THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA “So ill looked a place, among all the whore houses:” Mapping Moral and Physical Cleanliness in London from the mid-Sixteenth to the mid-Seventeenth Century A DISSERTATION Submitted to the Faculty of the Department of History School of Arts and Sciences Of The Catholic University of America In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree Doctor of Philosophy © All Rights Reserved By Laura Louise Trauth Washington, D.C. 2012 “So ill looked a place, among all the whore houses:” Mapping Moral and Physical Cleanliness in London from the mid-Sixteenth to the mid-Seventeenth Century Laura Louise Trauth, Ph.D. Lawrence R. Poos, Ph.D. For much of the modern era, a Malthusian attitude toward the poor was commonplace England and elsewhere. The poor brought poverty and suffering on themselves through laziness, lust, and gluttony. If they became sick, it was because they had no sense of decency and chose to live in drunken squalor. This study examines early manifestations of such attitudes in sixteenth and seventeenth-century London. Sin, sickness, and crime were clearly associated popular contemporary print works. Writing is not the same as policy, however. Did contemporaries act on these mental associations? An analysis of the spatial distributions of popular literary criminal accounts, Bridewell Hospital records, and parish burial registers reveals that by the mid-seventeenth century, perceptions of crime and disease formed a topography which identified both the dank, impoverished back-alleys and prominent London landmarks as sites of moral and physical sickness. Sites of finance and modern commercial exchange, which challenged traditional values, were perceived as particularly risky. Qualitative analysis of contemporary text demonstrates that the authors of rogue pamphlets and other cheap print “discovered” these locations, enabling their readers minimize the risks of city living with some success. Two issues remained, however. First, the crimes described in the pamphlets were actually imitated by some Bridewell defendants. Second, lurking beneath this predictable topography was the role of the household in perpetuating the risks of both crime and sickness. Servants were susceptible to both endemic and epidemic disease as well as the enticements of playhouses, whorehouses, and gambling dens. Neither their health nor their behavior could be ensured with absolute certainty. Unlike the terrain of publically discussed risks, therefore, the risks brought into the household by servants ultimately could not be avoided or controlled. The household always threatened, by its very makeup, to be ungovernable. The need to address household disorder and sickness led to the publication of many advice manuals and were reflected in contemporary diaries. The stresses of the permeable household also seem likely to have contributed to the development of a modern sense of self, defined more by one’s own actions and less by those of family, servants, and neighbors. This dissertation by Laura Louise Trauth fulfills the dissertation requirement for the doctoral degree in History approved by Lawrence R. Poos, Ph.D., as Director, and by Daniel R. Gibbons, Ph.D., and Caroline R. Sherman, Ph.D. as Readers. _________________________________ Lawrence R. Poos, Ph.D., Director _________________________________ Daniel R. Gibbons, Ph.D, Reader _________________________________ Caroline R. Sherman, Ph.D., Reader ii To all the people, both two- and four-footed, who lent me comfort and support throughout the years of study, research, and writing. iii Yet God hath beene kind to us who amongst the many othere favours, hath hard the grones and sighs of his peole for the poore citie of London where so many thousands hath beene swept away as the Dongue of the streetes. ~ Nehemiah Wallington iv Table of Contents Introduction and Methods ……………………………………………………..1 Views of London: A Survey of the Current Research ...……………………… 43 Views of London: A Survey of Contemporary Sources ……………………… 77 Mapping Crime in Early Modern London ……….………………………… 112 Mapping Disease in Early Modern London …...…………………………… 199 Intersections of Crime and Disease ...……………………………………… 292 Appendix ………………..………………………………………………… 352 Bibliography ……...………………………………………………… ……. 365 v There are many people without whom this project could not have been completed. I would like to extend my thanks and acknowledgements to all of them. The staff at the Manchester, MD Family History Center, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints were of great assistance in obtaining many of the records central to my research. Heather Wolfe, Curator of Manuscripts at the Folger Institute was invaluable in teaching me the English paleography skills I needed to work with manuscript sources. Kevin L. Jones, DSTL, taught me how to georeference un- projected maps and provided me with a modern, projected basemap of London. Jaime Alvarez, Instructor in the Geospatial Applications program, helped me troubleshoot ma analysis errors. Norman McCullough, Instructional Technology