Share of total deaths due to smallpox in London 1629-1830

In each decade between 1629 and 1830 in London, smallpox was responsible for a significant portion of all deaths; having a share of nine or ten percent in the second half of the eighteenth century. After this peak, the discovery of vaccination by Edward Jenner in 1796 helped to bring this share of deaths back down to a similar share it had in the mid-1600s. The lack of statistical data from these early decades makes it difficult to explain why smallpox's share of total deaths was lower than the decades where inoculation (known as "variolation" when referring to smallpox) was in practice throughout Britain, after its introduction in the 1720s; this is possibly due to the impact of other infectious diseases from the time (for example, the bubonic plague was present in England until the late seventeenth century) or possibly the misreporting of data.