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A Journal of the Plague Year
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 upon
them all that while, till it happened that there came two men of
the neighbourhood, hearing of the disturbance, and knowing my
brother, for they had been both dependents upon his family, and
they came to my assistance. These being, as I said, neighbours,
presently knew three of the women and told me who they were and
where they lived; and it seems they had given me a true account
of themselves before.
This brings these two men to a further remembrance. The name of
one was John Hayward, who was at that time undersexton of the
parish of St Stephen, Coleman Street. By undersexton was
understood at that time gravedigger and bearer of the dead. This
man carried, or assisted to carry, all the dead to their graves
which were buried in that large parish, and who were carried in
form; and after that form of burying was stopped, went with the
dead-cart and the bell to fetch the dead bodies from the houses
where they lay, and fetched many of them out of the chambers and
houses; for the parish was, and is still, remarkable
particularly, above all the parishes in London, for a great
number of alleys and thoroughfares, very long, into which no
carts could come, and where they were obliged to go and fetch the
bodies a very long way; which alleys now remain to witness it,
such as White’s Alley, Cross Key Court, Swan Alley, Bell Alley,
White Horse Alley, and many more. Here they went with a kind of
hand-barrow and laid the dead bodies on it, and carried them out
to the carts; which work he performed and never had the distemper
at all, but lived about twenty years after it, and was sexton of
the parish to the time of his death. His wife at the same time
was a nurse to infected people, and tended many that died in the
parish, being for her honesty recommended by the parish officers;
yet she never was infected neither.
He never used any preservative against the infection, other than
holding garlic and rue in his mouth, and smoking tobacco. This I
also had from his own mouth. And his wife’s remedy was washing
her head in vinegar and sprinkling her head-clothes so with
vinegar as to keep them always moist, and if the smell of any of
those she waited on was more than ordinary offensive, she snuffed
vinegar up her nose and sprinkled vinegar upon her head-clothes,
and held a handkerchief wetted with vinegar to her mouth.
It must be confessed that though the plague was chiefly among the
poor, yet were the poor the most venturous and fearless of it,
and went about their employment with a sort of brutal courage; I
must call it so, for it was founded neither on religion nor
prudence; scarce did they use any caution, but ran into any
business which they could get employment in, though it was the
most hazardous. Such was that of tending the sick, watching
houses shut up, carrying infected persons to the pest-house, and,
which was still worse, carrying the dead away to their graves.
It was under this John Hayward’s care, and within his bounds,
that the story of the piper, with which people have made
themselves so merry, happened, and he assured me that it was
true. It is said that it was a blind piper; but, as John told me,
the fellow was not blind, but an ignorant, weak, poor man, and
usually walked his rounds about ten o’clock at night and went
piping along from door to door, and the people usually took him
in at public-houses where they knew him, and would give him drink
and victuals, and sometimes farthings; and he in return would
pipe and sing and talk simply, which diverted the people; and
thus he lived. It was but a very bad time for this diversion
while things were as I have told, yet the poor fellow went about
as usual, but was almost starved; and when anybody asked how he
did he would answer, the dead cart had not taken him yet, but
that they had promised to call for him next week.
It happened one night that this poor fellow, whether somebody had
given him too much drink or no—John Hayward said he had not drink
in his house, but that they had given him a little more victuals
than ordinary at a public-house in Coleman Street—and the poor
fellow, having not usually had a bellyful for perhaps not a good
while, was laid all along upon the top of a bulk or stall, and
fast asleep, at a door in the street near London Wall, towards
Cripplegate-, and that upon the same bulk or stall the people of
some house, in the alley of which the house was a corner, hearing
a bell which they always rang before the cart came, had laid a
body really dead of the plague just by him, thinking, too, that
this poor fellow had been a dead body, as the other was, and laid
there by some of the neighbours.
Accordingly, when John Hayward with his bell and the cart came
along, finding two dead bodies lie upon the stall, they took them
up with the instrument they used and threw them into the cart,
and, all this while the piper slept soundly.
From hence they passed along and took in other dead bodies, till,
as honest John Hayward told me, they almost buried him alive in
the cart; yet all this while he slept soundly. At length the cart
came to the place where the bodies were to be thrown into the
ground, which, as I do remember, was at Mount Mill; and as the
cart usually stopped some time before they were ready to shoot
out the melancholy load they had in it, as soon as the cart
stopped the fellow awaked and struggled a little to get his head
out from among the dead bodies, when, raising himself up in the
cart, he called out, ‘Hey! where am I?’ This frighted the fellow
that attended about the work; but after some pause John Hayward,
recovering himself, said, ‘Lord, bless us! There’s somebody in
the cart not quite dead!’ So another called to him and said, ‘Who
are you?’ The fellow answered, ‘I am the poor piper. Where am I?’
‘Where are you?’ says Hayward. ‘Why, you are in the dead-cart,
and we are going to bury you.’ ‘But I an’t dead though, am I?’
says the piper, which made them laugh a little though, as John
said, they were heartily frighted at first; so they helped the
poor fellow down, and he went about his business.
I know the story goes he set up his pipes in the cart and
frighted the bearers and others so that they ran away; but John
Hayward did not tell the story so, nor say anything of his piping
at all; but that he was a poor piper, and that he was carried
away as above I am fully satisfied of the truth of.
It is to be noted here that the dead-carts in the city were not
confined to particular parishes, but one cart went through
several parishes, according as the number of dead presented; nor
were they tied to carry the dead to their respective parishes,
but many of the dead taken up in the city were carried to the
burying-ground in the out-parts for want of room.
