Would be really cool to graph out causes of death over the centuries! Wikipedia cites continous publication from 1527 to 1858[1]. Collecting the data seems daunting, though.
The stats from enclosed page are quite interesting. People speak today about depression/suicide epidemic, but when you look at that old numbers, "grief" and "hanged themselves" together give a top percentage.
Read the rest of the page. These are diseases the author deems "notorious". Taking grief and hanged themselves together that makes around 500 out of 229250 deaths. Which is very low. Globally around 1% of deaths are suicides, which is more than 4 times higher.
Horrific, I imagine. Brewer's mash is usually a little below 70°C. If someone fell in they probably survived with extensive scalding and died later from infection.
If the main purpose of this was to satisfy people's morbid curiosity that makes a lot of sense. Maybe they made up some juicy deaths in slow news weeks even.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bills_of_mortality
> Scalded in a Brewer's Maſh, at St. Giles Cripplegate, 01.
That's… quite specific.
And then there is the joker who entered 'suddenly' as the cause of death.