A Journal of the Plague Year
by Daniel Defoe · English · Gutenberg #376 · 589,680 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: A Journal of the Plague Year
Author: Daniel Defoe
Release date: January 16, 2006 [eBook #376]
Most recently updated: June 24, 2023
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/376
Credits: Tokuya Matsumoto and David Widger
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR ***
[Illustration]
A Journal of the Plague Year
by Daniel Defoe
being Observations or Memorials
of the most remarkable occurrences,
as well public as_ private, which happened in London
during the last great visitation in 1665.
Written by a CITIZEN who continued
all the while in London_.
Never made publick before
It was about the beginning of September, 1664, that I, among the
rest of my neighbours, heard in ordinary discourse that the
plague was returned again in Holland; for it had been very
violent there, and particularly at Amsterdam and Rotterdam, in
the year 1663, whither, they say, it was brought, some said from
Italy, others from the Levant, among some goods which were
brought home by their Turkey fleet; others said it was brought
from Candia; others from Cyprus. It mattered not from whence it
came; but all agreed it was come into Holland again.
We had no such thing as printed newspapers in those days to
spread rumours and reports of things, and to improve them by the
invention of men, as I have lived to see practised since. But
such things as these were gathered from the letters of merchants
and others who corresponded abroad, and from them was handed
about by word of mouth only; so that things did not spread
instantly over the whole nation, as they do now. But it seems
that the Government had a true account of it, and several
councils were held about ways to prevent its coming over; but all
was kept very private. Hence it was that this rumour died off
again, and people began to forget it as a thing we were very
little concerned in, and that we hoped was not true; till the
latter end of November or the beginning of December 1664 when two
men, said to be Frenchmen, died of the plague in Long Acre, or
rather at the upper end of Drury Lane. The family they were in
endeavoured to conceal it as much as possible, but as it had
gotten some vent in the discourse of the neighbourhood, the
Secretaries of State got knowledge of it; and concerning
themselves to inquire about it, in order to be certain of the
truth, two physicians and a surgeon were ordered to go to the
house and make inspection. This they did; and finding evident
tokens of the sickness upon both the bodies that were dead, they
gave their opinions publicly that they died of the plague.
Whereupon it was given in to the parish clerk, and he also
returned them to the Hall; and it was printed in the weekly bill
of mortality in the usual manner, thus—
Plague, 2. Parishes infected, 1.
The people showed a great concern at this, and began to be
alarmed all over the town, and the more, because in the last week
in December 1664 another man died in the same house, and of the
same distemper. And then we were easy again for about six weeks,
when none having died with any marks of infection, it was said
the distemper was gone; but after that, I think it was about the
12th of February, another died in another house, but in the same
parish and in the same manner.
This turned the people’s eyes pretty much towards that end of the
town, and the weekly bills showing an increase of burials in St
Giles’s parish more than usual, it began to be suspected that the
plague was among the people at that end of the town, and that
many had died of it, though they had taken care to keep it as
much from the knowledge of the public as possible. This possessed
the heads of the people very much, and few cared to go through
Drury Lane, or the other streets suspected, unless they had
extraordinary business that obliged them to it
This increase of the bills stood thus: the usual number of
burials in a week, in the parishes of St Giles-in-the-Fields and
St Andrew’s, Holborn, were from twelve to seventeen or nineteen
each, few more or less; but from the time that the plague first
began in St Giles’s parish, it was observed that the ordinary
burials increased in number considerably. For example:—
From December 27 to January 3 { St Giles’s 16
” { St Andrew’s 17
” January 3 ” ” 10 { St Giles’s 12
” { St Andrew’s 25
” January 10 ” ” 17 { St Giles’s 18
” { St Andrew’s 28
” January 17 ” ” 24 { St Giles’s 23
” { St Andrew’s 16
” January 24 ” ” 31 { St Giles’s 24
” { St Andrew’s 15
” January 30 ” February 7 { St Giles’s 21
” { St Andrew’s 23
” February 7 ” ” 14 { St Giles’s 24
The like increase of the bills was observed in the parishes of St
Bride’s, adjoining on one side of Holborn parish, and in the
parish of St James, Clerkenwell, adjoining on the other side of
Holborn; in both which parishes the usual numbers that died
weekly were from four to six or eight, whereas at that time they
were increased as follows:—
From December 20 to December 27 { St Bride’s 0
” { St James’s 8
” December 27 to January 3 { St Bride’s 6
” { St James’s 9
” January 3 ” ” 10 { St Bride’s 11
” { St James’s 7
” January 10 ” ” 17 { St Bride’s 12
” { St James’s 9
” January 17 ” ” 24 { St Bride’s 9
” { St James’s 15
” January 24 ” ” 31 { St Bride’s 8
” { St James’s 12
” January 31 ” February 7 { St Bride’s 13
” { St James’s 5
” February 7 ” ” 14 { St Bride’s 12
” { St James’s 6
Besides this, it was observed with great uneasiness by the people
that the weekly bills in general increased very much during these
weeks, although it was at a time of the year when usually the
bills are very moderate.
The usual number of burials within the bills of mortality for a
week was from about 240 or thereabouts to 300. The last was
esteemed a pretty high bill; but after this we found the bills
successively increasing as follows:—
Buried. Increased.
December the 20th to the 27th 291 ...
” ” 27th ” 3rd January 349 58
January the 3rd ” 10th ” 394 45
” ” 10th ” 17th ” 415 21
” ” 17th ” 24th ” 474 59
This last bill was really frightful, being a higher number than
had been known to have been buried in one week since the
preceding visitation of 1656.
However, all this went off again, and the weather proving cold,
and the frost, which began in December, still continuing very
severe even till near the end of February, attended with sharp
though moderate winds, the bills decreased again, and the city
grew healthy, and everybody began to look upon the danger as good
as over; only that still the burials in St Giles’s continued
high. From the beginning of April especially they stood at
twenty-five each week, till the week from the 18th to the 25th,
when there was buried in St Giles’s parish thirty, whereof two of
the plague and eight of the spotted-fever, which was looked upon
as the same thing; likewise the number that died of the
spotted-fever in the whole increased, being eight the week
before, and twelve the week above-named.
This alarmed us all again, and terrible apprehensions were among
the people, especially the weather being now changed and growing
warm, and the summer being at hand. However, the next week there
seemed to be some hopes again; the bills were low, the number of
the dead in all was but 388, there was none of the plague, and
but four of the spotted-fever.
But the following week it returned again, and the distemper was
spread into two or three other parishes, viz., St Andrew’s,
Holborn; St Clement Danes; and, to the great affliction of the
city, one died within the walls, in the parish of St Mary
Woolchurch, that is to say, in Bearbinder Lane, near Stocks
Market; in all there were nine of the plague and six of the
spotted-fever. It was, however, upon inquiry found that this
Frenchman who died in Bearbinder Lane was one who, having lived
in Long Acre, near the infected houses, had removed for fear of
the distemper, not knowing that he was already infected.
This was the beginning of May, yet the weather was temperate,
variable, and cool enough, and people had still some hopes. That
which encouraged them was that the city was healthy: the whole
ninety-seven parishes buried but fifty-four, and we began to hope
that, as it was chiefly among the people at that end of the town,
it might go no farther; and the rather, because the next week,
which was from the 9th of May to the 16th, there died but three,
of which not one within the whole city or liberties; and St
Andrew’s buried but fifteen, which was very low. ’Tis true St
Giles’s buried two-and-thirty, but still, as there was but one of
the plague, people began to be easy. The whole bill also was very
low, for the week before the bill was but 347, and the week above
mentioned but 343. We continued in these hopes for a few days,
but it was but for a few, for the people were no more to be
deceived thus; they searched the houses and found that the plague
was really spread every way, and that many died of it every day.
So that now all our extenuations abated, and it was no more to be
concealed; nay, it quickly appeared that the infection had spread
itself beyond all hopes of abatement. That in the parish of St
Giles it was gotten into several streets, and several families
lay all sick together; and, accordingly, in the weekly bill for
the next week the thing began to show itself. There was indeed
but fourteen set down of the plague, but this was all knavery and
collusion, for in St Giles’s parish they buried forty in all,
whereof it was certain most of them died of the plague, though
they were set down of other distempers; and though the number of
all the burials were not increased above thirty-two, and the
whole bill being but 385, yet there was fourteen of the
spotted-fever, as well as fourteen of the plague; and we took it
for granted upon the whole that there were fifty died that week
of the plague.
The next bill was from the 23rd of May to the 30th, when the
number of the plague was seventeen. But the burials in St Giles’s
were fifty-three—a frightful number!—of whom they set down but
nine of the plague; but on an examination more strictly by the
justices of peace, and at the Lord Mayor’s request, it was found
there were twenty more who were really dead of the plague in that
parish, but had been set down of the spotted-fever or other
distempers, besides others concealed.
But those were trifling things to what followed immediately
after; for now the weather set in hot, and from the first week in
June the infection spread in a dreadful manner, and the bills
rose high; the articles of the fever, spotted-fever, and teeth
began to swell; for all that could conceal their distempers did
it, to prevent their neighbours shunning and refusing to converse
with them, and also to prevent authority shutting up their
houses; which, though it was not yet practised, yet was
threatened, and people were extremely terrified at the thoughts
of it.
The second week in June, the parish of St Giles, where still the
weight of the infection lay, buried 120, whereof though the bills
said but sixty-eight of the plague, everybody said there had been
100 at least, calculating it from the usual number of funerals in
that parish, as above.
Till this week the city continued free, there having never any
died, except that one Frenchman whom I mentioned before, within
the whole ninety-seven parishes. Now there died four within the
city, one in Wood Street, one in Fenchurch Street, and two in
Crooked Lane. Southwark was entirely free, having not one yet
died on that side of the water.
I lived without Aldgate, about midway between Aldgate Church and
Whitechappel Bars, on the left hand or north side of the street;
and as the distemper had not reached to that side of the city,
our neighbourhood continued very easy. But at the other end of
the town their consternation was very great: and the richer sort
of people, especially the nobility and gentry from the west part
of the city, thronged out of town with their families and
servants in an unusual manner; and this was more particularly
seen in Whitechappel; that is to say, the Broad Street where I
lived; indeed, nothing was to be seen but waggons and carts, with
goods, women, servants, children, &c.; coaches filled with people
of the better sort and horsemen attending them, and all hurrying
away; then empty waggons and carts appeared, and spare horses
with servants, who, it was apparent, were returning or sent from
the countries to fetch more people; besides innumerable numbers
of men on horseback, some alone, others with servants, and,
generally speaking, all loaded with baggage and fitted out for
travelling, as anyone might perceive by their appearance.
This was a very terrible and melancholy thing to see, and as it
was a sight which I could not but look on from morning to night
(for indeed there was nothing else of moment to be seen), it
filled me with very serious thoughts of the misery that was
coming upon the city, and the unhappy condition of those that
would be left in it.
This hurry of the people was such for some weeks that there was
no getting at the Lord Mayor’s door without exceeding difficulty;
there were such pressing and crowding there to get passes and
certificates of health for such as travelled abroad, for without
these there was no being admitted to pass through the towns upon
the road, or to lodge in any inn. Now, as there had none died in
the city for all this time, my Lord Mayor gave certificates of
health without any difficulty to all those who lived in the
ninety-seven parishes, and to those within the liberties too for
a while.
This hurry, I say, continued some weeks, that is to say, all the
month of May and June, and the more because it was rumoured that
an order of the Government was to be issued out to place
turnpikes and barriers on the road to prevent people travelling,
and that the towns on the road would not suffer people from
London to pass for fear of bringing the infection along with
them, though neither of these rumours had any foundation but in
the imagination, especially at-first.
I now began to consider seriously with myself concerning my own
case, and how I should dispose of myself; that is to say, whether
I should resolve to stay in London or shut up my house and flee,
as many of my neighbours did. I have set this particular down so
fully, because I know not but it may be of moment to those who
come after me, if they come to be brought to the same distress,
and to the same manner of making their choice; and therefore I
desire this account may pass with them rather for a direction to
themselves to act by than a history of my actings, seeing it may
not be of one farthing value to them to note what became of me.
I had two important things before me: the one was the carrying on
my business and shop, which was considerable, and in which was
embarked all my effects in the world; and the other was the
preservation of my life in so dismal a calamity as I saw
apparently was coming upon the whole city, and which, however
great it was, my fears perhaps, as well as other people’s,
represented to be much greater than it could be.
The first consideration was of great moment to me; my trade was a
saddler, and as my dealings were chiefly not by a shop or chance
trade, but among the merchants trading to the English colonies in
America, so my effects lay very much in the hands of such. I was
a single man, ’tis true, but I had a family of servants whom I
kept at my business; had a house, shop, and warehouses filled
with goods; and, in short, to leave them all as things in such a
case must be left (that is to say, without any overseer or person
fit to be trusted with them), had been to hazard the loss not
only of my trade, but of my goods, and indeed of all I had in the
world.
I had an elder brother at the same time in London, and not many
years before come over from Portugal: and advising with him, his
answer was in three words, the same that was given in another
case quite different, viz., ‘Master, save thyself.’ In a word, he
was for my retiring into the country, as he resolved to do
himself with his family; telling me what he had, it seems, heard
abroad, that the best preparation for the plague was to run away
from it. As to my argument of losing my trade, my goods, or
debts, he quite confuted me. He told me the same thing which I
argued for my staying, viz., that I would trust God with my
safety and health, was the strongest repulse to my pretensions of
losing my trade and my goods; ‘for’, says he, ‘is it not as
reasonable that you should trust God with the chance or risk of
losing your trade, as that you should stay in so eminent a point
of danger, and trust Him with your life?’
I could not argue that I was in any strait as to a place where to
go, having several friends and relations in Northamptonshire,
whence our family first came from; and particularly, I had an
only sister in Lincolnshire, very willing to receive and
entertain me.
My brother, who had already sent his wife and two children into
Bedfordshire, and resolved to follow them, pressed my going very
earnestly; and I had once resolved to comply with his desires,
but at that time could get no horse; for though it is true all
the people did not go out of the city of London, yet I may
venture to say that in a manner all the horses did; for there was
hardly a horse to be bought or hired in the whole city for some
weeks. Once I resolved to travel on foot with one servant, and,
as many did, lie at no inn, but carry a soldier’s tent with us,
and so lie in the fields, the weather being very warm, and no
danger from taking cold. I say, as many did, because several did
so at last, especially those who had been in the armies in the
war which had not been many years past; and I must needs say
that, speaking of second causes, had most of the people that
travelled done so, the plague had not been carried into so many
country towns and houses as it was, to the great damage, and
indeed to the ruin, of abundance of people.
But then my servant, whom I had intended to take down with me,
deceived me; and being frighted at the increase of the distemper,
and not knowing when I should go, he took other measures, and
left me, so I was put off for that time; and, one way or other, I
always found that to appoint to go away was always crossed by
some accident or other, so as to disappoint and put it off again;
and this brings in a story which otherwise might be thought a
needless digression, viz., about these disappointments being from
Heaven.
I mention this story also as the best method I can advise any
person to take in such a case, especially if he be one that makes
conscience of his duty, and would be directed what to do in it,
namely, that he should keep his eye upon the particular
providences which occur at that time, and look upon them
complexly, as they regard one another, and as all together regard
the question before him: and then, I think, he may safely take
them for intimations from Heaven of what is his unquestioned duty
to do in such a case; I mean as to going away from or staying in
the place where we dwell, when visited with an infectious
distemper.
It came very warmly into my mind one morning, as I was musing on
this particular thing, that as nothing attended us without the
direction or permission of Divine Power, so these disappointments
must have something in them extraordinary; and I ought to
consider whether it did not evidently point out, or intimate to
me, that it was the will of Heaven I should not go. It
immediately followed in my thoughts, that if it really was from
God that I should stay, He was able effectually to preserve me in
the midst of all the death and danger that would surround me; and
that if I attempted to secure myself by fleeing from my
habitation, and acted contrary to these intimations, which I
believe to be Divine, it was a kind of flying from God, and that
He could cause His justice to overtake me when and where He
thought fit.
These thoughts quite turned my resolutions again, and when I came
to discourse with my brother again I told him that I inclined to
stay and take my lot in that station in which God had placed me,
and that it seemed to be made more especially my duty, on the
account of what I have said.
My brother, though a very religious man himself, laughed at all I
had suggested about its being an intimation from Heaven, and told
me several stories of such foolhardy people, as he called them,
as I was; that I ought indeed to submit to it as a work of Heaven
if I had been any way disabled by distempers or diseases, and
that then not being able to go, I ought to acquiesce in the
direction of Him, who, having been my Maker, had an undisputed
right of sovereignty in disposing of me, and that then there had
been no difficulty to determine which was the call of His
providence and which was not; but that I should take it as an
intimation from Heaven that I should not go out of town, only
because I could not hire a horse to go, or my fellow was run away
that was to attend me, was ridiculous, since at the time I had my
health and limbs, and other servants, and might with ease travel
a day or two on foot, and having a good certificate of being in
perfect health, might either hire a horse or take post on the
road, as I thought fit.
Then he proceeded to tell me of the mischievous consequences
which attended the presumption of the Turks and Mahometans in
Asia and in other places where he had been (for my brother, being
a merchant, was a few years before, as I have already observed,
returned from abroad, coming last from Lisbon), and how,
presuming upon their professed predestinating notions, and of
every man’s end being predetermined and unalterably beforehand
decreed, they would go unconcerned into infected places and
converse with infected persons, by which means they died at the
rate of ten or fifteen thousand a week, whereas the Europeans or
Christian merchants, who kept themselves retired and reserved,
generally escaped the contagion.
