114 • Confusionevery parish.^2 Saint Margaret Westminster’s situation was among the worst.
In the best of times, this parish had too few manufacturing jobs for its large
number of workers, making them overdependent on employment with the
courtier and professional service classes. The wholesale flight from plague of
courtiers had collapsed the job market and placed an extraordinary burden
on the parish’s poor-relief funds and voluntary donations.
The preeminent courtier parish of Covent Garden could probably cope,
thanks to its smaller population and money from absent peers and tradesmen
sent in to Reverend Patrick. But sickness and death were about to devastate
the heavily industrialized suburbs outside the courtier district. Smelly, messy
trades like brewing, glassmaking, tanning, and printing outside the walls and
down at the riverbank had attracted plague in past epidemics. Porters, who
carried goods from the wharf to manufacturers throughout London, were
also susceptible, as were servants, whose tasks could take them almost any-
where. Saint Giles Cripplegate alone accounted for 130 trades and 14 , 000
jobs; if past patterns held, mortality in many of these groups would be high
again. Cloth making was at the top of the vulnerable trades; in previous epi-
demics, weavers, cord winders, buttonhole makers, tailors, and glovers had
fallen in droves.^3
Inside the wall, still the safest place to be, another dangerous situation
loomed. Merchants and financiers were the heart and soul of the old city, and
many of them were staying after that first mass exodus. But how long could
the goldsmith Vyner continue trading money at the Sign of the Vine on
Lombard Street, or the scriveners Clayton and Morris keep managing the
dwindling volume of legal papers and property rentals at the Flying Horse
near the Royal Exchange, or Alderman Turner stay with his unsold bolts of
cloth at the Golden Fleece in Saint Paul’s churchyard? The merchant guilds
were closing their halls, with no meetings planned by their members “as long
as God’s displeasure lasts.” Individual guildsmen were left on their own.
Parishes close to Dr. Hodges’ home and Alderman Turner’s shop near the
cathedral were shutting up their first infected houses and inns. The clerk of
Saint Olave Hart Street was recording the first plague fatalities a street away
from Pepys’ apartment and the navy office on Seething Lane. Throughout
the metropolis stood shut-up houses with their red crosses. A nurse was al-
ways within, and outside a warder zealously guarded the door except when
buying “necessaries” for the inmates. A bearer with his dead-cart stopped in
front of a newly cross-marked door calling out: “Bring out your dead.” The
bearer, often an unsavory looking individual (for who would take such a