ABSTRACT
In 1766, when George Adams senior launched his new globes, he was aged fifty-seven and had only six more years to live, though having passed unscathed through the danger periods of infancy and adolescence and reached that age he might reasonably have expected to survive for somewhat longer. His contemporaries and neighbours in Fleet Street, James Ferguson and Benjamin Martin, lived to 66 and 77 respectively. Less than a year after publication of the fourth edition of Micrographia Illustrata, on 17 October 1772 George Adams senior died – of an 'apoplectick fit' according to one report. His death was noticed briefly in most of the London newspapers, but there were no long obituaries: these were generally limited to royalty and the nobility. He was buried in the churchyard of St Bride's, his old parish, on the 24th, the entry in the burial register giving his age as sixty-three, consistent with a birth date in early 1709.