Upon these arguments my brother changed my resolutions again, and
I began to resolve to go, and accordingly made all things ready;
for, in short, the infection increased round me, and the bills
were risen to almost seven hundred a week, and my brother told me
he would venture to stay no longer. I desired him to let me
consider of it but till the next day, and I would resolve: and as
I had already prepared everything as well as I could as to MY
business, and whom to entrust my affairs with, I had little to do
but to resolve.
I went home that evening greatly oppressed in my mind,
irresolute, and not knowing what to do. I had set the evening
wholly apart to consider seriously about it, and was all alone;
for already people had, as it were by a general consent, taken up
the custom of not going out of doors after sunset; the reasons I
shall have occasion to say more of by-and-by.
In the retirement of this evening I endeavoured to resolve,
first, what was my duty to do, and I stated the arguments with
which my brother had pressed me to go into the country, and I
set, against them the strong impressions which I had on my mind
for staying; the visible call I seemed to have from the
particular circumstance of my calling, and the care due from me
for the preservation of my effects, which were, as I might say,
my estate; also the intimations which I thought I had from
Heaven, that to me signified a kind of direction to venture; and
it occurred to me that if I had what I might call a direction to
stay, I ought to suppose it contained a promise of being
preserved if I obeyed.
This lay close to me, and my mind seemed more and more encouraged
to stay than ever, and supported with a secret satisfaction that
I should be kept. Add to this, that, turning over the Bible which
lay before me, and while my thoughts were more than ordinarily
serious upon the question, I cried out, ‘Well, I know not what to
do; Lord, direct me !’ and the like; and at that juncture I
happened to stop turning over the book at the ninety-first Psalm,
and casting my eye on the second verse, I read on to the seventh
verse exclusive, and after that included the tenth, as follows:
‘I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God,
in Him will I trust. Surely He shall deliver thee from the snare
of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence. He shall cover
thee with His feathers, and under His wings shalt thou trust: His
truth shall be thy shield and buckler. Thou shalt not be afraid
for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day;
nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the
destruction that wasteth at noonday. A thousand shall fall at thy
side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come
nigh thee. Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the
reward of the wicked. Because thou hast made the Lord, which is
my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation; there shall no
evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy
dwelling,’ &C.
I scarce need tell the reader that from that moment I resolved
that I would stay in the town, and casting myself entirely upon
the goodness and protection of the Almighty, would not seek any
other shelter whatever; and that, as my times were in His hands,
He was as able to keep me in a time of the infection as in a time
of health; and if He did not think fit to deliver me, still I was
in His hands, and it was meet He should do with me as should seem
good to Him.
With this resolution I went to bed; and I was further confirmed
in it the next day by the woman being taken ill with whom I had
intended to entrust my house and all my affairs. But I had a
further obligation laid on me on the same side, for the next day
I found myself very much out of order also, so that if I would
have gone away, I could not, and I continued ill three or four
days, and this entirely determined my stay; so I took my leave of
my brother, who went away to Dorking, in Surrey, and afterwards
fetched a round farther into Buckinghamshire or Bedfordshire, to
a retreat he had found out there for his family.
It was a very ill time to be sick in, for if any one complained,
it was immediately said he had the plague; and though I had
indeed no symptom of that distemper, yet being very ill, both in
my head and in my stomach, I was not without apprehension that I
really was infected; but in about three days I grew better; the
third night I rested well, sweated a little, and was much
refreshed. The apprehensions of its being the infection went also
quite away with my illness, and I went about my business as
usual.
These things, however, put off all my thoughts of going into the
country; and my brother also being gone, I had no more debate
either with him or with myself on that subject.
It was now mid-July, and the plague, which had chiefly raged at
the other end of the town, and, as I said before, in the parishes
of St Giles, St Andrew’s, Holborn, and towards Westminster, began
to now come eastward towards the part where I lived. It was to be
observed, indeed, that it did not come straight on towards us;
for the city, that is to say, within the walls, was indifferently
healthy still; nor was it got then very much over the water into
Southwark; for though there died that week 1268 of all
distempers, whereof it might be supposed above 600 died of the
plague, yet there was but twenty-eight in the whole city, within
the walls, and but nineteen in Southwark, Lambeth parish
included; whereas in the parishes of St Giles and St
Martin-in-the-Fields alone there died 421.
But we perceived the infection kept chiefly in the out-parishes,
which being very populous, and fuller also of poor, the distemper
found more to prey upon than in the city, as I shall observe
afterwards. We perceived, I say, the distemper to draw our way,
viz., by the parishes of Clarkenwell, Cripplegate, Shoreditch,
and Bishopsgate; which last two parishes joining to Aldgate,
Whitechappel, and Stepney, the infection came at length to spread
its utmost rage and violence in those parts, even when it abated
at the western parishes where it began.
It was very strange to observe that in this particular week, from
the 4th to the 11th of July, when, as I have observed, there died
near 400 of the plague in the two parishes of St Martin and St
Giles-in-the-Fields only, there died in the parish of Aldgate but
four, in the parish of Whitechappel three, in the parish of
Stepney but one.
Likewise in the next week, from the 11th of July to the 18th,
when the week’s bill was 1761, yet there died no more of the
plague, on the whole Southwark side of the water, than sixteen.
But this face of things soon changed, and it began to thicken in
Cripplegate parish especially, and in Clarkenwell; so that by the
second week in August, Cripplegate parish alone buried 886, and
Clarkenwell 155. Of the first, 850 might well be reckoned to die
of the plague; and of the last, the bill itself said 145 were of
the plague.
During the month of July, and while, as I have observed, our part
of the town seemed to be spared in comparison of the west part, I
went ordinarily about the streets, as my business required, and
particularly went generally once in a day, or in two days, into
the city, to my brother’s house, which he had given me charge of,
and to see if it was safe; and having the key in my pocket, I
used to go into the house, and over most of the rooms, to see
that all was well; for though it be something wonderful to tell,
that any should have hearts so hardened in the midst of such a
calamity as to rob and steal, yet certain it is that all sorts of
villainies, and even levities and debaucheries, were then
practised in the town as openly as ever—I will not say quite as
frequently, because the numbers of people were many ways
lessened.
But the city itself began now to be visited too, I mean within
the walls; but the number of people there were indeed extremely
lessened by so great a multitude having been gone into the
country; and even all this month of July they continued to flee,
though not in such multitudes as formerly. In August, indeed,
they fled in such a manner that I began to think there would be
really none but magistrates and servants left in the city.
As they fled now out of the city, so I should observe that the
Court removed early, viz., in the month of June, and went to
Oxford, where it pleased God to preserve them; and the distemper
did not, as I heard of, so much as touch them, for which I cannot
say that I ever saw they showed any great token of thankfulness,
and hardly anything of reformation, though they did not want
being told that their crying vices might without breach of
charity be said to have gone far in bringing that terrible
judgement upon the whole nation.
The face of London was—now indeed strangely altered: I mean the
whole mass of buildings, city, liberties, suburbs, Westminster,
Southwark, and altogether; for as to the particular part called
the city, or within the walls, that was not yet much infected.
But in the whole the face of things, I say, was much altered;
sorrow and sadness sat upon every face; and though some parts
were not yet overwhelmed, yet all looked deeply concerned; and,
as we saw it apparently coming on, so every one looked on himself
and his family as in the utmost danger. Were it possible to
represent those times exactly to those that did not see them, and
give the reader due ideas of the horror ‘that everywhere
presented itself, it must make just impressions upon their minds
and fill them with surprise. London might well be said to be all
in tears; the mourners did not go about the streets indeed, for
nobody put on black or made a formal dress of mourning for their
nearest friends; but the voice of mourners was truly heard in the
streets. The shrieks of women and children at the windows and
doors of their houses, where their dearest relations were perhaps
dying, or just dead, were so frequent to be heard as we passed
the streets, that it was enough to pierce the stoutest heart in
the world to hear them. Tears and lamentations were seen almost
in every house, especially in the first part of the visitation;
for towards the latter end men’s hearts were hardened, and death
was so always before their eyes, that they did not so much
concern themselves for the loss of their friends, expecting that
themselves should be summoned the next hour.
Business led me out sometimes to the other end of the town, even
when the sickness was chiefly there; and as the thing was new to
me, as well as to everybody else, it was a most surprising thing
to see those streets which were usually so thronged now grown
desolate, and so few people to be seen in them, that if I had
been a stranger and at a loss for my way, I might sometimes have
gone the length of a whole street (I mean of the by-streets), and
seen nobody to direct me except watchmen set at the doors of such
houses as were shut up, of which I shall speak presently.
One day, being at that part of the town on some special business,
curiosity led me to observe things more than usually, and indeed
I walked a great way where I had no business. I went up Holborn,
and there the street was full of people, but they walked in the
middle of the great street, neither on one side or other,
because, as I suppose, they would not mingle with anybody that
came out of houses, or meet with smells and scent from houses
that might be infected.
The Inns of Court were all shut up; nor were very many of the
lawyers in the Temple, or Lincoln’s Inn, or Gray’s Inn, to be
seen there. Everybody was at peace; there was no occasion for
lawyers; besides, it being in the time of the vacation too, they
were generally gone into the country. Whole rows of houses in
some places were shut close up, the inhabitants all fled, and
only a watchman or two left.
When I speak of rows of houses being shut up, I do not mean shut
up by the magistrates, but that great numbers of persons followed
the Court, by the necessity of their employments and other
dependences; and as others retired, really frighted with the
distemper, it was a mere desolating of some of the streets. But
the fright was not yet near so great in the city, abstractly so
called, and particularly because, though they were at first in a
most inexpressible consternation, yet as I have observed that the
distemper intermitted often at first, so they were, as it were,
alarmed and unalarmed again, and this several times, till it
began to be familiar to them; and that even when it appeared
violent, yet seeing it did not presently spread into the city, or
the east and south parts, the people began to take courage, and
to be, as I may say, a little hardened. It is true a vast many
people fled, as I have observed, yet they were chiefly from the
west end of the town, and from that we call the heart of the
city: that is to say, among the wealthiest of the people, and
such people as were unencumbered with trades and business. But of
the rest, the generality stayed, and seemed to abide the worst;
so that in the place we call the Liberties, and in the suburbs,
in Southwark, and in the east part, such as Wapping, Ratcliff,
Stepney, Rotherhithe, and the like, the people generally stayed,
except here and there a few wealthy families, who, as above, did
not depend upon their business.
It must not be forgot here that the city and suburbs were
prodigiously full of people at the time of this visitation, I
mean at the time that it began; for though I have lived to see a
further increase, and mighty throngs of people settling in London
more than ever, yet we had always a notion that the numbers of
people which, the wars being over, the armies disbanded, and the
royal family and the monarchy being restored, had flocked to
London to settle in business, or to depend upon and attend the
Court for rewards of services, preferments, and the like, was
such that the town was computed to have in it above a hundred
thousand people more than ever it held before; nay, some took
upon them to say it had twice as many, because all the ruined
families of the royal party flocked hither. All the old soldiers
set up trades here, and abundance of families settled here.
Again, the Court brought with them a great flux of pride, and new
fashions. All people were grown gay and luxurious, and the joy of
the Restoration had brought a vast many families to London.
I often thought that as Jerusalem was besieged by the Romans when
the Jews were assembled together to celebrate the Passover—by
which means an incredible number of people were surprised there
who would otherwise have been in other countries—so the plague
entered London when an incredible increase of people had happened
occasionally, by the particular circumstances above-named. As
this conflux of the people to a youthful and gay Court made a
great trade in the city, especially in everything that belonged
to fashion and finery, so it drew by consequence a great number
of workmen, manufacturers, and the like, being mostly poor people
who depended upon their labour. And I remember in particular that
in a representation to my Lord Mayor of the condition of the
poor, it was estimated that there were no less than an hundred
thousand riband-weavers in and about the city, the chiefest
number of whom lived then in the parishes of Shoreditch, Stepney,
Whitechappel, and Bishopsgate, that, namely, about Spitalfields;
that is to say, as Spitalfields was then, for it was not so large
as now by one fifth part.
By this, however, the number of people in the whole may be judged
of; and, indeed, I often wondered that, after the prodigious
numbers of people that went away at first, there was yet so great
a multitude left as it appeared there was.
But I must go back again to the beginning of this surprising
time. While the fears of the people were young, they were
increased strangely by several odd accidents which, put
altogether, it was really a wonder the whole body of the people
did not rise as one man and abandon their dwellings, leaving the
place as a space of ground designed by Heaven for an Akeldama,
doomed to be destroyed from the face of the earth, and that all
that would be found in it would perish with it. I shall name but
a few of these things; but sure they were so many, and so many
wizards and cunning people propagating them, that I have often
wondered there was any (women especially) left behind.
In the first place, a blazing star or comet appeared for several
months before the plague, as there did the year after another, a
little before the fire. The old women and the phlegmatic
hypochondriac part of the other sex, whom I could almost call old
women too, remarked (especially afterward, though not till both
those judgements were over) that those two comets passed directly
over the city, and that so very near the houses that it was plain
they imported something peculiar to the city alone; that the
comet before the pestilence was of a faint, dull, languid colour,
and its motion very heavy, Solemn, and slow; but that the comet
before the fire was bright and sparkling, or, as others said,
flaming, and its motion swift and furious; and that, accordingly,
one foretold a heavy judgement, slow but severe, terrible and
frightful, as was the plague; but the other foretold a stroke,
sudden, swift, and fiery as the conflagration. Nay, so particular
some people were, that as they looked upon that comet preceding
the fire, they fancied that they not only saw it pass swiftly and
fiercely, and could perceive the motion with their eye, but even
they heard it; that it made a rushing, mighty noise, fierce and
terrible, though at a distance, and but just perceivable.
I saw both these stars, and, I must confess, had so much of the
common notion of such things in my head, that I was apt to look
upon them as the forerunners and warnings of God’s judgements;
and especially when, after the plague had followed the first, I
yet saw another of the like kind, I could not but say God had not
yet sufficiently scourged the city.
But I could not at the same time carry these things to the height
that others did, knowing, too, that natural causes are assigned
by the astronomers for such things, and that their motions and
even their revolutions are calculated, or pretended to be
calculated, so that they cannot be so perfectly called the
forerunners or foretellers, much less the procurers, of such
events as pestilence, war, fire, and the like.
But let my thoughts and the thoughts of the philosophers be, or
have been, what they will, these things had a more than ordinary
influence upon the minds of the common people, and they had
almost universal melancholy apprehensions of some dreadful
calamity and judgement coming upon the city; and this principally
from the sight of this comet, and the little alarm that was given
in December by two people dying at St Giles’s, as above.
The apprehensions of the people were likewise strangely increased
by the error of the times; in which, I think, the people, from
what principle I cannot imagine, were more addicted to prophecies
and astrological conjurations, dreams, and old wives’ tales than
ever they were before or since. Whether this unhappy temper was
originally raised by the follies of some people who got money by
it—that is to say, by printing predictions and prognostications—I
know not; but certain it is, books frighted them terribly, such
as Lilly’s Almanack, Gadbury’s Astrological Predictions, Poor
Robin’s Almanack, and the like; also several pretended religious
books, one entitled, Come out of her, my People, lest you be
Partaker of her Plagues; another called, Fair Warning; another,
Britain’s Remembrancer; and many such, all, or most part of
which, foretold, directly or covertly, the ruin of the city. Nay,
some were so enthusiastically bold as to run about the streets
with their oral predictions, pretending they were sent to preach
to the city; and one in particular, who, like Jonah to Nineveh,
cried in the streets, ‘Yet forty days, and London shall be
destroyed.’ I will not be positive whether he said yet forty days
or yet a few days. Another ran about naked, except a pair of
drawers about his waist, crying day and night, like a man that
Josephus mentions, who cried, ‘Woe to Jerusalem!’ a little before
the destruction of that city. So this poor naked creature cried,
‘Oh, the great and the dreadful God!’ and said no more, but
repeated those words continually, with a voice and countenance
full of horror, a swift pace; and nobody could ever find him to
stop or rest, or take any sustenance, at least that ever I could
hear of. I met this poor creature several times in the streets,
and would have spoken to him, but he would not enter into speech
with me or any one else, but held on his dismal cries
continually.
These things terrified the people to the last degree, and
especially when two or three times, as I have mentioned already,
they found one or two in the bills dead of the plague at St
Giles’s.
Next to these public things were the dreams of old women, or, I
should say, the interpretation of old women upon other people’s
dreams; and these put abundance of people even out of their wits.
Some heard voices warning them to be gone, for that there would
be such a plague in London, so that the living would not be able
to bury the dead. Others saw apparitions in the air; and I must
be allowed to say of both, I hope without breach of charity, that
they heard voices that never spake, and saw sights that never
appeared; but the imagination of the people was really turned
wayward and possessed. And no wonder, if they who were poring
continually at the clouds saw shapes and figures, representations
and appearances, which had nothing in them but air, and vapour.
Here they told us they saw a flaming sword held in a hand coming
out of a cloud, with a point hanging directly over the city;
there they saw hearses and coffins in the air carrying to be
buried; and there again, heaps of dead bodies lying unburied, and
the like, just as the imagination of the poor terrified people
furnished them with matter to work upon.
So hypochondriac fancies represent
Ships, armies, battles in the firmament;
Till steady eyes the exhalations solve,
And all to its first matter, cloud, resolve.
