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

The Other London • 41

lings, however, was what it cost the most frugal poor person to subsist for a
week on bread and cheese and without any purchase of clothes or shoes. The

king’s tax assessors, therefore, looked more closely at the assets of a single-
hearth or two-hearth family, usually granting them an exemption on the ba-
sis of poverty. Not too far away a mansion boasting seven hearths or more
housed the family of a very wealthy tradesman or peer, taxed at the high end

of the hearth tax assessments. At the center of the walled city, 1. 5 percent of
the population was poor by these hearth tax calculations. Down at the city’s
waterfront, poverty averaged 5. 2 percent. Beyond the old wall, the percent-
ages rose dramatically: the poor were 25. 7 percent of the western parishes (in-

cluding affluent Whitehall), 49. 1 percent in the north, and 51. 9 percent in the
east. Across the river, poverty in Southwark’s parishes reached 43. 7 percent.^2
The percentage of poor Londoners who were struggling to survive on their
own or subsisting with the help of parish relief was greater than these figures

indicate, however. Modern investigations show that tax officials and other
official records missed up to one-third of the capital’s households. Most of
these undocumented families and individuals were surely poor people dou-
bling up in the same quarters, hidden in cellars or shacks, or boarding at

someone else’s dwelling.^3

Parish Priorities

Church expenses: To Mr. Symon Patrick, rector, in full for the year, £ 150.

To the bricklayer for mending churchyard walls and bellfrey, £ 9.

For rosemary, bayes, holley, and ivy for the church, 5 s 6 d.

Poor-tax payments: To a woman having 2 children sick of ye small pox, 2 s.

To the nurse for keeping a child till sent back to St. Martin’s,

2 s 6 d.

For a coffin for a child that dyed in Holborne, 1 s 6 d.

—From the account book of Saint Paul Covent Garden, Easter 1664 –Easter 1665

To the problem of poverty in medieval England, voluntary Christian charity
was the response. The surging population and migration of the sixteenth cen-
tury, however, greatly increased poverty, unemployment, and homelessness.
The crisis was greatest in the capital, whose economy even in the best of years

could not fully integrate the thousands of immigrants from the countryside
and abroad. Queen Elizabeth and her parliaments responded with a compul-
sory Poor Law system.^4 Able-bodied beggars and drifters were whipped and