G. Melvyn Howe (1920–2012)

Finally, a book with too many maps. I put this one on my wish list because it was referenced by a number of books about the Black Death; out of date now (printed 1972) but the historical part (7 chapters of a 14-chapter book) are still very relevant. As mentioned, author G. Melvyn Howe is in love with maps – as might be expected of a professor of geography – and they are all very well done. I commented in a thread somewhere else that maps from the pre-computer era, when they had to be drawn on a drafting table with India ink in a piston-point pen, are often of much higher quality than modern maps cranked out with CAD and GIS software. Howe is enamored of the chloropleth map and uses them with the slightest excuse but mostly to good effect. It’s fun to watch the changes of population – in medieval to Georgian times, port (London, Norwich, Bristol) and more-or-less evenly distributed regional market cities (York, Shrewsbury, Cambridge, Lincoln) are the most important with Liverpool, Birmingham and Manchester taking over when the Industrial Revolution got underway. The devastation of plague is clearly presented in a histogram – during the 1603 and 1625 outbreaks plague burials in London were between 3000 to 4000 per month, with total burials 4000 to 5000 – and these weren’t even bad plague years. By industrial times, smallpox, measles, and cholera had taken over; the age-at-death statistics are particularly grim in Dickensian times. Even for the upper class, average age at death was 35 in Liverpool versus 50 in rural areas; for tradesmen it was 22 versus 48, and for the working class 15 versus 33. There is, of course, a copy of Snow’s cholera map, but also nice maps showing the spread of cholera from the port cities in the 1831 and 1848 epidemics. The “modern” (i.e., 1970s) sections are, ironically, interesting from a historical point of view; Howe notes the great increase in cancer and gives at least lip service to the idea that “pollution” is to blame, without commenting that you won’t get a lot of cancer deaths if the average age at death is 15 years. It would be fun to see an updated version; there’s probably a little more archaeological evidence that could be applied to medieval times, but I’d be most interested in seeing maps of measles incidence in Wales.… (meer)