I could fill this account with the strange relations such people
gave every day of what they had seen; and every one was so
positive of their having seen what they pretended to see, that
there was no contradicting them without breach of friendship, or
being accounted rude and unmannerly on the one hand, and profane
and impenetrable on the other. One time before the plague was
begun (otherwise than as I have said in St Giles’s), I think it
was in March, seeing a crowd of people in the street, I joined
with them to satisfy my curiosity, and found them all staring up
into the air to see what a woman told them appeared plain to her,
which was an angel clothed in white, with a fiery sword in his
hand, waving it or brandishing it over his head. She described
every part of the figure to the life, showed them the motion and
the form, and the poor people came into it so eagerly, and with
so much readiness; ‘Yes, I see it all plainly,’ says one;
‘there’s the sword as plain as can be.’ Another saw the angel.
One saw his very face, and cried out what a glorious creature he
was! One saw one thing, and one another. I looked as earnestly as
the rest, but perhaps not with so much willingness to be imposed
upon; and I said, indeed, that I could see nothing but a white
cloud, bright on one side by the shining of the sun upon the
other part. The woman endeavoured to show it me, but could not
make me confess that I saw it, which, indeed, if I had I must
have lied. But the woman, turning upon me, looked in my face, and
fancied I laughed, in which her imagination deceived her too, for
I really did not laugh, but was very seriously reflecting how the
poor people were terrified by the force of their own imagination.
However, she turned from me, called me profane fellow, and a
scoffer; told me that it was a time of God’s anger, and dreadful
judgements were approaching, and that despisers such as I should
wander and perish.
The people about her seemed disgusted as well as she; and I found
there was no persuading them that I did not laugh at them, and
that I should be rather mobbed by them than be able to undeceive
them. So I left them; and this appearance passed for as real as
the blazing star itself.
Another encounter I had in the open day also; and this was in
going through a narrow passage from Petty France into Bishopsgate
Churchyard, by a row of alms-houses. There are two churchyards to
Bishopsgate church or parish; one we go over to pass from the
place called Petty France into Bishopsgate Street, coming out
just by the church door; the other is on the side of the narrow
passage where the alms-houses are on the left; and a dwarf-wall
with a palisado on it on the right hand, and the city wall on the
other side more to the right.
In this narrow passage stands a man looking through between the
palisadoes into the burying-place, and as many people as the
narrowness of the passage would admit to stop, without hindering
the passage of others, and he was talking mightily eagerly to
them, and pointing now to one place, then to another, and
affirming that he saw a ghost walking upon such a gravestone
there. He described the shape, the posture, and the movement of
it so exactly that it was the greatest matter of amazement to him
in the world that everybody did not see it as well as he. On a
sudden he would cry, ‘There it is; now it comes this way.’ Then,
’Tis turned back’; till at length he persuaded the people into so
firm a belief of it, that one fancied he saw it, and another
fancied he saw it; and thus he came every day making a strange
hubbub, considering it was in so narrow a passage, till
Bishopsgate clock struck eleven, and then the ghost would seem to
start, and, as if he were called away, disappeared on a sudden.
I looked earnestly every way, and at the very moment that this
man directed, but could not see the least appearance of anything;
but so positive was this poor man, that he gave the people the
vapours in abundance, and sent them away trembling and frighted,
till at length few people that knew of it cared to go through
that passage, and hardly anybody by night on any account
whatever.
This ghost, as the poor man affirmed, made signs to the houses,
and to the ground, and to the people, plainly intimating, or else
they so understanding it, that abundance of the people should
come to be buried in that churchyard, as indeed happened; but
that he saw such aspects I must acknowledge I never believed, nor
could I see anything of it myself, though I looked most earnestly
to see it, if possible.
These things serve to show how far the people were really
overcome with delusions; and as they had a notion of the approach
of a visitation, all their predictions ran upon a most dreadful
plague, which should lay the whole city, and even the kingdom,
waste, and should destroy almost all the nation, both man and
beast.
To this, as I said before, the astrologers added stories of the
conjunctions of planets in a malignant manner and with a
mischievous influence, one of which conjunctions was to happen,
and did happen, in October, and the other in November; and they
filled the people’s heads with predictions on these signs of the
heavens, intimating that those conjunctions foretold drought,
famine, and pestilence. In the two first of them, however, they
were entirely mistaken, for we had no droughty season, but in the
beginning of the year a hard frost, which lasted from December
almost to March, and after that moderate weather, rather warm
than hot, with refreshing winds, and, in short, very seasonable
weather, and also several very great rains.
Some endeavours were used to suppress the printing of such books
as terrified the people, and to frighten the dispersers of them,
some of whom were taken up; but nothing was done in it, as I am
informed, the Government being unwilling to exasperate the
people, who were, as I may say, all out of their wits already.
Neither can I acquit those ministers that in their sermons rather
sank than lifted up the hearts of their hearers. Many of them no
doubt did it for the strengthening the resolution of the people,
and especially for quickening them to repentance, but it
certainly answered not their end, at least not in proportion to
the injury it did another way; and indeed, as God Himself through
the whole Scriptures rather draws to Him by invitations and calls
to turn to Him and live, than drives us by terror and amazement,
so I must confess I thought the ministers should have done also,
imitating our blessed Lord and Master in this, that His whole
Gospel is full of declarations from heaven of God’s mercy, and
His readiness to receive penitents and forgive them, complaining,
‘Ye will not come unto Me that ye may have life’, and that
therefore His Gospel is called the Gospel of Peace and the Gospel
of Grace.
But we had some good men, and that of all persuasions and
opinions, whose discourses were full of terror, who spoke nothing
but dismal things; and as they brought the people together with a
kind of horror, sent them away in tears, prophesying nothing but
evil tidings, terrifying the people with the apprehensions of
being utterly destroyed, not guiding them, at least not enough,
to cry to heaven for mercy.
It was, indeed, a time of very unhappy breaches among us in
matters of religion. Innumerable sects and divisions and separate
opinions prevailed among the people. The Church of England was
restored, indeed, with the restoration of the monarchy, about
four years before; but the ministers and preachers of the
Presbyterians and Independents, and of all the other sorts of
professions, had begun to gather separate societies and erect
altar against altar, and all those had their meetings for worship
apart, as they have now, but not so many then, the Dissenters
being not thoroughly formed into a body as they are since; and
those congregations which were thus gathered together were yet
but few. And even those that were, the Government did not allow,
but endeavoured to suppress them and shut up their meetings.
But the visitation reconciled them again, at least for a time,
and many of the best and most valuable ministers and preachers of
the Dissenters were suffered to go into the churches where the
incumbents were fled away, as many were, not being able to stand
it; and the people flocked without distinction to hear them
preach, not much inquiring who or what opinion they were of. But
after the sickness was over, that spirit of charity abated; and
every church being again supplied with their own ministers, or
others presented where the minister was dead, things returned to
their old channel again.
One mischief always introduces another. These terrors and
apprehensions of the people led them into a thousand weak,
foolish, and wicked things, which they wanted not a sort of
people really wicked to encourage them to: and this was running
about to fortune-tellers, cunning-men, and astrologers to know
their fortune, or, as it is vulgarly expressed, to have their
fortunes told them, their nativities calculated, and the like;
and this folly presently made the town swarm with a wicked
generation of pretenders to magic, to the black art, as they
called it, and I know not what; nay, to a thousand worse dealings
with the devil than they were really guilty of. And this trade
grew so open and so generally practised that it became common to
have signs and inscriptions set up at doors: ‘Here lives a
fortune-teller’, ‘Here lives an astrologer’, ‘Here you may have
your nativity calculated’, and the like; and Friar Bacon’s
brazen-head, which was the usual sign of these people’s
dwellings, was to be seen almost in every street, or else the
sign of Mother Shipton, or of Merlin’s head, and the like.
With what blind, absurd, and ridiculous stuff these oracles of
the devil pleased and satisfied the people I really know not, but
certain it is that innumerable attendants crowded about their
doors every day. And if but a grave fellow in a velvet jacket, a
band, and a black coat, which was the habit those quack-conjurers
generally went in, was but seen in the streets the people would
follow them in crowds, and ask them questions as they went along.
I need not mention what a horrid delusion this was, or what it
tended to; but there was no remedy for it till the plague itself
put an end to it all—and, I suppose, cleared the town of most of
those calculators themselves. One mischief was, that if the poor
people asked these mock astrologers whether there would be a
plague or no, they all agreed in general to answer ‘Yes’, for
that kept up their trade. And had the people not been kept in a
fright about that, the wizards would presently have been rendered
useless, and their craft had been at an end. But they always
talked to them of such-and-such influences of the stars, of the
conjunctions of such-and-such planets, which must necessarily
bring sickness and distempers, and consequently the plague. And
some had the assurance to tell them the plague was begun already,
which was too true, though they that said so knew nothing of the
matter.
The ministers, to do them justice, and preachers of most sorts
that were serious and understanding persons, thundered against
these and other wicked practices, and exposed the folly as well
as the wickedness of them together, and the most sober and
judicious people despised and abhorred them. But it was
impossible to make any impression upon the middling people and
the working labouring poor. Their fears were predominant over all
their passions, and they threw away their money in a most
distracted manner upon those whimsies. Maid-servants especially,
and men-servants, were the chief of their customers, and their
question generally was, after the first demand of ‘Will there be
a plague?’ I say, the next question was, ‘Oh, sir I for the
Lord’s sake, what will become of me? Will my mistress keep me, or
will she turn me off? Will she stay here, or will she go into the
country? And if she goes into the country, will she take me with
her, or leave me here to be starved and undone?’ And the like of
menservants.
The truth is, the case of poor servants was very dismal, as I
shall have occasion to mention again by-and-by, for it was
apparent a prodigious number of them would be turned away, and it
was so. And of them abundance perished, and particularly of those
that these false prophets had flattered with hopes that they
should be continued in their services, and carried with their
masters and mistresses into the country; and had not public
charity provided for these poor creatures, whose number was
exceeding great and in all cases of this nature must be so, they
would have been in the worst condition of any people in the city.
These things agitated the minds of the common people for many
months, while the first apprehensions were upon them, and while
the plague was not, as I may say, yet broken out. But I must also
not forget that the more serious part of the inhabitants behaved
after another manner. The Government encouraged their devotion,
and appointed public prayers and days of fasting and humiliation,
to make public confession of sin and implore the mercy of God to
avert the dreadful judgement which hung over their heads; and it
is not to be expressed with what alacrity the people of all
persuasions embraced the occasion; how they flocked to the
churches and meetings, and they were all so thronged that there
was often no coming near, no, not to the very doors of the
largest churches. Also there were daily prayers appointed morning
and evening at several churches, and days of private praying at
other places; at all which the people attended, I say, with an
uncommon devotion. Several private families also, as well of one
opinion as of another, kept family fasts, to which they admitted
their near relations only. So that, in a word, those people who
were really serious and religious applied themselves in a truly
Christian manner to the proper work of repentance and
humiliation, as a Christian people ought to do.
Again, the public showed that they would bear their share in
these things; the very Court, which was then gay and luxurious,
put on a face of just concern for the public danger. All the
plays and interludes which, after the manner of the French Court,
had been set up, and began to increase among us, were forbid to
act; the gaming-tables, public dancing-rooms, and music-houses,
which multiplied and began to debauch the manners of the people,
were shut up and suppressed; and the jack-puddings,
merry-andrews, puppet-shows, rope-dancers, and such-like doings,
which had bewitched the poor common people, shut up their shops,
finding indeed no trade; for the minds of the people were
agitated with other things, and a kind of sadness and horror at
these things sat upon the countenances even of the common people.
Death was before their eyes, and everybody began to think of
their graves, not of mirth and diversions.
But even those wholesome reflections—which, rightly managed,
would have most happily led the people to fall upon their knees,
make confession of their sins, and look up to their merciful
Saviour for pardon, imploring His compassion on them in such a
time of their distress, by which we might have been as a second
Nineveh—had a quite contrary extreme in the common people, who,
ignorant and stupid in their reflections as they were brutishly
wicked and thoughtless before, were now led by their fright to
extremes of folly; and, as I have said before, that they ran to
conjurers and witches, and all sorts of deceivers, to know what
should become of them (who fed their fears, and kept them always
alarmed and awake on purpose to delude them and pick their
pockets), so they were as mad upon their running after quacks and
mountebanks, and every practising old woman, for medicines and
remedies; storing themselves with such multitudes of pills,
potions, and preservatives, as they were called, that they not
only spent their money but even poisoned themselves beforehand
for fear of the poison of the infection; and prepared their
bodies for the plague, instead of preserving them against it. On
the other hand it is incredible and scarce to be imagined, how
the posts of houses and corners of streets were plastered over
with doctors’ bills and papers of ignorant fellows, quacking and
tampering in physic, and inviting the people to come to them for
remedies, which was generally set off with such flourishes as
these, viz.: ‘Infallible preventive pills against the plague.’
‘Neverfailing preservatives against the infection.’ ‘Sovereign
cordials against the corruption of the air.’ ‘Exact regulations
for the conduct of the body in case of an infection.’
‘Anti-pestilential pills.’ ‘Incomparable drink against the
plague, never found out before.’ ‘An universal remedy for the
plague.’ ‘The only true plague water.’ ‘The royal antidote
against all kinds of infection’;—and such a number more that I
cannot reckon up; and if I could, would fill a book of themselves
to set them down.
Others set up bills to summon people to their lodgings for
directions and advice in the case of infection. These had
specious titles also, such as these:—
‘An eminent High Dutch physician, newly come over from Holland,
where he resided during all the time of the great plague last
year in Amsterdam, and cured multitudes of people that actually
had the plague upon them.’
‘An Italian gentlewoman just arrived from Naples, having a choice
secret to prevent infection, which she found out by her great
experience, and did wonderful cures with it in the late plague
there, wherein there died 20,000 in one day.’
‘An ancient gentlewoman, having practised with great success in
the late plague in this city, anno 1636, gives her advice only to
the female sex. To be spoken with,’ &c.
‘An experienced physician, who has long studied the doctrine of
antidotes against all sorts of poison and infection, has, after
forty years’ practice, arrived to such skill as may, with God’s
blessing, direct persons how to prevent their being touched by
any contagious distemper whatsoever. He directs the poor gratis.’
I take notice of these by way of specimen. I could give you two
or three dozen of the like and yet have abundance left behind.
’Tis sufficient from these to apprise any one of the humour of
those times, and how a set of thieves and pickpockets not only
robbed and cheated the poor people of their money, but poisoned
their bodies with odious and fatal preparations; some with
mercury, and some with other things as bad, perfectly remote from
the thing pretended to, and rather hurtful than serviceable to
the body in case an infection followed.
I cannot omit a subtility of one of those quack operators, with
which he gulled the poor people to crowd about him, but did
nothing for them without money. He had, it seems, added to his
bills, which he gave about the streets, this advertisement in
capital letters, viz., ‘He gives advice to the poor for nothing.’
Abundance of poor people came to him accordingly, to whom he made
a great many fine speeches, examined them of the state of their
health and of the constitution of their bodies, and told them
many good things for them to do, which were of no great moment.
But the issue and conclusion of all was, that he had a
preparation which if they took such a quantity of every morning,
he would pawn his life they should never have the plague; no,
though they lived in the house with people that were infected.
This made the people all resolve to have it; but then the price
of that was so much, I think ’twas half-a-crown. ‘But, sir,’ says
one poor woman, ‘I am a poor almswoman and am kept by the parish,
and your bills say you give the poor your help for nothing.’ ‘Ay,
good woman,’ says the doctor, ‘so I do, as I published there. I
give my advice to the poor for nothing, but not my physic.’
‘Alas, sir!’ says she, ‘that is a snare laid for the poor, then;
for you give them advice for nothing; that is to say, you advise
them gratis, to buy your physic for their money; so does every
shop-keeper with his wares.’ Here the woman began to give him ill
words, and stood at his door all that day, telling her tale to
all the people that came, till the doctor finding she turned away
his customers, was obliged to call her upstairs again, and give
her his box of physic for nothing, which perhaps, too, was good
for nothing when she had it.
But to return to the people, whose confusions fitted them to be
imposed upon by all sorts of pretenders and by every mountebank.
There is no doubt but these quacking sort of fellows raised great
gains out of the miserable people, for we daily found the crowds
that ran after them were infinitely greater, and their doors were
more thronged than those of Dr Brooks, Dr Upton, Dr Hodges, Dr
Berwick, or any, though the most famous men of the time. And I
was told that some of them got five pounds a day by their physic.
But there was still another madness beyond all this, which may
serve to give an idea of the distracted humour of the poor people
at that time: and this was their following a worse sort of
deceivers than any of these; for these petty thieves only deluded
them to pick their pockets and get their money, in which their
wickedness, whatever it was, lay chiefly on the side of the
deceivers, not upon the deceived. But in this part I am going to
mention, it lay chiefly in the people deceived, or equally in
both; and this was in wearing charms, philtres, exorcisms,
amulets, and I know not what preparations, to fortify the body
with them against the plague; as if the plague was not the hand
of God, but a kind of possession of an evil spirit, and that it
was to be kept off with crossings, signs of the zodiac, papers
tied up with so many knots, and certain words or figures written
on them, as particularly the word Abracadabra, formed in triangle
or pyramid, thus:—
ABRACADABRA
ABRACADABR Others had the Jesuits’
ABRACADAB mark in a cross:
ABRACADA I H
ABRACAD S.
