The Bills of Mortality of the 16th and 17th centuries are of more value, and they have been considered and revised by such able statisticians as John Graunt and Sir William Petty.
There is a set of Annual Bills from 1658 (with the exception of the years 1756 to 1764) in the library of the British Museum.3 These bills were not analysed and general results obtained from them until 1662, when Captain John Graunt first published his valuable Natural and Political Observations upon the Bills of 1 In a valuable paper on " The Population of Old London" in Blackwood's Magazine for April 1891.
224,275 272,207 339$24 460,000 The numbers for 1661 are those arrived at by Graunt, and they are just about half the population given authoritatively in the first census 1801 (864,845).
The following books on the population of London have been published: John Graunt, Natural and Political Observations on the Bills of Mortality (1661, other editions 1662, 1665, 1676); Essay in Political Arithmetick (1683); Five Essays on Political Arithmetick (1687); Several Essays in Political Arithmetick (1699, 1711, 1751, 1 755); Essay concerning the Multiplication of Mankind (1682, 1683, 1686), all by Sir William Petty; Corbyn Morris, Observations on the past Growth and present State of the City of London (1751); Collection of the Yearly Bills of Mortality from 1657 to 1758 (ed.
Graunt and Petty's Essays are reprinted in Economic Writings of Sir W.
Graunt, Observations on the Bills of Mortality (3rd ed., London, 1665).
