Morbidity in an early-modern small town: Loughborough in the seventeenth century

While the incidence of sickness has been explored for a few, large urban centres in early-modern England from the evidence of 'static' ('snapshot') surveys of the poor, another perspective can be obtained by scrutinising churchwardens' accounts for smaller towns. What the latter approach can reveal is something of the life-course of the sick--duration of sickness, life-stage sickness; and to what extent institutions in unincorporated towns (like Loughborough) could ameliorate the position of the sick-when and how, with limited resources, they could intervene. Despite some inherent problems of these accounts (payments to the sick selectively), their dissection can, in conjunction with the material in the surveys, assist in constructing a picture of early-modern morbidity.