ABRACA
ABRAC Others nothing but this
ABRA mark, thus:
ABR
AB * *
A {*}
I might spend a great deal of time in my exclamations against the
follies, and indeed the wickedness, of those things, in a time of
such danger, in a matter of such consequences as this, of a
national infection. But my memorandums of these things relate
rather to take notice only of the fact, and mention only that it
was so. How the poor people found the insufficiency of those
things, and how many of them were afterwards carried away in the
dead-carts and thrown into the common graves of every parish with
these hellish charms and trumpery hanging about their necks,
remains to be spoken of as we go along.
All this was the effect of the hurry the people were in, after
the first notion of the plague being at hand was among them, and
which may be said to be from about Michaelmas 1664, but more
particularly after the two men died in St Giles’s in the
beginning of December; and again, after another alarm in
February. For when the plague evidently spread itself, they soon
began to see the folly of trusting to those unperforming
creatures who had gulled them of their money; and then their
fears worked another way, namely, to amazement and stupidity, not
knowing what course to take or what to do either to help or
relieve themselves. But they ran about from one neighbour’s house
to another, and even in the streets from one door to another,
with repeated cries of, ‘Lord, have mercy upon us! What shall we
do?’
Indeed, the poor people were to be pitied in one particular thing
in which they had little or no relief, and which I desire to
mention with a serious awe and reflection, which perhaps every
one that reads this may not relish; namely, that whereas death
now began not, as we may say, to hover over every one’s head
only, but to look into their houses and chambers and stare in
their faces. Though there might be some stupidity and dulness of
the mind (and there was so, a great deal), yet there was a great
deal of just alarm sounded into the very inmost soul, if I may so
say, of others. Many consciences were awakened; many hard hearts
melted into tears; many a penitent confession was made of crimes
long concealed. It would wound the soul of any Christian to have
heard the dying groans of many a despairing creature, and none
durst come near to comfort them. Many a robbery, many a murder,
was then confessed aloud, and nobody surviving to record the
accounts of it. People might be heard, even into the streets as
we passed along, calling upon God for mercy through Jesus Christ,
and saying, ‘I have been a thief, ‘I have been an adulterer’, ‘I
have been a murderer’, and the like, and none durst stop to make
the least inquiry into such things or to administer comfort to
the poor creatures that in the anguish both of soul and body thus
cried out. Some of the ministers did visit the sick at first and
for a little while, but it was not to be done. It would have been
present death to have gone into some houses. The very buriers of
the dead, who were the hardenedest creatures in town, were
sometimes beaten back and so terrified that they durst not go
into houses where the whole families were swept away together,
and where the circumstances were more particularly horrible, as
some were; but this was, indeed, at the first heat of the
distemper.
Time inured them to it all, and they ventured everywhere
afterwards without hesitation, as I shall have occasion to
mention at large hereafter.
I am supposing now the plague to be begun, as I have said, and
that the magistrates began to take the condition of the people
into their serious consideration. What they did as to the
regulation of the inhabitants and of infected families, I shall
speak to by itself; but as to the affair of health, it is proper
to mention it here that, having seen the foolish humour of the
people in running after quacks and mountebanks, wizards and
fortune-tellers, which they did as above, even to madness, the
Lord Mayor, a very sober and religious gentleman, appointed
physicians and surgeons for relief of the poor—I mean the
diseased poor and in particular ordered the College of Physicians
to publish directions for cheap remedies for the poor, in all the
circumstances of the distemper. This, indeed, was one of the most
charitable and judicious things that could be done at that time,
for this drove the people from haunting the doors of every
disperser of bills, and from taking down blindly and without
consideration poison for physic and death instead of life.
This direction of the physicians was done by a consultation of
the whole College; and, as it was particularly calculated for the
use of the poor and for cheap medicines, it was made public, so
that everybody might see it, and copies were given gratis to all
that desired it. But as it is public, and to be seen on all
occasions, I need not give the reader of this the trouble of it.
I shall not be supposed to lessen the authority or capacity of
the physicians when I say that the violence of the distemper,
when it came to its extremity, was like the fire the next year.
The fire, which consumed what the plague could not touch, defied
all the application of remedies; the fire-engines were broken,
the buckets thrown away, and the power of man was baffled and
brought to an end. So the Plague defied all medicines; the very
physicians were seized with it, with their preservatives in their
mouths; and men went about prescribing to others and telling them
what to do till the tokens were upon them, and they dropped down
dead, destroyed by that very enemy they directed others to
oppose. This was the case of several physicians, even some of
them the most eminent, and of several of the most skilful
surgeons. Abundance of quacks too died, who had the folly to
trust to their own medicines, which they must needs be conscious
to themselves were good for nothing, and who rather ought, like
other sorts of thieves, to have run away, sensible of their
guilt, from the justice that they could not but expect should
punish them as they knew they had deserved.
Not that it is any derogation from the labour or application of
the physicians to say they fell in the common calamity; nor is it
so intended by me; it rather is to their praise that they
ventured their lives so far as even to lose them in the service
of mankind. They endeavoured to do good, and to save the lives of
others. But we were not to expect that the physicians could stop
God’s judgements, or prevent a distemper eminently armed from
heaven from executing the errand it was sent about.
Doubtless, the physicians assisted many by their skill, and by
their prudence and applications, to the saving of their lives and
restoring their health. But it is not lessening their character
or their skill, to say they could not cure those that had the
tokens upon them, or those who were mortally infected before the
physicians were sent for, as was frequently the case.
It remains to mention now what public measures were taken by the
magistrates for the general safety, and to prevent the spreading
of the distemper, when it first broke out. I shall have frequent
occasion to speak of the prudence of the magistrates, their
charity, their vigilance for the poor, and for preserving good
order, furnishing provisions, and the like, when the plague was
increased, as it afterwards was. But I am now upon the order and
regulations they published for the government of infected
families.
I mentioned above shutting of houses up; and it is needful to say
something particularly to that, for this part of the history of
the plague is very melancholy, but the most grievous story must
be told.
About June the Lord Mayor of London and the Court of Aldermen, as
I have said, began more particularly to concern themselves for
the regulation of the city.
The justices of Peace for Middlesex, by direction of the
Secretary of State, had begun to shut up houses in the parishes
of St Giles-in-the-Fields, St Martin, St Clement Danes, &c., and
it was with good success; for in several streets where the plague
broke out, upon strict guarding the houses that were infected,
and taking care to bury those that died immediately after they
were known to be dead, the plague ceased in those streets. It was
also observed that the plague decreased sooner in those parishes
after they had been visited to the full than it did in the
parishes of Bishopsgate, Shoreditch, Aldgate, Whitechappel,
Stepney, and others; the early care taken in that manner being a
great means to the putting a check to it.
This shutting up of houses was a method first taken, as I
understand, in the plague which happened in 1603, at the coming
of King James the First to the crown; and the power of shutting
people up in their own houses was granted by Act of Parliament,
entitled, ‘An Act for the charitable Relief and Ordering of
Persons infected with the Plague’; on which Act of Parliament the
Lord Mayor and aldermen of the city of London founded the order
they made at this time, and which took place the 1st of July
1665, when the numbers infected within the city were but few, the
last bill for the ninety-two parishes being but four; and some
houses having been shut up in the city, and some people being
removed to the pest-house beyond Bunhill Fields, in the way to
Islington,—I say, by these means, when there died near one
thousand a week in the whole, the number in the city was but
twenty-eight, and the city was preserved more healthy in
proportion than any other place all the time of the infection.
These orders of my Lord Mayor’s were published, as I have said,
the latter end of June, and took place from the 1st of July, and
were as follows, viz.:—
ORDERS CONCEIVED AND PUBLISHED BY THE LORD MAYOR AND ALDERMEN OF
THE CITY OF LONDON CONCERNING THE INFECTION OF THE PLAGUE, 1665.
‘WHEREAS in the reign of our late Sovereign King James, of happy
memory, an Act was made for the charitable relief and ordering of
persons infected with the plague, whereby authority was given to
justices of the peace, mayors, bailiffs, and other head-officers
to appoint within their several limits examiners, searchers,
watchmen, keepers, and buriers for the persons and places
infected, and to minister unto them oaths for the performance of
their offices. And the same statute did also authorise the giving
of other directions, as unto them for the present necessity
should seem good in their directions. It is now, upon special
consideration, thought very expedient for preventing and avoiding
of infection of sickness (if it shall so please Almighty God)
that these officers following be appointed, and these orders
hereafter duly observed.
Examiners to be appointed in every Parish.
‘First, it is thought requisite, and so ordered, that in every
parish there be one, two, or more persons of good sort and credit
chosen and appointed by the alderman, his deputy, and common
council of every ward, by the name of examiners, to continue in
that office the space of two months at least. And if any fit
person so appointed shall refuse to undertake the same, the said
parties so refusing to be committed to prison until they shall
conform themselves accordingly.
The Examiner’s Office.
‘That these examiners be sworn by the aldermen to inquire and
learn from time to time what houses in every parish be visited,
and what persons be sick, and of what diseases, as near as they
can inform themselves; and upon doubt in that case, to command
restraint of access until it appear what the disease shall prove.
And if they find any person sick of the infection, to give order
to the constable that the house be shut up; and if the constable
shall be found remiss or negligent, to give present notice
thereof to the alderman of the ward.
Watchmen.
‘That to every infected house there be appointed two watchmen,
one for every day, and the other for the night; and that these
watchmen have a special care that no person go in or out of such
infected houses whereof they have the charge, upon pain of severe
punishment. And the said watchmen to do such further offices as
the sick house shall need and require: and if the watchman be
sent upon any business, to lock up the house and take the key
with him; and the watchman by day to attend until ten of the
clock at night, and the watchman by night until six in the
morning.
Searchers.
‘That there be a special care to appoint women searchers in every
parish, such as are of honest reputation, and of the best sort as
can be got in this kind; and these to be sworn to make due search
and true report to the utmost of their knowledge whether the
persons whose bodies they are appointed to search do die of the
infection, or of what other diseases, as near as they can. And
that the physicians who shall be appointed for cure and
prevention of the infection do call before them the said
searchers who are, or shall be, appointed for the several
parishes under their respective cares, to the end they may
consider whether they are fitly qualified for that employment,
and charge them from time to time as they shall see cause, if
they appear defective in their duties.
‘That no searcher during this time of visitation be permitted to
use any public work or employment, or keep any shop or stall, or
be employed as a laundress, or in any other common employment
whatsoever.
Chirurgeons.
‘For better assistance of the searchers, forasmuch as there hath
been heretofore great abuse in misreporting the disease, to the
further spreading of the infection, it is therefore ordered that
there be chosen and appointed able and discreet chirurgeons,
besides those that do already belong to the pest-house, amongst
whom the city and Liberties to be quartered as the places lie
most apt and convenient; and every of these to have one quarter
for his limit; and the said chirurgeons in every of their limits
to join with the searchers for the view of the body, to the end
there may be a true report made of the disease.
‘And further, that the said chirurgeons shall visit and search
such-like persons as shall either send for them or be named and
directed unto them by the examiners of every parish, and inform
themselves of the disease of the said parties.
‘And forasmuch as the said chirurgeons are to be sequestered from
all other cures, and kept only to this disease of the infection,
it is ordered that every of the said chirurgeons shall have
twelve-pence a body searched by them, to be paid out of the goods
of the party searched, if he be able, or otherwise by the parish.
Nurse-keepers.
‘If any nurse-keeper shall remove herself out of any infected
house before twenty-eight days after the decease of any person
dying of the infection, the house to which the said nurse-keeper
doth so remove herself shall be shut up until the said
twenty-eight days be expired.’
ORDERS CONCERNING INFECTED HOUSES AND PERSONS SICK OF THE PLAGUE.
Notice to be given of the Sickness.
‘The master of every house, as soon as any one in his house
complaineth, either of blotch or purple, or swelling in any part
of his body, or falleth otherwise dangerously sick, without
apparent cause of some other disease, shall give knowledge
thereof to the examiner of health within two hours after the said
sign shall appear.
Sequestration of the Sick.
‘As soon as any man shall be found by this examiner, chirurgeon,
or searcher to be sick of the plague, he shall the same night be
sequestered in the same house; and in case he be so sequestered,
then though he afterwards die not, the house wherein he sickened
should be shut up for a month, after the use of the due
preservatives taken by the rest.
Airing the Stuff.
‘For sequestration of the goods and stuff of the infection, their
bedding and apparel and hangings of chambers must be well aired
with fire and such perfumes as are requisite within the infected
house before they be taken again to use. This to be done by the
appointment of an examiner.
Shutting up of the House.
‘If any person shall have visited any man known to be infected of
the plague, or entered willingly into any known infected house,
being not allowed, the house wherein he inhabiteth shall be shut
up for certain days by the examiner’s direction.
None to be removed out of infected Houses, but, &C.
‘Item, that none be removed out of the house where he falleth
sick of the infection into any other house in the city (except it
be to the pest-house or a tent, or unto some such house which the
owner of the said visited house holdeth in his own hands and
occupieth by his own servants); and so as security be given to
the parish whither such remove is made, that the attendance and
charge about the said visited persons shall be observed and
charged in all the particularities before expressed, without any
cost of that parish to which any such remove shall happen to be
made, and this remove to be done by night. And it shall be lawful
to any person that hath two houses to remove either his sound or
his infected people to his spare house at his choice, so as, if
he send away first his sound, he not after send thither his sick,
nor again unto the sick the sound; and that the same which he
sendeth be for one week at the least shut up and secluded from
company, for fear of some infection at the first not appearing.
Burial of the Dead.
‘That the burial of the dead by this visitation be at most
convenient hours, always either before sun-rising or after
sun-setting, with the privity of the churchwardens or constable,
and not otherwise; and that no neighbours nor friends be suffered
to accompany the corpse to church, or to enter the house visited,
upon pain of having his house shut up or be imprisoned.
‘And that no corpse dying of infection shall be buried, or remain
in any church in time of common prayer, sermon, or lecture. And
that no children be suffered at time of burial of any corpse in
any church, churchyard, or burying-place to come near the corpse,
coffin, or grave. And that all the graves shall be at least six
feet deep.
‘And further, all public assemblies at other burials are to be
foreborne during the continuance of this visitation.
No infected Stuff to be uttered.
‘That no clothes, stuff, bedding, or garments be suffered to be
carried or conveyed out of any infected houses, and that the
criers and carriers abroad of bedding or old apparel to be sold
or pawned be utterly prohibited and restrained, and no brokers of
bedding or old apparel be permitted to make any outward show, or
hang forth on their stalls, shop-boards, or windows, towards any
street, lane, common way, or passage, any old bedding or apparel
to be sold, upon pain of imprisonment. And if any broker or other
person shall buy any bedding, apparel, or other stuff out of any
infected house within two months after the infection hath been
there, his house shall be shut up as infected, and so shall
continue shut up twenty days at the least.
No Person to be conveyed out of any infected House.
‘If any person visited do fortune, by negligent looking unto, or
by any other means, to come or be conveyed from a place infected
to any other place, the parish from whence such party hath come
or been conveyed, upon notice thereof given, shall at their
charge cause the said party so visited and escaped to be carried
and brought back again by night, and the parties in this case
offending to be punished at the direction of the alderman of the
ward, and the house of the receiver of such visited person to be
shut up for twenty days.
Every visited House to be marked.
‘That every house visited be marked with a red cross of a foot
long in the middle of the door, evident to be seen, and with
these usual printed words, that is to say, “Lord, have mercy upon
us,” to be set close over the same cross, there to continue until
lawful opening of the same house.
Every visited House to be watched.
‘That the constables see every house shut up, and to be attended
with watchmen, which may keep them in, and minister necessaries
unto them at their own charges, if they be able, or at the common
charge, if they are unable; the shutting up to be for the space
of four weeks after all be whole.
‘That precise order to be taken that the searchers, chirurgeons,
keepers, and buriers are not to pass the streets without holding
a red rod or wand of three feet in length in their hands, open
and evident to be seen, and are not to go into any other house
than into their own, or into that whereunto they are directed or
sent for; but to forbear and abstain from company, especially
when they have been lately used in any such business or
attendance.
Inmates.
‘That where several inmates are in one and the same house, and
any person in that house happens to be infected, no other person
or family of such house shall be suffered to remove him or
themselves without a certificate from the examiners of health of
that parish; or in default thereof, the house whither he or they
so remove shall be shut up as in case of visitation.
Hackney-Coaches.
‘That care be taken of hackney-coachmen, that they may not (as
some of them have been observed to do after carrying of infected
persons to the pest-house and other places) be admitted to common
use till their coaches be well aired, and have stood unemployed
by the space of five or six days after such service.’
ORDERS FOR CLEANSING AND KEEPING OF THE STREETS SWEPT.
The Streets to be kept Clean.
‘First, it is thought necessary, and so ordered, that every
householder do cause the street to be daily prepared before his
door, and so to keep it clean swept all the week long.
That Rakers take it from out the Houses.
‘That the sweeping and filth of houses be daily carried away by
the rakers, and that the raker shall give notice of his coming by
the blowing of a horn, as hitherto hath been done.
Laystalls to be made far off from the City.
‘That the laystalls be removed as far as may be out of the city
and common passages, and that no nightman or other be suffered to
empty a vault into any garden near about the city.
Care to be had of unwholesome Fish or Flesh, and of musty Corn.
‘That special care be taken that no stinking fish, or unwholesome
flesh, or musty corn, or other corrupt fruits of what sort
soever, be suffered to be sold about the city, or any part of the
same.
‘That the brewers and tippling-houses be looked into for musty
and unwholesome casks.
