“A Frightful Number!” is a digital mapping and timeline of Daniel Defoe’s 1722 fictional account of the Great Plague of 1665, which ravaged London for over a year, killing roughly 100,000 people, or nearly a quarter of the city’s population. Most deaths from the plague were recorded for each of London’s parishes in the Bills of Mortality. Defoe’s novel, published fifty-seven years after the plague, questions the accuracy of those records through the use of a narrator, H.F., who travels London and observes the plague first-hand. Defoe’s fictional journal offers a perspective on the plague that is often at odds with and more horrifying than the official numbers. How might we organize the data in order to analyze and understand the cultural meaning of the discrepancies between these accounts?
London parishes for 1665 as they would appear on a modern map.
With DRC’s mapping / timeline tool ITINERARY, I can chart each Plaguerelated itinerary on a digital representation of a historical map of London. The tool allows me to “geo-rectify” this map in relation to a more accurate, contemporary Google Earth map of London, and I am able to draw parish boundaries, enter mortality data for each parish and month, and draw the itineraries of H.F. and the Three Kinsmen.
A digital map and timeline is one way to supplement our reading of Defoe and the Plague. And such a map would allow us to track at least three itineraries across London’s parishes, and over time. •the progression of the Great Plague as recorded in the official Bills of Mortality, which give death numbers and dates per parish dates, •the route that the narrator, H.F., takes as he speculates on the cause and impact of the plague, and •the travels of “three kinsmen” (as told by H.F.) as they flee the city.
Using MapWarper technology, we “geo-rectify” the 1665 map of London by “layering” it on top of a Google Earth map of London. The user places a set of pins on corresponding places on each map, thus linking historical places to actual geocoordinates. Because the historical map is not accurate, it will appear “warped” in comparison to the accurate coordinates of the satellite map. We then use geoJSON.io technology to draw the parish boundaries. In a future version of the site, we will use new features in ITINERARY to draw the London and Suburban routes that Defoe describes for H.F. and the Three Kinsmen.
When a user clicks on the timeline below the map, or on a line of data in the database (to the right), the mortality statistics of that parish and date pop-up.
For more a video and more projects using DRC’s ITINERARY, go to http://hofstra.github.io/itinerary/
Clicking through the timeline or database reveals the progression of the plague.
Adam G. Sills Professor of English Project Director Hofstra University