New research by Karen McBride, an accounting professor at the University of Portsmouth, argues that the weekly Bills of Mortality acted as an early public health information system, shaping how some Londoners navigated life, work and survival during the Great Plague. Drawing on the diary of Samuel Pepys, the study suggests the published death figures were used as "quite practical decision guiding accounts or data of what was going on". The Bills were issued weekly, listing deaths by parish across the capital. They were posted publicly and sold on street corners, allowing readers to compare week-on-week rises and falls.
How Londoners used data to survive the Great Plague www.bbc.com/news/article...
A journal of the plague year: Samuel Pepys and the Bills of Mortality as accounting doi.org/10.1177/1032...
Bills of mortality en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bills_o...
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