The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal About Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power

by Deirdre Mask

In 1837, as the compiler of abstracts for the Register Office, Farr strayed beyond his job duties, asking physicians to record careful descriptions of each patient’s cause of death. He had become obsessed with the ways the English were living and dying, compiling data on causes of death and occupation to search for patterns that might improve the public’s health. For the first time, anyone could know exactly how people died in London. Without the how, Farr knew very well, you couldn’t investigate the why. “Diseases are more easily prevented than cured,” he wrote, “and the first step to their prevention is the discovery of their causes.” These fine-grained statistics were possible because of street addresses. London had long been carefully mapped, but regular house numbers were still fairly new. In 1765, parliament had ordered that all houses be numbered, and the numbers painted conspicuously on the doors. So Farr’s General Register Office didn’t just know who had died; they knew where, as well. And it’s hard to emphasize enough just how important the “where” would become for public health. Addresses made pinpointing disease possible.