The Great Plague. The Story of London\'s Most Deadly Year

Business Not as Usual • 165

nailers, plumbers, and plasterers all fell to the common sickness in Cripple-
gate. Fatalities followed these workers inside the wall. The beadle-caretaker

at the Carpenters’ Hall died of the infection. The carpenters had kept their
hall open, unlike the wealthier guilds, fumigating all the rooms for the few
carpenters who occasionally showed up. The company books list several fa-
talities among the members.^13

The landscape of death among the skilled working population and com-
mon laborers of Cripplegate presented a grim prospect. No craft or trade
that exposed workers and their households to crowded spots or smelly, messy
trades seemed safe. Metalworkers were dying in inordinate numbers.

Twenty-one were listed among Cripplegate’s dead in August, after plying
their trades as wiredrawer, twister, and cooper. Blacksmiths and porters, to-
bacconists and vintners, even a few dissenter ministers who had settled into
the parish of the Miltons and Defoes after the Restoration, succumbed.

Unskilled workers probably suffered an even greater toll. Nicholas Thrift,
“labourer,” lost his wife and two children, all buried the same night. The reg-
ister gave the causes as spotted fever, abortive, and plague. Thirty-three “la-
borers” were listed in the register in August, but many more fell without a

trace—the clerk having no clue of their work or their existence. Pyne’s reg-
ister rarely mentioned a death in Tenters Alley, a glaring oversight of a
densely populated working-class living space. The city pesthouse and a gap-

ing pit were close by its shabby housing—likely last stops in the lives of sev-
eral of its residents.

Vital Services

Plague raged so much among the Poor it came by some to be called the Poors

Plague.

—Nathaniel Hodges,Loimologia

Reverend Patrick was trying to explain his situation to Elizabeth Gauden
without alarming her. “I intend to be wary about my house,” he began. “But

stay here I cannot, without hazard to my health, the rooms being so cold, and
my landlord gone.” The problem was where to go and how to function in his
old place in the meantime. There were few handymen to make his rooms
comfortable again. Symon knew of the danger of engaging such a person, if

such could be found. Deciding to try draperies to keep out the cold, he