‘That no hogs, dogs, or cats, or tame pigeons, or ponies, be
suffered to be kept within any part of the city, or any swine to
be or stray in the streets or lanes, but that such swine be
impounded by the beadle or any other officer, and the owner
punished according to Act of Common Council, and that the dogs be
killed by the dog-killers appointed for that purpose.’
ORDERS CONCERNING LOOSE PERSONS AND IDLE ASSEMBLIES.
Beggars.
‘Forasmuch as nothing is more complained of than the multitude of
rogues and wandering beggars that swarm in every place about the
city, being a great cause of the spreading of the infection, and
will not be avoided, notwithstanding any orders that have been
given to the contrary: It is therefore now ordered, that such
constables, and others whom this matter may any way concern, take
special care that no wandering beggars be suffered in the streets
of this city in any fashion or manner whatsoever, upon the
penalty provided by the law, to be duly and severely executed
upon them.
Plays.
‘That all plays, bear-baitings, games, singing of ballads,
buckler-play, or such-like causes of assemblies of people be
utterly prohibited, and the parties offending severely punished
by every alderman in his ward.
Feasting prohibited.
‘That all public feasting, and particularly by the companies of
this city, and dinners at taverns, ale-houses, and other places
of common entertainment, be forborne till further order and
allowance; and that the money thereby spared be preserved and
employed for the benefit and relief of the poor visited with the
infection.
Tippling-houses.
‘That disorderly tippling in taverns, ale-houses, coffee-houses,
and cellars be severely looked unto, as the common sin of this
time and greatest occasion of dispersing the plague. And that no
company or person be suffered to remain or come into any tavern,
ale-house, or coffee-house to drink after nine of the clock in
the evening, according to the ancient law and custom of this
city, upon the penalties ordained in that behalf.
‘And for the better execution of these orders, and such other
rules and directions as, upon further consideration, shall be
found needful: It is ordered and enjoined that the aldermen,
deputies, and common councilmen shall meet together weekly, once,
twice, thrice or oftener (as cause shall require), at some one
general place accustomed in their respective wards (being clear
from infection of the plague), to consult how the said orders may
be duly put in execution; not intending that any dwelling in or
near places infected shall come to the said meeting while their
coming may be doubtful. And the said aldermen, and deputies, and
common councilmen in their several wards may put in execution any
other good orders that by them at their said meetings shall be
conceived and devised for preservation of his Majesty’s subjects
from the infection.
‘SIR JOHN LAWRENCE, Lord Mayor.
SIR GEORGE WATERMAN
SIR CHARLES
DOE, Sheriffs.’
I need not say that these orders extended only to such places as
were within the Lord Mayor’s jurisdiction, so it is requisite to
observe that the justices of Peace within those parishes and
places as were called the Hamlets and out-parts took the same
method. As I remember, the orders for shutting up of houses did
not take Place so soon on our side, because, as I said before,
the plague did not reach to these eastern parts of the town at
least, nor begin to be very violent, till the beginning of
August. For example, the whole bill from the 11th to the 18th of
July was 1761, yet there died but 71 of the plague in all those
parishes we call the Tower Hamlets, and they were as follows:—
- The next week And to the 1st
- was thus: of Aug. thus:
Aldgate 14 34 65
Stepney 33 58 76
Whitechappel 21 48 79
St Katherine, Tower 2 4 4
Trinity, Minories 1 1 4
- —- —- —-
- 71 145 228
It was indeed coming on amain, for the burials that same week
were in the next adjoining parishes thus:—
- The next week
- prodigiously To the 1st of
- increased, as: Aug. thus:
St Leonard’s, Shoreditch 64 84 110
St Botolph’s, Bishopsgate 65 105 116
St Giles’s, Cripplegate 213 421 554
- —- —- —-
- 342 610 780
This shutting up of houses was at first counted a very cruel and
unchristian method, and the poor people so confined made bitter
lamentations. Complaints of the severity of it were also daily
brought to my Lord Mayor, of houses causelessly (and some
maliciously) shut up. I cannot say; but upon inquiry many that
complained so loudly were found in a condition to be continued;
and others again, inspection being made upon the sick person, and
the sickness not appearing infectious, or if uncertain, yet on
his being content to be carried to the pest-house, were released.
It is true that the locking up the doors of people’s houses, and
setting a watchman there night and day to prevent their stirring
out or any coming to them, when perhaps the sound people in the
family might have escaped if they had been removed from the sick,
looked very hard and cruel; and many people perished in these
miserable confinements which, ’tis reasonable to believe, would
not have been distempered if they had had liberty, though the
plague was in the house; at which the people were very clamorous
and uneasy at first, and several violences were committed and
injuries offered to the men who were set to watch the houses so
shut up; also several people broke out by force in many places,
as I shall observe by-and-by. But it was a public good that
justified the private mischief, and there was no obtaining the
least mitigation by any application to magistrates or government
at that time, at least not that I heard of. This put the people
upon all manner of stratagem in order, if possible, to get out;
and it would fill a little volume to set down the arts used by
the people of such houses to shut the eyes of the watchmen who
were employed, to deceive them, and to escape or break out from
them, in which frequent scuffles and some mischief happened; of
which by itself.
As I went along Houndsditch one morning about eight o’clock there
was a great noise. It is true, indeed, there was not much crowd,
because people were not very free to gather together, or to stay
long together when they were there; nor did I stay long there.
But the outcry was loud enough to prompt my curiosity, and I
called to one that looked out of a window, and asked what was the
matter.
A watchman, it seems, had been employed to keep his post at the
door of a house which was infected, or said to be infected, and
was shut up. He had been there all night for two nights together,
as he told his story, and the day-watchman had been there one
day, and was now come to relieve him. All this while no noise had
been heard in the house, no light had been seen; they called for
nothing, sent him of no errands, which used to be the chief
business of the watchmen; neither had they given him any
disturbance, as he said, from the Monday afternoon, when he heard
great crying and screaming in the house, which, as he supposed,
was occasioned by some of the family dying just at that time. It
seems, the night before, the dead-cart, as it was called, had
been stopped there, and a servant-maid had been brought down to
the door dead, and the buriers or bearers, as they were called,
put her into the cart, wrapt only in a green rug, and carried her
away.
The watchman had knocked at the door, it seems, when he heard
that noise and crying, as above, and nobody answered a great
while; but at last one looked out and said with an angry, quick
tone, and yet a kind of crying voice, or a voice of one that was
crying, ‘What d’ye want, that ye make such a knocking?’ He
answered, ‘I am the watchman! How do you do? What is the matter?’
The person answered, ‘What is that to you? Stop the dead-cart.’
This, it seems, was about one o’clock. Soon after, as the fellow
said, he stopped the dead-cart, and then knocked again, but
nobody answered. He continued knocking, and the bellman called
out several times, ‘Bring out your dead’; but nobody answered,
till the man that drove the cart, being called to other houses,
would stay no longer, and drove away.
The watchman knew not what to make of all this, so he let them
alone till the morning-man or day-watchman, as they called him,
came to relieve him. Giving him an account of the particulars,
they knocked at the door a great while, but nobody answered; and
they observed that the window or casement at which the person had
looked out who had answered before continued open, being up two
pair of stairs.
Upon this the two men, to satisfy their curiosity, got a long
ladder, and one of them went up to the window and looked into the
room, where he saw a woman lying dead upon the floor in a dismal
manner, having no clothes on her but her shift. But though he
called aloud, and putting in his long staff, knocked hard on the
floor, yet nobody stirred or answered; neither could he hear any
noise in the house.
He came down again upon this, and acquainted his fellow, who went
up also; and finding it just so, they resolved to acquaint either
the Lord Mayor or some other magistrate of it, but did not offer
to go in at the window. The magistrate, it seems, upon the
information of the two men, ordered the house to be broke open, a
constable and other persons being appointed to be present, that
nothing might be plundered; and accordingly it was so done, when
nobody was found in the house but that young woman, who having
been infected and past recovery, the rest had left her to die by
herself, and were every one gone, having found some way to delude
the watchman, and to get open the door, or get out at some
back-door, or over the tops of the houses, so that he knew
nothing of it; and as to those cries and shrieks which he heard,
it was supposed they were the passionate cries of the family at
the bitter parting, which, to be sure, it was to them all, this
being the sister to the mistress of the family. The man of the
house, his wife, several children, and servants, being all gone
and fled, whether sick or sound, that I could never learn; nor,
indeed, did I make much inquiry after it.
Many such escapes were made out of infected houses, as
particularly when the watchman was sent of some errand; for it
was his business to go of any errand that the family sent him of;
that is to say, for necessaries, such as food and physic; to
fetch physicians, if they would come, or surgeons, or nurses, or
to order the dead-cart, and the like; but with this condition,
too, that when he went he was to lock up the outer door of the
house and take the key away with him, To evade this, and cheat
the watchmen, people got two or three keys made to their locks,
or they found ways to unscrew the locks such as were screwed on,
and so take off the lock, being in the inside of the house, and
while they sent away the watchman to the market, to the
bakehouse, or for one trifle or another, open the door and go out
as often as they pleased. But this being found out, the officers
afterwards had orders to padlock up the doors on the outside, and
place bolts on them as they thought fit.
At another house, as I was informed, in the street next within
Aldgate, a whole family was shut up and locked in because the
maid-servant was taken sick. The master of the house had
complained by his friends to the next alderman and to the Lord
Mayor, and had consented to have the maid carried to the
pest-house, but was refused; so the door was marked with a red
cross, a padlock on the outside, as above, and a watchman set to
keep the door, according to public order.
After the master of the house found there was no remedy, but that
he, his wife, and his children were to be locked up with this
poor distempered servant, he called to the watchman, and told him
he must go then and fetch a nurse for them to attend this poor
girl, for that it would be certain death to them all to oblige
them to nurse her; and told him plainly that if he would not do
this, the maid must perish either of the distemper or be starved
for want of food, for he was resolved none of his family should
go near her; and she lay in the garret four storey high, where
she could not cry out, or call to anybody for help.
The watchman consented to that, and went and fetched a nurse, as
he was appointed, and brought her to them the same evening.
During this interval the master of the house took his opportunity
to break a large hole through his shop into a bulk or stall,
where formerly a cobbler had sat, before or under his
shop-window; but the tenant, as may be supposed at such a dismal
time as that, was dead or removed, and so he had the key in his
own keeping. Having made his way into this stall, which he could
not have done if the man had been at the door, the noise he was
obliged to make being such as would have alarmed the watchman; I
say, having made his way into this stall, he sat still till the
watchman returned with the nurse, and all the next day also. But
the night following, having contrived to send the watchman of
another trifling errand, which, as I take it, was to an
apothecary’s for a plaister for the maid, which he was to stay
for the making up, or some other such errand that might secure
his staying some time; in that time he conveyed himself and all
his family out of the house, and left the nurse and the watchman
to bury the poor wench—that is, throw her into the cart—and take
care of the house.
I could give a great many such stories as these, diverting
enough, which in the long course of that dismal year I met
with—that is, heard of—and which are very certain to be true, or
very near the truth; that is to say, true in the general: for no
man could at such a time learn all the particulars. There was
likewise violence used with the watchmen, as was reported, in
abundance of places; and I believe that from the beginning of the
visitation to the end, there was not less than eighteen or twenty
of them killed, or so wounded as to be taken up for dead, which
was supposed to be done by the people in the infected houses
which were shut up, and where they attempted to come out and were
opposed.
Nor, indeed, could less be expected, for here were so many
prisons in the town as there were houses shut up; and as the
people shut up or imprisoned so were guilty of no crime, only
shut up because miserable, it was really the more intolerable to
them.
It had also this difference, that every prison, as we may call
it, had but one jailer, and as he had the whole house to guard,
and that many houses were so situated as that they had several
ways out, some more, some less, and some into several streets, it
was impossible for one man so to guard all the passages as to
prevent the escape of people made desperate by the fright of
their circumstances, by the resentment of their usage, or by the
raging of the distemper itself; so that they would talk to the
watchman on one side of the house, while the family made their
escape at another.
For example, in Coleman Street there are abundance of alleys, as
appears still. A house was shut up in that they call White’s
Alley; and this house had a back-window, not a door, into a court
which had a passage into Bell Alley. A watchman was set by the
constable at the door of this house, and there he stood, or his
comrade, night and day, while the family went all away in the
evening out at that window into the court, and left the poor
fellows warding and watching for near a fortnight.
Not far from the same place they blew up a watchman with
gunpowder, and burned the poor fellow dreadfully; and while he
made hideous cries, and nobody would venture to come near to help
him, the whole family that were able to stir got out at the
windows one storey high, two that were left sick calling out for
help. Care was taken to give them nurses to look after them, but
the persons fled were never found, till after the plague was
abated they returned; but as nothing could be proved, so nothing
could be done to them.
It is to be considered, too, that as these were prisons without
bars and bolts, which our common prisons are furnished with, so
the people let themselves down out of their windows, even in the
face of the watchman, bringing swords or pistols in their hands,
and threatening the poor wretch to shoot him if he stirred or
called for help.
In other cases, some had gardens, and walls or pales, between
them and their neighbours, or yards and back-houses; and these,
by friendship and entreaties, would get leave to get over those
walls or pales, and so go out at their neighbours’ doors; or, by
giving money to their servants, get them to let them through in
the night; so that in short, the shutting up of houses was in no
wise to be depended upon. Neither did it answer the end at all,
serving more to make the people desperate, and drive them to such
extremities as that they would break out at all adventures.
And that which was still worse, those that did thus break out
spread the infection farther by their wandering about with the
distemper upon them, in their desperate circumstances, than they
would otherwise have done; for whoever considers all the
particulars in such cases must acknowledge, and we cannot doubt
but the severity of those confinements made many people
desperate, and made them run out of their houses at all hazards,
and with the plague visibly upon them, not knowing either whither
to go or what to do, or, indeed, what they did; and many that did
so were driven to dreadful exigencies and extremities, and
perished in the streets or fields for mere want, or dropped down
by the raging violence of the fever upon them. Others wandered
into the country, and went forward any way, as their desperation
guided them, not knowing whither they went or would go: till,
faint and tired, and not getting any relief, the houses and
villages on the road refusing to admit them to lodge whether
infected or no, they have perished by the roadside or gotten into
barns and died there, none daring to come to them or relieve
them, though perhaps not infected, for nobody would believe them.
On the other hand, when the plague at first seized a family that
is to say, when any body of the family had gone out and unwarily
or otherwise catched the distemper and brought it home—it was
certainly known by the family before it was known to the
officers, who, as you will see by the order, were appointed to
examine into the circumstances of all sick persons when they
heard of their being sick.
In this interval, between their being taken sick and the
examiners coming, the master of the house had leisure and liberty
to remove himself or all his family, if he knew whither to go,
and many did so. But the great disaster was that many did thus
after they were really infected themselves, and so carried the
disease into the houses of those who were so hospitable as to
receive them; which, it must be confessed, was very cruel and
ungrateful.
And this was in part the reason of the general notion, or scandal
rather, which went about of the temper of people infected:
namely, that they did not take the least care or make any scruple
of infecting others, though I cannot say but there might be some
truth in it too, but not so general as was reported. What natural
reason could be given for so wicked a thing at a time when they
might conclude themselves just going to appear at the bar of
Divine justice I know not. I am very well satisfied that it
cannot be reconciled to religion and principle any more than it
can be to generosity and Humanity, but I may speak of that again.
I am speaking now of people made desperate by the apprehensions
of their being shut up, and their breaking out by stratagem or
force, either before or after they were shut up, whose misery was
not lessened when they were out, but sadly increased. On the
other hand, many that thus got away had retreats to go to and
other houses, where they locked themselves up and kept hid till
the plague was over; and many families, foreseeing the approach
of the distemper, laid up stores of provisions sufficient for
their whole families, and shut themselves up, and that so
entirely that they were neither seen or heard of till the
infection was quite ceased, and then came abroad sound and well.
I might recollect several such as these, and give you the
particulars of their management; for doubtless it was the most
effectual secure step that could be taken for such whose
circumstances would not admit them to remove, or who had not
retreats abroad proper for the case; for in being thus shut up
they were as if they had been a hundred miles off. Nor do I
remember that any one of those families miscarried. Among these,
several Dutch merchants were particularly remarkable, who kept
their houses like little garrisons besieged suffering none to go
in or out or come near them, particularly one in a court in
Throgmorton Street whose house looked into Draper’s Garden.
But I come back to the case of families infected and shut up by
the magistrates. The misery of those families is not to be
expressed; and it was generally in such houses that we heard the
most dismal shrieks and outcries of the poor people, terrified
and even frighted to death by the sight of the condition of their
dearest relations, and by the terror of being imprisoned as they
were.
I remember, and while I am writing this story I think I hear the
very sound of it, a certain lady had an only daughter, a young
maiden about nineteen years old, and who was possessed of a very
considerable fortune. They were only lodgers in the house where
they were. The young woman, her mother, and the maid had been
abroad on some occasion, I do not remember what, for the house
was not shut up; but about two hours after they came home the
young lady complained she was not well; in a quarter of an hour
more she vomited and had a violent pain in her head. ‘Pray God’,
says her mother, in a terrible fright, ‘my child has not the
distemper!’ The pain in her head increasing, her mother ordered
the bed to be warmed, and resolved to put her to bed, and
prepared to give her things to sweat, which was the ordinary
remedy to be taken when the first apprehensions of the distemper
began.
