1 - ‘Here Falling Houses Thunder on your Head’ Sudden Violent Death and the Metropolis

Summary

Here Malice, Rapine, Accident, conspire,

And now a Rabble Rages, now a Fire;

Their Ambush here relentless Ruffians lay,

And here the fell Attorney prowls for Prey;

Here falling Houses thunder on your Head,

And here a female Atheist talks you dead.

Samuel Johnson, London: A Poem (1738)

The city in the title of this book is London. More specifically, London as it was between the mid-seventeenth and mid-eighteenth centuries. At that time the great metropolis was the pre-eminent urban centre of England, housing an immense, teeming mass of people. Its population grew rapidly, from at least 350,000 in the 1650s to just over half a million by 1700. The eighteenth century saw further steady growth through to the 1750s, when the city and its suburbs housed some 675,000 people. That increase in population was the result principally of migration by predominantly young men and women from the surrounding counties to the capital. The age structure of London, it has been suggested, was thereby skewed toward such youth. We can therefore assume that a large proportion of the London workforce possessed a relatively limited stock of skill and experience – a situation that must have increased the risks to life and limb encountered by those participating in the city's thriving construction, manufacturing, transport, dealing and service industries.

London was more than just the sum of its citizens, whatever their origins, status or calling. The economic vibrancy of the metropolis extended not only across the region and kingdom but far wider, reaching into Europe and, through maritime endeavour, around the globe. London sat emphatically at the centre of politics, governance, law, culture, commerce and manufacture; it was truly the ‘vitals of the commonwealth’. Such dynamism was driven by a population determined to succeed, determined to live life to the full and, for many, determined to make a profit. Trade was everywhere, from the bustling streets with their hawkers and stall-holders to the careful merchants contracting their commerce under the walkways of the Royal Exchange and in the coffee-houses surrounding it. Ships conveyed goods, produce and merchandise to and from the city through its great port, equipped as it was with a seemingly endless continuance of wharfs and warehouses. Moving goods from wharf to warehouse to market occupied thousands in manual toil, loading and unloading, packing and unpacking.