The Awakening • 253Sir William Turner, being wealthier, more religious, and more civic minded,
had undoubtedly contributed considerably more and still retained the several
thousand pounds with which he had begun the year.^21 But common laborers
or scullery maids, whose annual income could have fallen far short of two
pounds each that year, might well have judged their material resources dur-
ing the plague adequate. They had been kept in bread and beer with perhaps
some vegetables and meat. If plague had entered their households, a nurse
and medicaments might have been supplied. And if death had ensued, the
parish’s knells and bells fund covered burial expenses.
People of Turner’s and Pepys’ class may have considered these relief meas-
ures a credible response to the ravages of plague, given the public and private
resources of the time.^22 But conquest of the disease lay beyond their power
and knowledge. Only divine intervention and nature’s cyclical return to au-
tumn and winter seemed to have stayed the hand of the Destroying Angel.
To be sure, the Plague Orders had some tangible results; witness the removal
of some 40 , 000 dogs and 200 , 000 cats from London! Nothing had pre-
vented the infection from reaching England’s shores, however, or spreading
through the capital after it broke through the initial watch surrounding Saint
Giles in the Fields. As London awakened from its long nightmare, it was
easier for the authorities to focus on tightening existing public health con-
trols than to strike out with new theories and plans.
Mayor Bludworth ordered the city law courts back into session to speed
up the enforcement of obvious measures. He forbade citizens to reenter an
infected house until its contents were smoked and aired out.^23 Churchwar-
dens were to see that graveyards had an extra foot of lime placed over the
graves, which was not always possible because of lack of parish funds and the
scarcity of lime after its continual use. Constables rounded up drifters and
sent them packing to their original parish if it was known; London’s lockup
facilities at Bethlehem Hospital and Bridewell prison scarcely sufficed for
the city’s mentally and physically ill “deserving poor” and “able-bodied” beg-
gars and prostitutes.^24 Alderman Turner made a mental note of this. When
business returned to normal, he intended to tackle the problems in Bethle-
hem and Bridewell.
Bolder proposals germinated in tracts and private writings. The most far-
reaching idea came from Sir William Petty, who calculated that the loss of
workers during this epidemic was a tragic waste of human resources. When
plague threatened again London should evacuate its healthy population en
masse to existing and new housing within a thirty-five-mile radius of the
capital. This might, he admitted, cost more than the Great Plague had in