While the bed was airing the mother undressed the young woman,
and just as she was laid down in the bed, she, looking upon her
body with a candle, immediately discovered the fatal tokens on
the inside of her thighs. Her mother, not being able to contain
herself, threw down her candle and shrieked out in such a
frightful manner that it was enough to place horror upon the
stoutest heart in the world; nor was it one scream or one cry,
but the fright having seized her spirits, she—fainted first, then
recovered, then ran all over the house, up the stairs and down
the stairs, like one distracted, and indeed really was
distracted, and continued screeching and crying out for several
hours void of all sense, or at least government of her senses,
and, as I was told, never came thoroughly to herself again. As to
the young maiden, she was a dead corpse from that moment, for the
gangrene which occasions the spots had spread [over] her whole
body, and she died in less than two hours. But still the mother
continued crying out, not knowing anything more of her child,
several hours after she was dead. It is so long ago that I am not
certain, but I think the mother never recovered, but died in two
or three weeks after.
This was an extraordinary case, and I am therefore the more
particular in it, because I came so much to the knowledge of it;
but there were innumerable such-like cases, and it was seldom
that the weekly bill came in but there were two or three put in,
‘frighted’; that is, that may well be called frighted to death.
But besides those who were so frighted as to die upon the spot,
there were great numbers frighted to other extremes, some
frighted out of their senses, some out of their memory, and some
out of their understanding. But I return to the shutting up of
houses.
As several people, I say, got out of their houses by stratagem
after they were shut up, so others got out by bribing the
watchmen, and giving them money to let them go privately out in
the night. I must confess I thought it at that time the most
innocent corruption or bribery that any man could be guilty of,
and therefore could not but pity the poor men, and think it was
hard when three of those watchmen were publicly whipped through
the streets for suffering people to go out of houses shut up.
But notwithstanding that severity, money prevailed with the poor
men, and many families found means to make sallies out, and
escape that way after they had been shut up; but these were
generally such as had some places to retire to; and though there
was no easy passing the roads any whither after the 1st of
August, yet there were many ways of retreat, and particularly, as
I hinted, some got tents and set them up in the fields, carrying
beds or straw to lie on, and provisions to eat, and so lived in
them as hermits in a cell, for nobody would venture to come near
them; and several stories were told of such, some comical, some
tragical, some who lived like wandering pilgrims in the deserts,
and escaped by making themselves exiles in such a manner as is
scarce to be credited, and who yet enjoyed more liberty than was
to be expected in such cases.
I have by me a story of two brothers and their kinsman, who being
single men, but that had stayed in the city too long to get away,
and indeed not knowing where to go to have any retreat, nor
having wherewith to travel far, took a course for their own
preservation, which though in itself at first desperate, yet was
so natural that it may be wondered that no more did so at that
time. They were but of mean condition, and yet not so very poor
as that they could not furnish themselves with some little
conveniences such as might serve to keep life and soul together;
and finding the distemper increasing in a terrible manner, they
resolved to shift as well as they could, and to be gone.
One of them had been a soldier in the late wars, and before that
in the Low Countries, and having been bred to no particular
employment but his arms, and besides being wounded, and not able
to work very hard, had for some time been employed at a baker’s
of sea-biscuit in Wapping.
The brother of this man was a seaman too, but somehow or other
had been hurt of one leg, that he could not go to sea, but had
worked for his living at a sailmaker’s in Wapping, or
thereabouts; and being a good husband, had laid up some money,
and was the richest of the three.
The third man was a joiner or carpenter by trade, a handy fellow,
and he had no wealth but his box or basket of tools, with the
help of which he could at any time get his living, such a time as
this excepted, wherever he went—and he lived near Shadwell.
They all lived in Stepney parish, which, as I have said, being
the last that was infected, or at least violently, they stayed
there till they evidently saw the plague was abating at the west
part of the town, and coming towards the east, where they lived.
The story of those three men, if the reader will be content to
have me give it in their own persons, without taking upon me to
either vouch the particulars or answer for any mistakes, I shall
give as distinctly as I can, believing the history will be a very
good pattern for any poor man to follow, in case the like public
desolation should happen here; and if there may be no such
occasion, which God of His infinite mercy grant us, still the
story may have its uses so many ways as that it will, I hope,
never be said that the relating has been unprofitable.
I say all this previous to the history, having yet, for the
present, much more to say before I quit my own part.
I went all the first part of the time freely about the streets,
though not so freely as to run myself into apparent danger,
except when they dug the great pit in the churchyard of our
parish of Aldgate. A terrible pit it was, and I could not resist
my curiosity to go and see it. As near as I may judge, it was
about forty feet in length, and about fifteen or sixteen feet
broad, and at the time I first looked at it, about nine feet
deep; but it was said they dug it near twenty feet deep
afterwards in one part of it, till they could go no deeper for
the water; for they had, it seems, dug several large pits before
this. For though the plague was long a-coming to our parish, yet,
when it did come, there was no parish in or about London where it
raged with such violence as in the two parishes of Aldgate and
Whitechappel.
I say they had dug several pits in another ground, when the
distemper began to spread in our parish, and especially when the
dead-carts began to go about, which was not, in our parish, till
the beginning of August. Into these pits they had put perhaps
fifty or sixty bodies each; then they made larger holes wherein
they buried all that the cart brought in a week, which, by the
middle to the end of August, came to from 200 to 400 a week; and
they could not well dig them larger, because of the order of the
magistrates confining them to leave no bodies within six feet of
the surface; and the water coming on at about seventeen or
eighteen feet, they could not well, I say, put more in one pit.
But now, at the beginning of September, the plague raging in a
dreadful manner, and the number of burials in our parish
increasing to more than was ever buried in any parish about
London of no larger extent, they ordered this dreadful gulf to be
dug—for such it was, rather than a pit.
They had supposed this pit would have supplied them for a month
or more when they dug it, and some blamed the churchwardens for
suffering such a frightful thing, telling them they were making
preparations to bury the whole parish, and the like; but time
made it appear the churchwardens knew the condition of the parish
better than they did: for, the pit being finished the 4th of
September, I think, they began to bury in it the 6th, and by the
20th, which was just two weeks, they had thrown into it 1114
bodies when they were obliged to fill it up, the bodies being
then come to lie within six feet of the surface. I doubt not but
there may be some ancient persons alive in the parish who can
justify the fact of this, and are able to show even in what place
of the churchyard the pit lay better than I can. The mark of it
also was many years to be seen in the churchyard on the surface,
lying in length parallel with the passage which goes by the west
wall of the churchyard out of Houndsditch, and turns east again
into Whitechappel, coming out near the Three Nuns’ Inn.
It was about the 10th of September that my curiosity led, or
rather drove, me to go and see this pit again, when there had
been near 400 people buried in it; and I was not content to see
it in the day-time, as I had done before, for then there would
have been nothing to have been seen but the loose earth; for all
the bodies that were thrown in were immediately covered with
earth by those they called the buriers, which at other times were
called bearers; but I resolved to go in the night and see some of
them thrown in.
There was a strict order to prevent people coming to those pits,
and that was only to prevent infection. But after some time that
order was more necessary, for people that were infected and near
their end, and delirious also, would run to those pits, wrapt in
blankets or rugs, and throw themselves in, and, as they said,
bury themselves. I cannot say that the officers suffered any
willingly to lie there; but I have heard that in a great pit in
Finsbury, in the parish of Cripplegate, it lying open then to the
fields, for it was not then walled about, [many] came and threw
themselves in, and expired there, before they threw any earth
upon them; and that when they came to bury others and found them
there, they were quite dead, though not cold.
This may serve a little to describe the dreadful condition of
that day, though it is impossible to say anything that is able to
give a true idea of it to those who did not see it, other than
this, that it was indeed very, very, very dreadful, and such as
no tongue can express.
I got admittance into the churchyard by being acquainted with the
sexton who attended; who, though he did not refuse me at all, yet
earnestly persuaded me not to go, telling me very seriously (for
he was a good, religious, and sensible man) that it was indeed
their business and duty to venture, and to run all hazards, and
that in it they might hope to be preserved; but that I had no
apparent call to it but my own curiosity, which, he said, he
believed I would not pretend was sufficient to justify my running
that hazard. I told him I had been pressed in my mind to go, and
that perhaps it might be an instructing sight, that might not be
without its uses. ‘Nay,’ says the good man, ‘if you will venture
upon that score, name of God go in; for, depend upon it, ’twill
be a sermon to you, it may be, the best that ever you heard in
your life. ’Tis a speaking sight,’ says he, ‘and has a voice with
it, and a loud one, to call us all to repentance’; and with that
he opened the door and said, ‘Go, if you will.’
His discourse had shocked my resolution a little, and I stood
wavering for a good while, but just at that interval I saw two
links come over from the end of the Minories, and heard the
bellman, and then appeared a dead-cart, as they called it, coming
over the streets; so I could no longer resist my desire of seeing
it, and went in. There was nobody, as I could perceive at first,
in the churchyard, or going into it, but the buriers and the
fellow that drove the cart, or rather led the horse and cart; but
when they came up to the pit they saw a man go to and again,
muffled up in a brown Cloak, and making motions with his hands
under his cloak, as if he was in great agony, and the buriers
immediately gathered about him, supposing he was one of those
poor delirious or desperate creatures that used to pretend, as I
have said, to bury themselves. He said nothing as he walked
about, but two or three times groaned very deeply and loud, and
sighed as he would break his heart.
When the buriers came up to him they soon found he was neither a
person infected and desperate, as I have observed above, or a
person distempered—in mind, but one oppressed with a dreadful
weight of grief indeed, having his wife and several of his
children all in the cart that was just come in with him, and he
followed in an agony and excess of sorrow. He mourned heartily,
as it was easy to see, but with a kind of masculine grief that
could not give itself vent by tears; and calmly defying the
buriers to let him alone, said he would only see the bodies
thrown in and go away, so they left importuning him. But no
sooner was the cart turned round and the bodies shot into the pit
promiscuously, which was a surprise to him, for he at least
expected they would have been decently laid in, though indeed he
was afterwards convinced that was impracticable; I say, no sooner
did he see the sight but he cried out aloud, unable to contain
himself. I could not hear what he said, but he went backward two
or three steps and fell down in a swoon. The buriers ran to him
and took him up, and in a little while he came to himself, and
they led him away to the Pie Tavern over against the end of
Houndsditch, where, it seems, the man was known, and where they
took care of him. He looked into the pit again as he went away,
but the buriers had covered the bodies so immediately with
throwing in earth, that though there was light enough, for there
were lanterns, and candles in them, placed all night round the
sides of the pit, upon heaps of earth, seven or eight, or perhaps
more, yet nothing could be seen.
This was a mournful scene indeed, and affected me almost as much
as the rest; but the other was awful and full of terror. The cart
had in it sixteen or seventeen bodies; some were wrapt up in
linen sheets, some in rags, some little other than naked, or so
loose that what covering they had fell from them in the shooting
out of the cart, and they fell quite naked among the rest; but
the matter was not much to them, or the indecency much to any one
else, seeing they were all dead, and were to be huddled together
into the common grave of mankind, as we may call it, for here was
no difference made, but poor and rich went together; there was no
other way of burials, neither was it possible there should, for
coffins were not to be had for the prodigious numbers that fell
in such a calamity as this.
It was reported by way of scandal upon the buriers, that if any
corpse was delivered to them decently wound up, as we called it
then, in a winding-sheet tied over the head and feet, which some
did, and which was generally of good linen; I say, it was
reported that the buriers were so wicked as to strip them in the
cart and carry them quite naked to the ground. But as I cannot
easily credit anything so vile among Christians, and at a time so
filled with terrors as that was, I can only relate it and leave
it undetermined.
Innumerable stories also went about of the cruel behaviours and
practices of nurses who tended the sick, and of their hastening
on the fate of those they tended in their sickness. But I shall
say more of this in its place.
I was indeed shocked with this sight; it almost overwhelmed me,
and I went away with my heart most afflicted, and full of the
afflicting thoughts, such as I cannot describe just at my going
out of the church, and turning up the street towards my own
house, I saw another cart with links, and a bellman going before,
coming out of Harrow Alley in the Butcher Row, on the other side
of the way, and being, as I perceived, very full of dead bodies,
it went directly over the street also toward the church. I stood
a while, but I had no stomach to go back again to see the same
dismal scene over again, so I went directly home, where I could
not but consider with thankfulness the risk I had run, believing
I had gotten no injury, as indeed I had not.
Here the poor unhappy gentleman’s grief came into my head again,
and indeed I could not but shed tears in the reflection upon it,
perhaps more than he did himself; but his case lay so heavy upon
my mind that I could not prevail with myself, but that I must go
out again into the street, and go to the Pie Tavern, resolving to
inquire what became of him.
It was by this time one o’clock in the morning, and yet the poor
gentleman was there. The truth was, the people of the house,
knowing him, had entertained him, and kept him there all the
night, notwithstanding the danger of being infected by him,
though it appeared the man was perfectly sound himself.
It is with regret that I take notice of this tavern. The people
were civil, mannerly, and an obliging sort of folks enough, and
had till this time kept their house open and their trade going
on, though not so very publicly as formerly: but there was a
dreadful set of fellows that used their house, and who, in the
middle of all this horror, met there every night, behaved with
all the revelling and roaring extravagances as is usual for such
people to do at other times, and, indeed, to such an offensive
degree that the very master and mistress of the house grew first
ashamed and then terrified at them.
They sat generally in a room next the street, and as they always
kept late hours, so when the dead-cart came across the street-end
to go into Houndsditch, which was in view of the tavern windows,
they would frequently open the windows as soon as they heard the
bell and look out at them; and as they might often hear sad
lamentations of people in the streets or at their windows as the
carts went along, they would make their impudent mocks and jeers
at them, especially if they heard the poor people call upon God
to have mercy upon them, as many would do at those times in their
ordinary passing along the streets.
These gentlemen, being something disturbed with the clutter of
bringing the poor gentleman into the house, as above, were first
angry and very high with the master of the house for suffering
such a fellow, as they called him, to be brought out of the grave
into their house; but being answered that the man was a
neighbour, and that he was sound, but overwhelmed with the
calamity of his family, and the like, they turned their anger
into ridiculing the man and his sorrow for his wife and children,
taunted him with want of courage to leap into the great pit and
go to heaven, as they jeeringly expressed it, along with them,
adding some very profane and even blasphemous expressions.
They were at this vile work when I came back to the house, and,
as far as I could see, though the man sat still, mute and
disconsolate, and their affronts could not divert his sorrow, yet
he was both grieved and offended at their discourse. Upon this I
gently reproved them, being well enough acquainted with their
characters, and not unknown in person to two of them.
They immediately fell upon me with ill language and oaths, asked
me what I did out of my grave at such a time when so many
honester men were carried into the churchyard, and why I was not
at home saying my prayers against the dead-cart came for me, and
the like.
I was indeed astonished at the impudence of the men, though not
at all discomposed at their treatment of me. However, I kept my
temper. I told them that though I defied them or any man in the
world to tax me with any dishonesty, yet I acknowledged that in
this terrible judgement of God many better than I were swept away
and carried to their grave. But to answer their question
directly, the case was, that I was mercifully preserved by that
great God whose name they had blasphemed and taken in vain by
cursing and swearing in a dreadful manner, and that I believed I
was preserved in particular, among other ends of His goodness,
that I might reprove them for their audacious boldness in
behaving in such a manner and in such an awful time as this was,
especially for their jeering and mocking at an honest gentleman
and a neighbour (for some of them knew him), who, they saw, was
overwhelmed with sorrow for the breaches which it had pleased God
to make upon his family.
I cannot call exactly to mind the hellish, abominable raillery
which was the return they made to that talk of mine: being
provoked, it seems, that I was not at all afraid to be free with
them; nor, if I could remember, would I fill my account with any
of the words, the horrid oaths, curses, and vile expressions,
such as, at that time of the day, even the worst and ordinariest
people in the street would not use; for, except such hardened
creatures as these, the most wicked wretches that could be found
had at that time some terror upon their minds of the hand of that
Power which could thus in a moment destroy them.
But that which was the worst in all their devilish language was,
that they were not afraid to blaspheme God and talk
atheistically, making a jest of my calling the plague the hand of
God; mocking, and even laughing, at the word judgement, as if the
providence of God had no concern in the inflicting such a
desolating stroke; and that the people calling upon God as they
saw the carts carrying away the dead bodies was all enthusiastic,
absurd, and impertinent.
I made them some reply, such as I thought proper, but which I
found was so far from putting a check to their horrid way of
speaking that it made them rail the more, so that I confess it
filled me with horror and a kind of rage, and I came away, as I
told them, lest the hand of that judgement which had visited the
whole city should glorify His vengeance upon them, and all that
were near them.
They received all reproof with the utmost contempt, and made the
greatest mockery that was possible for them to do at me, giving
me all the opprobrious, insolent scoffs that they could think of
for preaching to them, as they called it, which indeed grieved
me, rather than angered me; and I went away, blessing God,
however, in my mind that I had not spared them, though they had
insulted me so much.
They continued this wretched course three or four days after
this, continually mocking and jeering at all that showed
themselves religious or serious, or that were any way touched
with the sense of the terrible judgement of God upon us; and I
was informed they flouted in the same manner at the good people
who, notwithstanding the contagion, met at the church, fasted,
and prayed to God to remove His hand from them.
I say, they continued this dreadful course three or four days—I
think it was no more—when one of them, particularly he who asked
the poor gentleman what he did out of his grave, was struck from
Heaven with the plague, and died in a most deplorable manner;
and, in a word, they were every one of them carried into the
great pit which I have mentioned above, before it was quite
filled up, which was not above a fortnight or thereabout.