Specialist at the Community College of Baltimore County, Essex, helped me digitize crucial historical map images. And last but not least, I wish to thank my committee, especially the Director, Dr. L. R. Poos, for their guidance throughout. vi Chapter 1 Introduction and Methods [Y]ee that in these dolefull daies of plague and pestilence… neglect all publike fasting preaching and praying which now if every should be cried up and practiced And instead thereof give yourselves over to dancing feasting playing Sabbath breaking to draw downe more wrath and plagues upon us… ~Notebooks of Nehemiah Wallington A Malthusian attitude toward the poor was commonplace by eighteenth and nineteenth century London. The poor brought poverty and suffering on themselves through laziness, lust, and gluttony. If they became sick, it was because they had no sense of cleanliness and chose to live in squalor, for example.1 Sin and bad behavior caused the working poor to be unable to live in better neighborhoods or to avoid illness. But when did such attitudes begin and, more importantly, when were they incorporated into people‘s daily lives and actions? In her detailed study of seventeenth and eighteenth century filth, noise, and stench, Emily Cockayne notes many references to the association of the poor with crowding, filth, and ill health. None is earlier than 1713.2 Sin and ill health, however, as Nehemiah Wallington‘s journals reveal, were associated by the early sixteenth century. Such a correlation in people‘s writings is not the same as public policy, however. The question remains whether or not people actually acted on these mental associations. In the chapters that follow, I examine the connections between moral and physical sickness in London from the 1580s through the 1660s, in both literature and legal records 1 Steven Johnson, The Ghost Map (New York: Riverhead, 2006), 21. 2 Emily Cockayne, Hubbub: Filth, Noise, and Stench in England, 1660-1770 (Princeton, NJ Yale University Press, 2007), 231-233. 1 2 (theory and action). This time period experienced several periods of increased disease load and economic hard times. It is also characterized by the evolving Protestant reformations in England and the new mindsets they brought about.3 I have analyzed the associations between moral and physical sickness by looking at the prosecution within society of morally suspect petty criminals: prostitutes, gamblers, conmen, and disobedient servants. Who was prosecuted? Where were crimes committed? And how does the geography of these crimes compare with that of epidemic disease? In chapters that follow, I analyze and map those crimes for the city of London and compare their distribution and effects to those of plague, smallpox and other feared diseases. Before proceeding to the study itself, however, a discussion of its setting, late Tudor and early Stuart London, is in order. This introduction to London follows below along with an introduction to the methods and sources used to complete the study. Early Modern London Swiss traveler and author Thomas Platter writes of London that ―it is so superior to other English towns that London is not said to be in England, but rather England to be in London.‖4 This is an exaggeration of course. Travel guides of England regularly list other towns and cities of England such as Oxford, York, Bristol, and Norwich. It is not by accident, however, that these guides list the other towns by their relation to London.5 As 3 Christopher Haigh, English Reformations: Religion, Politics, and Society under the Tudors (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 286. 4 Lena Cowen Orlin, ―Introduction,‖ in Material London, C. 1600, ed. Lena Cowen Orlin (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), 1. 5 Ibid. 3 England‘s largest city, its capital and center of government, a hub of trade and manufacturing, center of publishing, London occupied the imaginations of early modern Englishman as much as it does today‘s researcher.6 The population of the city and its nearest suburbs has been estimated at over 200,000 by 1600 and over 375,000 by 1650.7 At this time, it had caught up in size to Paris, the largest city on Continental Europe.8 Norwich, the ―leading provincial city‖ of England, had only reached a population of 20,000 by the mid seventeenth century.9 The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw tremendous changes in London and its environs. As noted above, London grew tremendously during this period. By 1650, it incorporated seven percent of the total population of England.10 Most of the population increase came from immigration, both from the English countryside and abroad. Young people lacking status and the freedom of the city came to London from the counties to look for work. They traveled from all over England; the average distance of an apprentice‘s journey was 115 miles.11 Apprentices alone, excluding domestic servants, made up around ten percent of the population of London.12 While most servants and apprentices were in 6 Westminster, the center of the Court and Parliament, lay just to the west of London.