162 • The AbyssThe family might pause over their sparse supper to offer a prayer of thanks-
giving to God, their version of Sir William Turner’s handwritten “Praise to
God” that continued to adorn the top of his ledgers despite the pestilence.
Even after Pepys moved down to Woolwich in September, when he re-
turned for business in the city he found a waterman to bring him upstream
to his old office and a tavern to quench his thirst and give him food and
cheer. Yet he never mentioned the dangers that dealing with the public
brought to these occupations. Without fares, boatmen could not survive, but
with fares might well come the deadly pestilence on a customer’s body or
clothes. When his brewer’s place was shut up, Pepys recorded the fact with-
out mentioning the obvious: workers in the hot, smelly brewing trade were
dying en masse from the plague. His cousin’s husband, a tallow chandler by
trade, was hard pressed to supply gravediggers with candles for their night-
time labor, yet the man undoubtedly considered himself lucky to have any
trade at all.
Sir William Turner’s mail was shuttled in and out of London every week
by carriers on horseback. He said nothing about letters carrying the infection
and endangering the lives of the carrier and receiver. Other persons depend-
ent on that service expressed their anxieties. William Boghurst’s wife re-
ceived packages for her apothecary husband, thankful that the messenger at-
tached them to a long pole. “I blesse God that I have one friend left at Rye yt
will communicate with me in receiving and answering of letters,” John Allin
wrote with relief to Philip Fryth. The postmaster at the main London letter
office let the king know of the dangerous yet crucial role his staff played in
keeping the lines of communication open. The post office was thick with
smoke from constant fumigation, and the fifty sorters and several window
men suffered from the smoke and a drastic cut in income because fewer
people were using the public post these days. A score of the workers had al-
ready succumbed to the infection; the rest were carrying on.^7
A few persons were keenly aware of the importance of these working-class
Londoners to those above their social station. Among them was a visionary
thinker, Sir William Petty, the economic counterpart of Thomson and Boyle
on the medical frontier. After the plague had died down, Petty wrote “that
the late mortality by the Pest is a great loss to the Kingdom,” whereas others
looked at it as only a temporary displacement of people and goods.^8 Petty’s
fellow demographer and friend John Graunt had just published another
tract, reinforcing his view that the loss of workers from plague was unimpor-
tant. Property values and other assets, he contended, would rebound quickly
after the visitation. But Petty was of a different mind. On the basis of goods