1.All master-workmen in manufactures,especially such as belonged to ornament and the less necessary parts of the people's dress,clothes,and furniture for houses,such as riband-weavers and other weavers,gold and silver lace makers,and gold and silver wire drawers,sempstresses,milliners,shoemakers,hatmakers,and glovemakers;also upholsterers,joiners,cabinet-makers,looking-glass makers,and innumerable trades which depend upon such as these;-I say,the master-workmen in such stopped their work,dismissed their journeymen and workmen,and all their dependents.
2.As merchandising was at a full stop,for very few ships ventured to come up the river and none at all went out,so all the extraordinary officers of the customs,likewise the watermen,carmen,porters,and all the poor whose labour depended upon the merchants,were at once dismissed and put out of business.
3.All the tradesmen usually employed in building or repairing of houses were at a full stop,for the people were far from wanting to build houses when so many thousand houses were at once stripped of their inhabitants;so that this one article turned all the ordinary workmen of that kind out of business,such as bricklayers,masons,carpenters,joiners,plasterers,painters,glaziers,smiths,plumbers,and all the labourers depending on such.
4.As navigation was at a stop,our ships neither coming in or going out as before,so the seamen were all out of employment,and many of them in the last and lowest degree of distress;and with the seamen were all the several tradesmen and workmen belonging to and depending upon the building and fitting out of ships,such as ship-carpenters,caulkers,ropemakers,dry coopers,sailmakers,anchorsmiths,and other smiths;blockmakers,carvers,gunsmiths,ship-chandlers,ship-carvers,and the like.The masters of those perhaps might live upon their substance,but the traders were universally at a stop,and consequently all their workmen discharged.
Add to these that the river was in a manner without boats,and all or most part of the watermen,lightermen,boat-builders,and lighter-builders in like manner idle and laid by.
5.All families retrenched their living as much as possible,as well those that fled as those that stayed;so that an innumerable multitude of footmen,serving-men,shopkeepers,journeymen,merchants'bookkeepers,and such sort of people,and especially poor maid-servants,were turned off,and left friendless and helpless,without employment and without habitation,and this was really a dismal article.
I might be more particular as to this part,but it may suffice to mention in general,all trades being stopped,employment ceased:the labour,and by that the bread,of the poor were cut off;and at first indeed the cries of the poor were most lamentable to hear,though by the distribution of charity their misery that way was greatly abated.
Many indeed fled into the counties,but thousands of them having stayed in London till nothing but desperation sent them away,death overtook them on the road,and they served for no better than the messengers of death;indeed,others carrying the infection along with them,spread it very unhappily into the remotest parts of the kingdom.
Many of these were the miserable objects of despair which I have mentioned before,and were removed by the destruction which followed.These might be said to perish not by the infection itself but by the consequence of it;indeed,namely,by hunger and distress and the want of all things:being without lodging,without money,without friends,without means to get their bread,or without anyone to give it them;for many of them were without what we call legal settlements,and so could not claim of the parishes,and all the support they had was by application to the magistrates for relief,which relief was (to give the magistrates their due)carefully and cheerfully administered as they found it necessary,and those that stayed behind never felt the want and distress of that kind which they felt who went away in the manner above noted.
Let any one who is acquainted with what multitudes of people get their daily bread in this city by their labour,whether artificers or mere workmen -I say,let any man consider what must be the miserable condition of this town if,on a sudden,they should be all turned out of employment,that labour should cease,and wages for work be no more.
This was the case with us at that time;and had not the sums of money contributed in charity by well-disposed people of every kind,as well abroad as at home,been prodigiously great,it had not been in the power of the Lord Mayor and sheriffs to have kept the public peace.Nor were they without apprehensions,as it was,that desperation should push the people upon tumults,and cause them to rifle the houses of rich men and plunder the markets of provisions;in which case the country people,who brought provisions very freely and boldly to town,would have been terrified from coming any more,and the town would have sunk under an unavoidable famine.
But the prudence of my Lord Mayor and the Court of Aldermen within the city,and of the justices of peace in the out-parts,was such,and they were supported with money from all parts so well,that the poor people were kept quiet,and their wants everywhere relieved,as far as was possible to be done.