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1592–1594, and these are the Bills which are usually stated to have been the first. There is no copy of these or of any of the foregoing Bills in the British Museum, Guildhall, Record Office, or Somerset House.
The first year in which the Bills of Mortality were issued to the public was 1594. Walford is of the opinion that this was done in order to frighten people from settling in the Metropolis, for Queen Elizabeth was seriously alarmed at the rapid growth of the city.
The area within the first Bills of Mortality consisted only of the city parishes, but in 1605 six contiguous parishes in Middlesex and Surrey were added, and in 1626 the City of Westminster, making the total area 5,875 acres. In 1636, Hackney, Islington, Newington, Stepney, Poplar, Bethnal Green, and Rotherhithe were included, bringing the area up to 22,538 acres. St. Peter ad Vincula was added in 1729, "but a conteſt ariſing between the Inhabitants of the Tower Liberty without and thoſe within the Tower, whether the Church of St Peter ad Vincula was Parochial or not, the Merits thereof were try'd in the Court of King's-Bench at Weſtminſter in the Year 1730, when it was determin'd in the Negative, which occaſion'd its being left out of the Bill of Mortality ſoon after" (Maitland).
Particulars of diseases and casualties were first included in the Bills in 1629, and the burials of males and females were then given separately. It was at first feared that the publication of the causes of death might give offence, and for some years two sets of Bills were printed, one with and the other without this information. But in 1660 the Bills were remodelled, and henceforth only one Bill was issued. The list of casualties and diseases from the Bill for 1665—the year of the Great Plague—is here given as an illustration of the terminology in use at the time:
| Abortive and Stilborne | 617 |
| Aged | 1,545 |
| Ague and Feaver | 5,257 |
| Appoplex and Suddenly | 116 |
| Bedrid | 10 |
| Blasted | 5 |
| Bleeding | 16 |
| Bloudy Flux, Scowring and Flux | 18 |
| Burnt and Scalded | 8 |
| Calenture | 3 |
| Cancer, Gangrene, and Fistula | 56 |
| Canker and Thrush | 111 |
