ABSTRACT
The City of Westminster presents an interesting phenomenon regarding drowning deaths in the Tudor and Stuart decades. Though Westminster’s population certainly interacted with and travelled by water, riverside life, and its perils, were not a primary focus for its wealthy inhabitants, who also would have been expected to be protected from the dangers of the river. Westminster drowning deaths were spread over a range of locations, in addition to the Thames itself, such as the rivers, the brooks, ponds, wells and fountains (islands) that made up the late Tudor and Stuart Westminster landscape and its immediate environs. The seriousness of continual water deaths in normal times in the Westminster area is defined as well by their high numbers relative to both water deaths in other London precincts and to other such fatalities. Just as noteworthy are the Middlesex Sessions Rolls that report Westminster drownings caused by falling into inland water bodies such as mill dams, wells, streams, brooks and into the Thames itself.
