The author revisits the long observed relationship between poverty and high mortality rates during plague with his mapping of the progress of sickness and death in the poor parish of St Lorenzo, adding some nuance to the work of scholars such as Carmichael and Litchfield Building on Calvi’s research in the criminal archives Henderson not only submits the records to a careful statistical analysis, but also draws attention to what court narratives tell us about the individual needs and attitudes, which drove people to flout quarantine regulations 1 We see how the financial hardship, boredom, frustration and loneliness endured by those incarcerated in their homes for over 2 months led them to continue meeting and exchanging physical goods – and therefore potentially spreading the plague – through their financial, familial and social networks Henderson’s intention was to provide an ‘histoire totale’ (p 14) and he has certainly succeeded [ ]Covid-19 has swept through the world since this book was published and it is suddenly painfully relevant: offering us a rare opportunity to reduce the gap between us and the past as we reflect on the ways in which our experiences now resonate a little more closely with experiences of those whose lives he describes 1 G Calvi, Histories of a Plague Year: The Social and the imaginary in Baroque Florence (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989)
Florence Under Siege: Surviving Plague in an Early Modern City ( New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2019 ), pp. 363, £30.00, hardback, ISBN: 9780300196344