17th Century Death Roulette

What it is

17th Century Death Roulette is a one-button toy built on real records. In 1665 London kept weekly Bills of Mortality, a printed tally of who died and of what, and this page turns that grim paperwork into a wheel of fortune. Spin it and you find out what would have carried you off in plague-year London, in the original spelling, from a list that is far stranger than plague alone.

How to play

Press the big button. The wheel spins through a few dozen causes lifted straight from the bills, then asks you to pick a week of the year. The result is one sentence: in that week, you died of this. Read it out loud, spin again, and send the best one to someone. There is nothing to set up and nothing to win, and the whole thing takes about a minute unless you keep going, which you will.

What makes it different

Most morbid-curiosity pages make things up. This one does not have to. Every cause on the wheel is a real category a clerk wrote down in 1665, which is why some of them are medical, some are oddly specific accidents with an address attached, and some are simply baffling, and the page links its source so you can check. It is history teaching by the least respectful method available, and it works.

Why it is on Bored

17th Century Death Roulette is a gag with a footnote. Every cause on the wheel was written down by a real clerk in 1665, so you leave a one-minute spin knowing something you did not know before, which is more than most one-button toys manage. It is quick enough to show the whole room while the kettle boils. Fair warning from the page itself: the spin flickers a little, and the subject is death.

Tips

• Spin more than once, the wheel has a long tail of oddities
• Pick different weeks, the date in the sentence changes with it
• Follow the link at the top if you want to read the real bills
• It flickers briefly on the spin, so give it a miss if flashing bothers you

FAQ