 | Ralph Tailor''s Summer Subjects: Tailor Ralph; Plague -- Social aspects -- England -- Newcastle-upon-Tyne -- History -- 17th century; Scriveners (Law) -- England -- Newcastle-upon-Tyne -- Biography; Notaries -- England -- Newcastle-upon-Tyne -- Biography; Newcastle-upon-Tyne (England) -; One man's life in the plague, his record of the calamitous decimation of a city where nearly half the people died, and its sometimes surprising impact on families and communities As a scrivener Tailor was responsible for many of the wills and inventories of his fellow citizens. By listening to and writing down the final wishes of the dying, the young scrivener often became the principal provider of comfort in people's last hours. Drawing on the rich records left by Tailor during the course of his work along with many other sources, Keith Wrightson vividly reconstructs life in the early modern city during a time of crisis and envisions what such a calamitous decimation of the population must have meant for personal, familial, and social relations. Keith Wrightson is the Townsend Professor of History at Yale University and the author of Earthly Necessities: Economic Lives in Early Modern Britain . He lives in Guilford, CT. |