These men were guilty of many extravagances, such as one would
think human nature should have trembled at the thoughts of at
such a time of general terror as was then upon us, and
particularly scoffing and mocking at everything which they
happened to see that was religious among the people, especially
at their thronging zealously to the place of public worship to
implore mercy from Heaven in such a time of distress; and this
tavern where they held their dub being within view of the
church-door, they had the more particular occasion for their
atheistical profane mirth.
But this began to abate a little with them before the accident
which I have related happened, for the infection increased so
violently at this part of the town now, that people began to be
afraid to come to the church; at least such numbers did not
resort thither as was usual. Many of the clergymen likewise were
dead, and others gone into the country; for it really required a
steady courage and a strong faith for a man not only to venture
being in town at such a time as this, but likewise to venture to
come to church and perform the office of a minister to a
congregation, of whom he had reason to believe many of them were
actually infected with the plague, and to do this every day, or
twice a day, as in some places was done.
It is true the people showed an extraordinary zeal in these
religious exercises, and as the church-doors were always open,
people would go in single at all times, whether the minister was
officiating or no, and locking themselves into separate pews,
would be praying to God with great fervency and devotion.
Others assembled at meeting-houses, every one as their different
opinions in such things guided, but all were promiscuously the
subject of these men’s drollery, especially at the beginning of
the visitation.
It seems they had been checked for their open insulting religion
in this manner by several good people of every persuasion, and
that, and the violent raging of the infection, I suppose, was the
occasion that they had abated much of their rudeness for some
time before, and were only roused by the spirit of ribaldry and
atheism at the clamour which was made when the gentleman was
first brought in there, and perhaps were agitated by the same
devil, when I took upon me to reprove them; though I did it at
first with all the calmness, temper, and good manners that I
could, which for a while they insulted me the more for thinking
it had been in fear of their resentment, though afterwards they
found the contrary.
I went home, indeed, grieved and afflicted in my mind at the
abominable wickedness of those men, not doubting, however, that
they would be made dreadful examples of God’s justice; for I
looked upon this dismal time to be a particular season of Divine
vengeance, and that God would on this occasion single out the
proper objects of His displeasure in a more especial and
remarkable manner than at another time; and that though I did
believe that many good people would, and did, fall in the common
calamity, and that it was no certain rule to judge of the eternal
state of any one by their being distinguished in such a time of
general destruction neither one way or other; yet, I say, it
could not but seem reasonable to believe that God would not think
fit to spare by His mercy such open declared enemies, that should
insult His name and Being, defy His vengeance, and mock at His
worship and worshippers at such a time; no, not though His mercy
had thought fit to bear with and spare them at other times; that
this was a day of visitation, a day of God’s anger, and those
words came into my thought, Jer. v. 9: ‘Shall I not visit for
these things? saith the Lord: and shall not My soul be avenged of
such a nation as this?’
These things, I say, lay upon my mind, and I went home very much
grieved and oppressed with the horror of these men’s wickedness,
and to think that anything could be so vile, so hardened, and
notoriously wicked as to insult God, and His servants, and His
worship in such a manner, and at such a time as this was, when He
had, as it were, His sword drawn in His hand on purpose to take
vengeance not on them only, but on the whole nation.
I had, indeed, been in some passion at first with them—though it
was really raised, not by any affront they had offered me
personally, but by the horror their blaspheming tongues filled me
with. However, I was doubtful in my thoughts whether the
resentment I retained was not all upon my own private account,
for they had given me a great deal of ill language too—I mean
personally; but after some pause, and having a weight of grief
upon my mind, I retired myself as soon as I came home, for I
slept not that night; and giving God most humble thanks for my
preservation in the eminent danger I had been in, I set my mind
seriously and with the utmost earnestness to pray for those
desperate wretches, that God would pardon them, open their eyes,
and effectually humble them.
By this I not only did my duty, namely, to pray for those who
despitefully used me, but I fully tried my own heart, to my full
satisfaction, that it was not filled with any spirit of
resentment as they had offended me in particular; and I humbly
recommend the method to all those that would know, or be certain,
how to distinguish between their zeal for the honour of God and
the effects of their private passions and resentment.
But I must go back here to the particular incidents which occur
to my thoughts of the time of the visitation, and particularly to
the time of their shutting up houses in the first part of their
sickness; for before the sickness was come to its height people
had more room to make their observations than they had afterward;
but when it was in the extremity there was no such thing as
communication with one another, as before.
During the shutting up of houses, as I have said, some violence
was offered to the watchmen. As to soldiers, there were none to
be found. The few guards which the king then had, which were
nothing like the number entertained since, were dispersed, either
at Oxford with the Court, or in quarters in the remoter parts of
the country, small detachments excepted, who did duty at the
Tower and at Whitehall, and these but very few. Neither am I
positive that there was any other guard at the Tower than the
warders, as they called them, who stand at the gate with gowns
and caps, the same as the yeomen of the guard, except the
ordinary gunners, who were twenty-four, and the officers
appointed to look after the magazine, who were called armourers.
As to trained bands, there was no possibility of raising any;
neither, if the Lieutenancy, either of London or Middlesex, had
ordered the drums to beat for the militia, would any of the
companies, I believe, have drawn together, whatever risk they had
run.
This made the watchmen be the less regarded, and perhaps
occasioned the greater violence to be used against them. I
mention it on this score to observe that the setting watchmen
thus to keep the people in was, first of all, not effectual, but
that the people broke out, whether by force or by stratagem, even
almost as often as they pleased; and, second, that those that did
thus break out were generally people infected who, in their
desperation, running about from one place to another, valued not
whom they injured: and which perhaps, as I have said, might give
birth to report that it was natural to the infected people to
desire to infect others, which report was really false.
And I know it so well, and in so many several cases, that I could
give several relations of good, pious, and religious people who,
when they have had the distemper, have been so far from being
forward to infect others that they have forbid their own family
to come near them, in hopes of their being preserved, and have
even died without seeing their nearest relations lest they should
be instrumental to give them the distemper, and infect or
endanger them. If, then, there were cases wherein the infected
people were careless of the injury they did to others, this was
certainly one of them, if not the chief, namely, when people who
had the distemper had broken out from houses which were so shut
up, and having been driven to extremities for provision or for
entertainment, had endeavoured to conceal their condition, and
have been thereby instrumental involuntarily to infect others who
have been ignorant and unwary.
This is one of the reasons why I believed then, and do believe
still, that the shutting up houses thus by force, and
restraining, or rather imprisoning, people in their own houses,
as I said above, was of little or no service in the whole. Nay, I
am of opinion it was rather hurtful, having forced those
desperate people to wander abroad with the plague upon them, who
would otherwise have died quietly in their beds.
I remember one citizen who, having thus broken out of his house
in Aldersgate Street or thereabout, went along the road to
Islington; he attempted to have gone in at the Angel Inn, and
after that the White Horse, two inns known still by the same
signs, but was refused; after which he came to the Pied Bull, an
inn also still continuing the same sign. He asked them for
lodging for one night only, pretending to be going into
Lincolnshire, and assuring them of his being very sound and free
from the infection, which also at that time had not reached much
that way.
They told him they had no lodging that they could spare but one
bed up in the garret, and that they could spare that bed for one
night, some drovers being expected the next day with cattle; so,
if he would accept of that lodging, he might have it, which he
did. So a servant was sent up with a candle with him to show him
the room. He was very well dressed, and looked like a person not
used to lie in a garret; and when he came to the room he fetched
a deep sigh, and said to the servant, ‘I have seldom lain in such
a lodging as this. ‘However, the servant assuring him again that
they had no better, ‘Well,’ says he, ‘I must make shift; this is
a dreadful time; but it is but for one night.’ So he sat down
upon the bedside, and bade the maid, I think it was, fetch him up
a pint of warm ale. Accordingly the servant went for the ale, but
some hurry in the house, which perhaps employed her other ways,
put it out of her head, and she went up no more to him.
The next morning, seeing no appearance of the gentleman, somebody
in the house asked the servant that had showed him upstairs what
was become of him. She started. ‘Alas I,’ says she, ‘I never
thought more of him. He bade me carry him some warm ale, but I
forgot.’ Upon which, not the maid, but some other person was sent
up to see after him, who, coming into the room, found him stark
dead and almost cold, stretched out across the bed. His clothes
were pulled off, his jaw fallen, his eyes open in a most
frightful posture, the rug of the bed being grasped hard in one
of his hands, so that it was plain he died soon after the maid
left him; and ’tis probable, had she gone up with the ale, she
had found him dead in a few minutes after he sat down upon the
bed. The alarm was great in the house, as anyone may suppose,
they having been free from the distemper till that disaster,
which, bringing the infection to the house, spread it immediately
to other houses round about it. I do not remember how many died
in the house itself, but I think the maid-servant who went up
first with him fell presently ill by the fright, and several
others; for, whereas there died but two in Islington of the
plague the week before, there died seventeen the week after,
whereof fourteen were of the plague. This was in the week from
the 11th of July to the 18th.
There was one shift that some families had, and that not a few,
when their houses happened to be infected, and that was this: the
families who, in the first breaking-out of the distemper, fled
away into the country and had retreats among their friends,
generally found some or other of their neighbours or relations to
commit the charge of those houses to for the safety of the goods
and the like. Some houses were, indeed, entirely locked up, the
doors padlocked, the windows and doors having deal boards nailed
over them, and only the inspection of them committed to the
ordinary watchmen and parish officers; but these were but few.
It was thought that there were not less than 10,000 houses
forsaken of the inhabitants in the city and suburbs, including
what was in the out-parishes and in Surrey, or the side of the
water they called Southwark. This was besides the numbers of
lodgers, and of particular persons who were fled out of other
families; so that in all it was computed that about 200,000
people were fled and gone. But of this I shall speak again. But I
mention it here on this account, namely, that it was a rule with
those who had thus two houses in their keeping or care, that if
anybody was taken sick in a family, before the master of the
family let the examiners or any other officer know of it, he
immediately would send all the rest of his family, whether
children or servants, as it fell out to be, to such other house
which he had so in charge, and then giving notice of the sick
person to the examiner, have a nurse or nurses appointed, and
have another person to be shut up in the house with them (which
many for money would do), so to take charge of the house in case
the person should die.
This was, in many cases, the saving a whole family, who, if they
had been shut up with the sick person, would inevitably have
perished. But, on the other hand, this was another of the
inconveniences of shutting up houses; for the apprehensions and
terror of being shut up made many run away with the rest of the
family, who, though it was not publicly known, and they were not
quite sick, had yet the distemper upon them; and who, by having
an uninterrupted liberty to go about, but being obliged still to
conceal their circumstances, or perhaps not knowing it
themselves, gave the distemper to others, and spread the
infection in a dreadful manner, as I shall explain further
hereafter.
And here I may be able to make an observation or two of my own,
which may be of use hereafter to those into whose hands these may
come, if they should ever see the like dreadful visitation. (1)
The infection generally came into the houses of the citizens by
the means of their servants, whom they were obliged to send up
and down the streets for necessaries; that is to say, for food or
physic, to bakehouses, brew-houses, shops, &c.; and who going
necessarily through the streets into shops, markets, and the
like, it was impossible but that they should, one way or other,
meet with distempered people, who conveyed the fatal breath into
them, and they brought it home to the families to which they
belonged. (2) It was a great mistake that such a great city as
this had but one pest-house; for had there been, instead of one
pest-house—viz., beyond Bunhill Fields, where, at most, they
could receive, perhaps, two hundred or three hundred people—I
say, had there, instead of that one, been several pest-houses,
every one able to contain a thousand people, without lying two in
a bed, or two beds in a room; and had every master of a family,
as soon as any servant especially had been taken sick in his
house, been obliged to send them to the next pest-house, if they
were willing, as many were, and had the examiners done the like
among the poor people when any had been stricken with the
infection; I say, had this been done where the people were
willing (not otherwise), and the houses not been shut, I am
persuaded, and was all the while of that opinion, that not so
many, by several thousands, had died; for it was observed, and I
could give several instances within the compass of my own
knowledge, where a servant had been taken sick, and the family
had either time to send him out or retire from the house and
leave the sick person, as I have said above, they had all been
preserved; whereas when, upon one or more sickening in a family,
the house has been shut up, the whole family have perished, and
the bearers been obliged to go in to fetch out the dead bodies,
not being able to bring them to the door, and at last none left
to do it.
(3) This put it out of question to me, that the calamity was
spread by infection; that is to say, by some certain steams or
fumes, which the physicians call effluvia, by the breath, or by
the sweat, or by the stench of the sores of the sick persons, or
some other way, perhaps, beyond even the reach of the physicians
themselves, which effluvia affected the sound who came within
certain distances of the sick, immediately penetrating the vital
parts of the said sound persons, putting their blood into an
immediate ferment, and agitating their spirits to that degree
which it was found they were agitated; and so those newly
infected persons communicated it in the same manner to others.
And this I shall give some instances of, that cannot but convince
those who seriously consider it; and I cannot but with some
wonder find some people, now the contagion is over, talk of its
being an immediate stroke from Heaven, without the agency of
means, having commission to strike this and that particular
person, and none other—which I look upon with contempt as the
effect of manifest ignorance and enthusiasm; likewise the opinion
of others, who talk of infection being carried on by the air
only, by carrying with it vast numbers of insects and invisible
creatures, who enter into the body with the breath, or even at
the pores with the air, and there generate or emit most acute
poisons, or poisonous ovae or eggs, which mingle themselves with
the blood, and so infect the body: a discourse full of learned
simplicity, and manifested to be so by universal experience; but
I shall say more to this case in its order.
I must here take further notice that nothing was more fatal to
the inhabitants of this city than the supine negligence of the
people themselves, who, during the long notice or warning they
had of the visitation, made no provision for it by laying in
store of provisions, or of other necessaries, by which they might
have lived retired and within their own houses, as I have
observed others did, and who were in a great measure preserved by
that caution; nor were they, after they were a little hardened to
it, so shy of conversing with one another, when actually
infected, as they were at first: no, though they knew it.
I acknowledge I was one of those thoughtless ones that had made
so little provision that my servants were obliged to go out of
doors to buy every trifle by penny and halfpenny, just as before
it began, even till my experience showing me the folly, I began
to be wiser so late that I had scarce time to store myself
sufficient for our common subsistence for a month.
I had in family only an ancient woman that managed the house, a
maid-servant, two apprentices, and myself; and the plague
beginning to increase about us, I had many sad thoughts about
what course I should take, and how I should act. The many dismal
objects which happened everywhere as I went about the streets,
had filled my mind with a great deal of horror for fear of the
distemper, which was indeed very horrible in itself, and in some
more than in others. The swellings, which were generally in the
neck or groin, when they grew hard and would not break, grew so
painful that it was equal to the most exquisite torture; and
some, not able to bear the torment, threw themselves out at
windows or shot themselves, or otherwise made themselves away,
and I saw several dismal objects of that kind. Others, unable to
contain themselves, vented their pain by incessant roarings, and
such loud and lamentable cries were to be heard as we walked
along the streets that would pierce the very heart to think of,
especially when it was to be considered that the same dreadful
scourge might be expected every moment to seize upon ourselves.
I cannot say but that now I began to faint in my resolutions; my
heart failed me very much, and sorely I repented of my rashness.
When I had been out, and met with such terrible things as these I
have talked of, I say I repented my rashness in venturing to
abide in town. I wished often that I had not taken upon me to
stay, but had gone away with my brother and his family.
Terrified by those frightful objects, I would retire home
sometimes and resolve to go out no more; and perhaps I would keep
those resolutions for three or four days, which time I spent in
the most serious thankfulness for my preservation and the
preservation of my family, and the constant confession of my
sins, giving myself up to God every day, and applying to Him with
fasting, humiliation, and meditation. Such intervals as I had I
employed in reading books and in writing down my memorandums of
what occurred to me every day, and out of which afterwards I took
most of this work, as it relates to my observations without
doors. What I wrote of my private meditations I reserve for
private use, and desire it may not be made public on any account
whatever.
I also wrote other meditations upon divine subjects, such as
occurred to me at that time and were profitable to myself, but
not fit for any other view, and therefore I say no more of that.
I had a very good friend, a physician, whose name was Heath, whom
I frequently visited during this dismal time, and to whose advice
I was very much obliged for many things which he directed me to
take, by way of preventing the infection when I went out, as he
found I frequently did, and to hold in my mouth when I was in the
streets. He also came very often to see me, and as he was a good
Christian as well as a good physician, his agreeable conversation
was a very great support to me in the worst of this terrible
time.
It was now the beginning of August, and the plague grew very
violent and terrible in the place where I lived, and Dr Heath
coming to visit me, and finding that I ventured so often out in
the streets, earnestly persuaded me to lock myself up and my
family, and not to suffer any of us to go out of doors; to keep
all our windows fast, shutters and curtains close, and never to
open them; but first, to make a very strong smoke in the room
where the window or door was to be opened, with rozen and pitch,
brimstone or gunpowder and the like; and we did this for some
time; but as I had not laid in a store of provision for such a
retreat, it was impossible that we could keep within doors
entirely. However, I attempted, though it was so very late, to do
something towards it; and first, as I had convenience both for
brewing and baking, I went and bought two sacks of meal, and for
several weeks, having an oven, we baked all our own bread; also I
bought malt, and brewed as much beer as all the casks I had would
hold, and which seemed enough to serve my house for five or six
weeks; also I laid in a quantity of salt butter and Cheshire
cheese; but I had no flesh-meat, and the plague raged so
violently among the butchers and slaughter-houses on the other
side of our street, where they are known to dwell in great
numbers, that it was not advisable so much as to go over the
street among them.
