Plague’s Progress • 119diggers, new bell ropes and shovels, axes and burial shrouds—the closest that
many of the departed had to a coffin. The watchers’ names and the locations
of the houses they guarded provide a shadowy map of how the disease
spread. The cat and dog catchers were paid for disposing of stray animals—
three to four hundred at a time! Apothecaries were paid for physick, sur-
geons for lancing and dressing buboes, and doctors for their therapies. Sev-
eral of these medical providers, sadly, found their way into burial records.
The existing pesthouse was expanded by ten “rooms,” and supplies were
brought in for eating, sleeping, and burying (see appendix B).^14 These ex-
traordinary steps in plague relief were reenacted time and again in every par-
ish within Greater London—and beyond.
Warders at the red-crossed door of dwelling after dwelling in alleys and
lanes were visual proof of Saint Margaret’s plague burden. Close to the grand
King Street, which stretched from Whitehall to the abbey, stood a checker-
board of uneven suburban housing with fitting names like Long Ditch,
Bell Alley, and Thieving Lane. Beyond them lay a ramshackle hamlet called
Knightsbridge. When the pestilential fever came, it overwhelmed these
places.
Bills of Mortality list plague victims in Saint Margaret’s beginning the
third week of June.^15 The churchwardens’ accounts tell a different story. In
May several members of two neighboring houses in Long Ditch became in-
fected. On the tenth Alice Gale was interred, the cause of death not listed in
Table 4.Greater London Bills of Mortality: Plague Burials
and Total Burials, June 27–August 1, 1665Number of Burials (Plague / Total)St. Giles St. Giles St. Margaret All 130
Week in the Fields Cripplegate Westminster ParishesJune 27–July 4 140/203 32/98 26/50 470/1,006
July 4–11 213/268 49/103 34/58 725/1,268
July 11–18 218/268 114/232 56/79 1,089/1,761
July 18–25 329/370 208/421 98/120 1,843/2,785
July 25–August 1 229/282 302/554 101/133 2,010/3,041