appears that the corresponding figures for those four years were 16,935 burials, 86 burials of the plague, and 17,906 christenings respectively. (The summaries are printed at length on pp. 433—435.) Thus it becomes possible to make a comparison of weekly averages:
| Total burials | Of the plague | Other causes | Christenings | |||||||||
| 1578—1582 | 98 | 33 | 64 | 65 | ||||||||
| 1592 | 644 | 271 | 373 | 104 | ||||||||
| 1597—1600 | 82 | 1 | 81 | 86 | ||||||||
Second, The various figures in each column bear such a relation to one another as at least suggests fraud. If we disregard the week ending 21 July and the last week in the column of total burials, and also disregard the first four weeks and the weeks ending 23 and 30 June in the plague column, the remaining significant integers in the units place in both columns are arranged in pairs whose sum is invariably ten. For example, the figures at the bottom of the plague column run 9 & 1, 6 & 4, 3 & 7, 9 & 1, 2 & 8, etc. throughout.
Third, Neither total printed is the true sum of the figures at whose foot it stands. A note upon the bill of 1603 (A) declares that "in the last visitation, from 20 December, 1592 to the 23. of the same moneth in the yeare 1593 there died in all 25886. Of the Plague in and about London, 15003." This confirms Graunt's total of all buried as to numbers, but not as to time covered. His total of plague deaths may have originated in a misprint. The true sums of his columns are 26,407 and 11,106 respectively.
In addition to these reasons, Bell's chronological objection, as quoted in the Introduction, should also be noted. On the whole we must consider Graunt's figures for 1592 spurious.
3 If 1146 (A, D, E, F, and G) be substituted for 1149 on 13 October and 585 (D, E, F, and G) be substituted for 545 on 10 November, Graunt's totals become the correct footings of his columns, and the figures are, doubtless authentic as far as they go. But they do not cover the whole year, they omit the burials in the out parishes before 14 July, and they omit entirely the burials in Westminster, the Savoy, Stepney, Newington, Islington, Lambeth and Hackney. The bill of 20 October, 1603 (A), informs us that, from the beginning of the plague to that date there were "buried in all within the 7 places last aforenamed 4378, whereof of the plague, 3997." Cf. Creighton, 1. 477.
4 The figures are probably authentic, being confirmed for four scattered weeks by letters at the Record Office. Cal. S. P. Dom. 1625—26, pp. 84, 144, 179. But the columns as printed add up 50,823 and 35,400 respectively, and the corrections noted below do not explain Graunt's totals. The figures, furthermore, omit Westminster, etc., where there were buried in the whole year 8,736, of whom 5,896 of the plague. Ibid., 84, 184. Creighton (p. 508) gives the figures, from Bell, for the weeks preceding 17 March, making the total mortality for the year, including Westminster, 63,001, whereof of the plague 41,313, and these totals are further confirmed by an original yearly bill. Cal. S. P. D., 1625—26, pp. 177, 184.
Corrections of specific numbers: 12 May, for 232 read 332 (B, D, E, F, G), 16 June, for 161 read 165 (B, D, E, F, G); 14 July, for 1781 read 1741 (B only);