And here I must observe again, that this necessity of going out
of our houses to buy provisions was in a great measure the ruin
of the whole city, for the people catched the distemper on these
occasions one of another, and even the provisions themselves were
often tainted; at least I have great reason to believe so; and
therefore I cannot say with satisfaction what I know is repeated
with great assurance, that the market-people and such as brought
provisions to town were never infected. I am certain the butchers
of Whitechappel, where the greatest part of the flesh-meat was
killed, were dreadfully visited, and that at least to such a
degree that few of their shops were kept open, and those that
remained of them killed their meat at Mile End and that way, and
brought it to market upon horses.
However, the poor people could not lay up provisions, and there
was a necessity that they must go to market to buy, and others to
send servants or their children; and as this was a necessity
which renewed itself daily, it brought abundance of unsound
people to the markets, and a great many that went thither sound
brought death home with them.
It is true people used all possible precaution. When any one
bought a joint of meat in the market they would not take it off
the butcher’s hand, but took it off the hooks themselves. On the
other hand, the butcher would not touch the money, but have it
put into a pot full of vinegar, which he kept for that purpose.
The buyer carried always small money to make up any odd sum, that
they might take no change. They carried bottles of scents and
perfumes in their hands, and all the means that could be used
were used, but then the poor could not do even these things, and
they went at all hazards.
Innumerable dismal stories we heard every day on this very
account. Sometimes a man or woman dropped down dead in the very
markets, for many people that had the plague upon them knew
nothing of it till the inward gangrene had affected their vitals,
and they died in a few moments. This caused that many died
frequently in that manner in the streets suddenly, without any
warning; others perhaps had time to go to the next bulk or stall,
or to any door-porch, and just sit down and die, as I have said
before.
These objects were so frequent in the streets that when the
plague came to be very raging on one side, there was scarce any
passing by the streets but that several dead bodies would be
lying here and there upon the ground. On the other hand, it is
observable that though at first the people would stop as they
went along and call to the neighbours to come out on such an
occasion, yet afterward no notice was taken of them; but that if
at any time we found a corpse lying, go across the way and not
come near it; or, if in a narrow lane or passage, go back again
and seek some other way to go on the business we were upon; and
in those cases the corpse was always left till the officers had
notice to come and take them away, or till night, when the
bearers attending the dead-cart would take them up and carry them
away. Nor did those undaunted creatures who performed these
offices fail to search their pockets, and sometimes strip off
their clothes if they were well dressed, as sometimes they were,
and carry off what they could get.
But to return to the markets. The butchers took that care that if
any person died in the market they had the officers always at
hand to take them up upon hand-barrows and carry them to the next
churchyard; and this was so frequent that such were not entered
in the weekly bill, ‘Found dead in the streets or fields’, as is
the case now, but they went into the general articles of the
great distemper.
But now the fury of the distemper increased to such a degree that
even the markets were but very thinly furnished with provisions
or frequented with buyers compared to what they were before; and
the Lord Mayor caused the country people who brought provisions
to be stopped in the streets leading into the town, and to sit
down there with their goods, where they sold what they brought,
and went immediately away; and this encouraged the country people
greatly-to do so, for they sold their provisions at the very
entrances into the town, and even in the fields, as particularly
in the fields beyond Whitechappel, in Spittlefields; also in St
George’s Fields in Southwark, in Bunhill Fields, and in a great
field called Wood’s Close, near Islington. Thither the Lord
Mayor, aldermen, and magistrates sent their officers and servants
to buy for their families, themselves keeping within doors as
much as possible, and the like did many other people; and after
this method was taken the country people came with great
cheerfulness, and brought provisions of all sorts, and very
seldom got any harm, which, I suppose, added also to that report
of their being miraculously preserved.
As for my little family, having thus, as I have said, laid in a
store of bread, butter, cheese, and beer, I took my friend and
physician’s advice, and locked myself up, and my family, and
resolved to suffer the hardship of living a few months without
flesh-meat, rather than to purchase it at the hazard of our
lives.
But though I confined my family, I could not prevail upon my
unsatisfied curiosity to stay within entirely myself; and though
I generally came frighted and terrified home, yet I could not
restrain; only that indeed I did not do it so frequently as at
first.
I had some little obligations, indeed, upon me to go to my
brother’s house, which was in Coleman Street parish and which he
had left to my care, and I went at first every day, but
afterwards only once or twice a week.
In these walks I had many dismal scenes before my eyes, as
particularly of persons falling dead in the streets, terrible
shrieks and screechings of women, who, in their agonies, would
throw open their chamber windows and cry out in a dismal,
surprising manner. It is impossible to describe the variety of
postures in which the passions of the poor people would express
themselves.
Passing through Tokenhouse Yard, in Lothbury, of a sudden a
casement violently opened just over my head, and a woman gave
three frightful screeches, and then cried, ‘Oh! death, death,
death!’ in a most inimitable tone, and which struck me with
horror and a chillness in my very blood. There was nobody to be
seen in the whole street, neither did any other window open, for
people had no curiosity now in any case, nor could anybody help
one another, so I went on to pass into Bell Alley.
Just in Bell Alley, on the right hand of the passage, there was a
more terrible cry than that, though it was not so directed out at
the window; but the whole family was in a terrible fright, and I
could hear women and children run screaming about the rooms like
distracted, when a garret-window opened and somebody from a
window on the other side the alley called and asked, ‘What is the
matter?’ upon which, from the first window, it was answered, ‘Oh
Lord, my old master has hanged himself!’ The other asked again,
‘Is he quite dead?’ and the first answered, ‘Ay, ay, quite dead;
quite dead and cold!’ This person was a merchant and a deputy
alderman, and very rich. I care not to mention the name, though I
knew his name too, but that would be an hardship to the family,
which is now flourishing again.
But this is but one; it is scarce credible what dreadful cases
happened in particular families every day. People in the rage of
the distemper, or in the torment of their swellings, which was
indeed intolerable, running out of their own government, raving
and distracted, and oftentimes laying violent hands upon
themselves, throwing themselves out at their windows, shooting
themselves &c.; mothers murdering their own children in their
lunacy, some dying of mere grief as a passion, some of mere
fright and surprise without any infection at all, others frighted
into idiotism and foolish distractions, some into despair and
lunacy, others into melancholy madness.
The pain of the swelling was in particular very violent, and to
some intolerable; the physicians and surgeons may be said to have
tortured many poor creatures even to death. The swellings in some
grew hard, and they applied violent drawing-plaisters or
poultices to break them, and if these did not do they cut and
scarified them in a terrible manner. In some those swellings were
made hard partly by the force of the distemper and partly by
their being too violently drawn, and were so hard that no
instrument could cut them, and then they burnt them with
caustics, so that many died raving mad with the torment, and some
in the very operation. In these distresses, some, for want of
help to hold them down in their beds, or to look to them, laid
hands upon themselves as above. Some broke out into the streets,
perhaps naked, and would run directly down to the river if they
were not stopped by the watchman or other officers, and plunge
themselves into the water wherever they found it.
It often pierced my very soul to hear the groans and cries of
those who were thus tormented, but of the two this was counted
the most promising particular in the whole infection, for if
these swellings could be brought to a head, and to break and run,
or, as the surgeons call it, to digest, the patient generally
recovered; whereas those who, like the gentlewoman’s daughter,
were struck with death at the beginning, and had the tokens come
out upon them, often went about indifferent easy till a little
before they died, and some till the moment they dropped down, as
in apoplexies and epilepsies is often the case. Such would be
taken suddenly very sick, and would run to a bench or bulk, or
any convenient place that offered itself, or to their own houses
if possible, as I mentioned before, and there sit down, grow
faint, and die. This kind of dying was much the same as it was
with those who die of common mortifications, who die swooning,
and, as it were, go away in a dream. Such as died thus had very
little notice of their being infected at all till the gangrene
was spread through their whole body; nor could physicians
themselves know certainly how it was with them till they opened
their breasts or other parts of their body and saw the tokens.
We had at this time a great many frightful stories told us of
nurses and watchmen who looked after the dying people; that is to
say, hired nurses who attended infected people, using them
barbarously, starving them, smothering them, or by other wicked
means hastening their end, that is to say, murdering of them; and
watchmen, being set to guard houses that were shut up when there
has been but one person left, and perhaps that one lying sick,
that they have broke in and murdered that body, and immediately
thrown them out into the dead-cart! And so they have gone scarce
cold to the grave.
I cannot say but that some such murders were committed, and I
think two were sent to prison for it, but died before they could
be tried; and I have heard that three others, at several times,
were excused for murders of that kind; but I must say I believe
nothing of its being so common a crime as some have since been
pleased to say, nor did it seem to be so rational where the
people were brought so low as not to be able to help themselves,
for such seldom recovered, and there was no temptation to commit
a murder, at least none equal to the fact, where they were sure
persons would die in so short a time, and could not live.
That there were a great many robberies and wicked practices
committed even in this dreadful time I do not deny. The power of
avarice was so strong in some that they would run any hazard to
steal and to plunder; and particularly in houses where all the
families or inhabitants have been dead and carried out, they
would break in at all hazards, and without regard to the danger
of infection, take even the clothes off the dead bodies and the
bed-clothes from others where they lay dead.
This, I suppose, must be the case of a family in Houndsditch,
where a man and his daughter, the rest of the family being, as I
suppose, carried away before by the dead-cart, were found stark
naked, one in one chamber and one in another, lying dead on the
floor, and the clothes of the beds, from whence ’tis supposed
they were rolled off by thieves, stolen and carried quite away.
It is indeed to be observed that the women were in all this
calamity the most rash, fearless, and desperate creatures, and as
there were vast numbers that went about as nurses to tend those
that were sick, they committed a great many petty thieveries in
the houses where they were employed; and some of them were
publicly whipped for it, when perhaps they ought rather to have
been hanged for examples, for numbers of houses were robbed on
these occasions, till at length the parish officers were sent to
recommend nurses to the sick, and always took an account whom it
was they sent, so as that they might call them to account if the
house had been abused where they were placed.
But these robberies extended chiefly to wearing-clothes, linen,
and what rings or money they could come at when the person died
who was under their care, but not to a general plunder of the
houses; and I could give you an account of one of these nurses,
who, several years after, being on her deathbed, confessed with
the utmost horror the robberies she had committed at the time of
her being a nurse, and by which she had enriched herself to a
great degree. But as for murders, I do not find that there was
ever any proof of the facts in the manner as it has been
reported, except as above.
They did tell me, indeed, of a nurse in one place that laid a wet
cloth upon the face of a dying patient whom she tended, and so
put an end to his life, who was just expiring before; and another
that smothered a young woman she was looking to when she was in a
fainting fit, and would have come to herself; some that killed
them by giving them one thing, some another, and some starved
them by giving them nothing at all. But these stories had two
marks of suspicion that always attended them, which caused me
always to slight them and to look on them as mere stories that
people continually frighted one another with. First, that
wherever it was that we heard it, they always placed the scene at
the farther end of the town, opposite or most remote from where
you were to hear it. If you heard it in Whitechappel, it had
happened at St Giles’s, or at Westminster, or Holborn, or that
end of the town. If you heard of it at that end of the town, then
it was done in Whitechappel, or the Minories, or about
Cripplegate parish. If you heard of it in the city, why, then it
happened in Southwark; and if you heard of it in Southwark, then
it was done in the city, and the like.
In the next place, of what part soever you heard the story, the
particulars were always the same, especially that of laying a wet
double cloth on a dying man’s face, and that of smothering a
young gentlewoman; so that it was apparent, at least to my
judgement, that there was more of tale than of truth in those
things.
However, I cannot say but it had some effect upon the people, and
particularly that, as I said before, they grew more cautious whom
they took into their houses, and whom they trusted their lives
with, and had them always recommended if they could; and where
they could not find such, for they were not very plenty, they
applied to the parish officers.
But here again the misery of that time lay upon the poor who,
being infected, had neither food or physic, neither physician or
apothecary to assist them, or nurse to attend them. Many of those
died calling for help, and even for sustenance, out at their
windows in a most miserable and deplorable manner; but it must be
added that whenever the cases of such persons or families were
represented to my Lord Mayor they always were relieved.
It is true, in some houses where the people were not very poor,
yet where they had sent perhaps their wives and children away,
and if they had any servants they had been dismissed;—I say it is
true that to save the expenses, many such as these shut
themselves in, and not having help, died alone.
A neighbour and acquaintance of mine, having some money owing to
him from a shopkeeper in Whitecross Street or thereabouts, sent
his apprentice, a youth about eighteen years of age, to endeavour
to get the money. He came to the door, and finding it shut,
knocked pretty hard; and, as he thought, heard somebody answer
within, but was not sure, so he waited, and after some stay
knocked again, and then a third time, when he heard somebody
coming downstairs.
At length the man of the house came to the door; he had on his
breeches or drawers, and a yellow flannel waistcoat, no
stockings, a pair of slipped-shoes, a white cap on his head, and,
as the young man said, ‘death in his face’.
When he opened the door, says he, ‘What do you disturb me thus
for?’ The boy, though a little surprised, replied, ‘I come from
such a one, and my master sent me for the money which he says you
know of.’ ‘Very well, child,’ returns the living ghost; ‘call as
you go by at Cripplegate Church, and bid them ring the bell’; and
with these words shut the door again, and went up again, and died
the same day; nay, perhaps the same hour. This the young man told
me himself, and I have reason to believe it. This was while the
plague was not come to a height. I think it was in June, towards
the latter end of the month; it must be before the dead-carts
came about, and while they used the ceremony of ringing the bell
for the dead, which was over for certain, in that parish at
least, before the month of July, for by the 25th of July there
died 550 and upwards in a week, and then they could no more bury
in form, rich or poor.
I have mentioned above that notwithstanding this dreadful
calamity, yet the numbers of thieves were abroad upon all
occasions, where they had found any prey, and that these were
generally women. It was one morning about eleven O’clock, I had
walked out to my brother’s house in Coleman Street parish, as I
often did, to see that all was safe.
My brother’s house had a little court before it, and a brick wall
and a gate in it, and within that several warehouses where his
goods of several sorts lay. It happened that in one of these
warehouses were several packs of women’s high-crowned hats, which
came out of the country and were, as I suppose, for exportation:
whither, I know not.
I was surprised that when I came near my brother’s door, which
was in a place they called Swan Alley, I met three or four women
with high-crowned hats on their heads; and, as I remembered
afterwards, one, if not more, had some hats likewise in their
hands; but as I did not see them come out at my brother’s door,
and not knowing that my brother had any such goods in his
warehouse, I did not offer to say anything to them, but went
across the way to shun meeting them, as was usual to do at that
time, for fear of the plague. But when I came nearer to the gate
I met another woman with more hats come out of the gate. ‘What
business, mistress,’ said I, ‘have you had there?’ ‘There are
more people there,’ said she; ‘I have had no more business there
than they.’ I was hasty to get to the gate then, and said no more
to her, by which means she got away. But just as I came to the
gate, I saw two more coming across the yard to come out with hats
also on their heads and under their arms, at which I threw the
gate to behind me, which having a spring lock fastened itself;
and turning to the women, ‘Forsooth,’ said I, ‘what are you doing
here?’ and seized upon the hats, and took them from them. One of
them, who, I confess, did not look like a thief—‘Indeed,’ says
she, ‘we are wrong, but we were told they were goods that had no
owner. Be pleased to take them again; and look yonder, there are
more such customers as we.’ She cried and looked pitifully, so I
took the hats from her and opened the gate, and bade them be
gone, for I pitied the women indeed; but when I looked towards
the warehouse, as she directed, there were six or seven more, all
women, fitting themselves with hats as unconcerned and quiet as
if they had been at a hatter’s shop buying for their money.
I was surprised, not at the sight of so many thieves only, but at
the circumstances I was in; being now to thrust myself in among
so many people, who for some weeks had been so shy of myself that
if I met anybody in the street I would cross the way from them.
They were equally surprised, though on another account. They all
told me they were neighbours, that they had heard anyone might
take them, that they were nobody’s goods, and the like. I talked
big to them at first, went back to the gate and took out the key,
so that they were all my prisoners, threatened to lock them all
into the warehouse, and go and fetch my Lord Mayor’s officers for
them.
They begged heartily, protested they found the gate open, and the
warehouse door open; and that it had no doubt been broken open by
some who expected to find goods of greater value: which indeed
was reasonable to believe, because the lock was broke, and a
padlock that hung to the door on the outside also loose, and an
abundance of the hats carried away.
At length I considered that this was not a time to be cruel and
rigorous; and besides that, it would necessarily oblige me to go
much about, to have several people come to me, and I go to
several whose circumstances of health I knew nothing of; and that
even at this time the plague was so high as that there died 4000
a week; so that in showing my resentment, or even in seeking
justice for my brother’s goods, I might lose my own life; so I
contented myself with taking the names and places where some of
them lived, who were really inhabitants in the neighbourhood, and
threatening that my brother should call them to an account for it
when he returned to his habitation.
Then I talked a little upon another foot with them, and asked
them how they could do such things as these in a time of such
general calamity, and, as it were, in the face of God’s most
dreadful judgements, when the plague was at their very doors,
and, it may be, in their very houses, and they did not know but
that the dead-cart might stop at their doors in a few hours to
carry them to their graves.
I could not perceive that my discourse made much impression
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