Stuart jobs • Page 2
Big shillings are to be made in pest control, with public concern over the spread of infectious diseases growing greater day by day. As a result, there is an increase in the demand for houses to be fumigated and cleared of all bugs and mites to protect their goodly patrons from the ravages of the plague.
There is no doubt that the technique works. Neither you nor your clients will have to endure being covered with bursting buboes, noses running with blood or rings of roses. You will all be dead from sulphur dioxide poisoning, long before the plague reaches your door.
Fancy yourself as the next Sam Ryan of Silent Witness? We are looking for seekers of the dead to manhandle and examine fresh corpses to ascertain causes of death to be published in Bills of Mortality.
You will preferably be a wizened old woman with a questioning mind and an observant eye (not unlike Sam Ryan, in fact). You are required to conduct thorough inspections, noting visible marks on the body (for instance, pus-oozing buboes in plague victims), and interview the deceased's nearest and dearest before you reach your diagnosis. The three to four pence per corpse that is paid will allow you to live out your last days (of which there won't be very many, bearing in mind how contagious the plague is) in some comfort.
Let's not beat about the bush: these are desperate times. The plague is killing people faster than we can bury them – 69,000 in London alone – and bodies are starting to pile up. There's not the time nor the resources to bury people in their own private graves any more.
Body collectors are needed to clear corpses from houses and take them to the cemeteries, where they are to be thrown by their hundreds into the specially dug pits and covered with quicklime. As Daniel Defoe is to write in A Journal of the Plague Year: ''Tis certain they died by heaps and were buried by heaps.'
To do this job, you have to be strong – nowadays the dead are carried in slings between two men, not on carts – and you have to like working at night: the City council has ruled that all burials must be carried out during the hours of darkness. However, Samuel Pepys notes that, because nights are short in August and September, burials have been spotted during the day.
The chances of catching the infection are extremely high whether you do this job or not. Why not spend your last few days on this plague-ridden earth with a few coins in your pocket and food in your stomach?
Whatever else you say about it, there's no doubt the plague is good for job seekers. Not only are new vacancies arising all the time as current job holders depart this mortal coil, but a whole new range of interesting positions are popping on to the exciting job market.
Are you a cat person or a dog person? Dog and cat killers are now being offered 1-2 pence per carcass in an attempt to stop the disease spreading into more parishes of London. There's plenty of 'game' about: it is estimated that 40,000 dogs and 200,000 cats will soon meet their makers.
However, interested parties are advised to cash in as soon as possible before it becomes patently obvious that this cull isn't making the slightest difference to the rampage of the plague. (Actually, it makes it worse: executing all the cats eliminates the main predators of the rats that carry the fleas that bite the people who then catch the disease.)
Quack doctor seeks assistant. Duties will include the demonstration of the fantastical powers of medicinal remedies of my own devising at markets and fairs across the country. After you have swallowed one of my toads, which are supposedly deadly poisonous, you will miraculously come back to life following a dose of one of my medicaments. Then crowds eager for some relief from their aches and pains, infections and diseases will flock to purchase it.
Some experience in sleight-of-hand is advisable, unless you particularly relish the notion of suffering terrible stomach-ache and violent vomiting after gorging down a fat toad – in which case, incidentally, you may find that my own 'Potion for Curious Maladies', at three pence a bottle, provides some relief.
Are you quite good at painting still lifes and creating hands, cherubs and angels that look right? A two-year contract is offered for an artist to assist James Thornhill (1675-1734) in painting the interior of the dome of St Paul's Cathedral with scenes from the saint's life. (This is much against the architect Christopher Wren's wishes – he wants mosaics for the dome – but he has conveniently been removed from the project.)
The portfolios of those applying for this position should demonstrate considerable skill at the grisaille (monochrome) technique of painting, which Mr Thornhill is planning to employ on this contract. Successful applicants will also need to show evidence of an ability to cling to very flimsy scaffolding, some 75 metres (245 feet) above the ground, and to control the very natural urge for their hands to sweat and shake uncontrollably with fear.
