beliefs. I can't imagine
Speaker 1: how the woman whose neck was set to one side
Speaker 1: was able to move it through hypnotism. Listen me either anyway.
Speaker 1: As a reward for reading through all that, please enjoy
Speaker 1: these flowers. In Pella, Iowa, there is a tulip festival.
Speaker 1: The town plants thousands of different kinds of tulips, and
Speaker 1: driving a few hours to see them in May is
Speaker 1: much easier than flying to Amsterdam. I have never seen
Speaker 1: so many different kinds, and I hope you enjoy them.
Speaker 1: Thanks for all you do. I truly appreciate your show
Speaker 1: and the hard work you put into it. And there
Speaker 1: are beautiful pictures of tulips. There are some pink ones,
Speaker 1: some orange ones, some yellow ones, and some that look black,
Speaker 1: which I come up with, And I'm like, will those
Speaker 1: grow in Georgia, because maybe I start planning tulips. Listen,
Speaker 1: we love a little gothic flower in our house. I
Speaker 1: am glad to have gotten Jamie's account of being hypnotized. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I realized, I don't think I've ever been hypnotized. And
Speaker 1: I'm like, would that work for me? Or would I
Speaker 1: be a pain in the Would I be the problem
Speaker 1: child that's like this isn't working, that tries to be
Speaker 1: a trouble. Yeah. When I was in college, we had
Speaker 1: a couple of you know, the things arranged by the
Speaker 1: student affairs committee or whatever, like, yeah, whoever was arranging
Speaker 1: entertainment on campus, and there were a couple of different
Speaker 1: times that there was a hypnotist show, and I always
Speaker 1: found it so fascinating what was happening, and then also
Speaker 1: was curious of like is this actually staged or is
Speaker 1: this really happening? Yeah, which was going on during James
Speaker 1: Braid's time as well. Correct. If you would like to
Speaker 1: email us to tell us about your experience with hypnotism
Speaker 1: or with tulips or your pets or whatever you wish,
Speaker 1: you could do that at History podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1: If you would like to read the show notes, those
Speaker 1: are available at mystonhistory dot com. We put them up
Speaker 1: for every episode we do. And if you have not
Speaker 1: subscribed to the podcast and you would like to, you
Speaker 1: can do that on the iHeartRadio app or anywhere you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows. Stuff you Missed in History
Speaker 1: Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.