I have already mentioned the surprise that this judgement was at
first among the people. I must be allowed to give some of my
observations on the more serious and religious part. Surely never
city, at least of this bulk and magnitude, was taken in a
condition so perfectly unprepared for such a dreadful visitation,
whether I am to speak of the civil preparations or religious.
They were, indeed, as if they had had no warning, no expectation,
no apprehensions, and consequently the least provision imaginable
was made for it in a public way. For example, the Lord Mayor and
sheriffs had made no provision as magistrates for the regulations
which were to be observed. They had gone into no measures for
relief of the poor. The citizens had no public magazines or
storehouses for corn or meal for the subsistence of the poor,
which if they had provided themselves, as in such cases is done
abroad, many miserable families who were now reduced to the
utmost distress would have been relieved, and that in a better
manner than now could be done.
The stock of the city’s money I can say but little to. The
Chamber of London was said to be exceedingly rich, and it may be
concluded that they were so, by the vast of money issued from
thence in the rebuilding the public edifices after the fire of
London, and in building new works, such as, for the first part,
the Guildhall, Blackwell Hall, part of Leadenhall, half the
Exchange, the Session House, the Compter, the prisons of Ludgate,
Newgate, &c., several of the wharfs and stairs and landing-places
on the river; all which were either burned down or damaged by the
great fire of London, the next year after the plague; and of the
second sort, the Monument, Fleet Ditch with its bridges, and the
Hospital of Bethlem or Bedlam, &c. But possibly the managers of
the city’s credit at that time made more conscience of breaking
in upon the orphan’s money to show charity to the distressed
citizens than the managers in the following years did to beautify
the city and re-edify the buildings; though, in the first case,
the losers would have thought their fortunes better bestowed, and
the public faith of the city have been less subjected to scandal
and reproach.
It must be acknowledged that the absent citizens, who, though
they were fled for safety into the country, were yet greatly
interested in the welfare of those whom they left behind, forgot
not to contribute liberally to the relief of the poor, and large
sums were also collected among trading towns in the remotest
parts of England; and, as I have heard also, the nobility and the
gentry in all parts of England took the deplorable condition of
the city into their consideration, and sent up large sums of
money in charity to the Lord Mayor and magistrates for the relief
of the poor. The king also, as I was told, ordered a thousand
pounds a week to be distributed in four parts: one quarter to the
city and liberty of Westminster; one quarter or part among the
inhabitants of the Southwark side of the water; one quarter to
the liberty and parts within of the city, exclusive of the city
within the walls; and one-fourth part to the suburbs in the
county of Middlesex, and the east and north parts of the city.
But this latter I only speak of as a report.
Certain it is, the greatest part of the poor or families who
formerly lived by their labour, or by retail trade, lived now on
charity; and had there not been prodigious sums of money given by
charitable, well-minded Christians for the support of such, the
city could never have subsisted. There were, no question,
accounts kept of their charity, and of the just distribution of
it by the magistrates. But as such multitudes of those very
officers died through whose hands it was distributed, and also
that, as I have been told, most of the accounts of those things
were lost in the great fire which happened in the very next year,
and which burnt even the chamberlain’s office and many of their
papers, so I could never come at the particular account, which I
used great endeavours to have seen.
It may, however, be a direction in case of the approach of a like
visitation, which God keep the city from;—I say, it may be of use
to observe that by the care of the Lord Mayor and aldermen at
that time in distributing weekly great sums of money for relief
of the poor, a multitude of people who would otherwise have
perished, were relieved, and their lives preserved. And here let
me enter into a brief state of the case of the poor at that time,
and what way apprehended from them, from whence may be judged
hereafter what may be expected if the like distress should come
upon the city.
At the beginning of the plague, when there was now no more hope
but that the whole city would be visited; when, as I have said,
all that had friends or estates in the country retired with their
families; and when, indeed, one would have thought the very city
itself was running out of the gates, and that there would be
nobody left behind; you may be sure from that hour all trade,
except such as related to immediate subsistence, was, as it were,
at a full stop.
This is so lively a case, and contains in it so much of the real
condition of the people, that I think I cannot be too particular
in it, and therefore I descend to the several arrangements or
classes of people who fell into immediate distress upon this
occasion. For example:
1. All master-workmen in manufactures, especially such as
belonged to ornament and the less necessary parts of the people’s
dress, clothes, and furniture for houses, such as riband-weavers
and other weavers, gold and silver lace makers, and gold and
silver wire drawers, sempstresses, milliners, shoemakers,
hatmakers, and glovemakers; also upholsterers, joiners,
cabinet-makers, looking-glass makers, and innumerable trades
which depend upon such as these;—I say, the master-workmen in
such stopped their work, dismissed their journeymen and workmen,
and all their dependents.
2. As merchandising was at a full stop, for very few ships
ventured to come up the river and none at all went out, so all
the extraordinary officers of the customs, likewise the watermen,
carmen, porters, and all the poor whose labour depended upon the
merchants, were at once dismissed and put out of business.
3. All the tradesmen usually employed in building or repairing of
houses were at a full stop, for the people were far from wanting
to build houses when so many thousand houses were at once
stripped of their inhabitants; so that this one article turned
all the ordinary workmen of that kind out of business, such as
bricklayers, masons, carpenters, joiners, plasterers, painters,
glaziers, smiths, plumbers, and all the labourers depending on
such.
4. As navigation was at a stop, our ships neither coming in or
going out as before, so the seamen were all out of employment,
and many of them in the last and lowest degree of distress; and
with the seamen were all the several tradesmen and workmen
belonging to and depending upon the building and fitting out of
ships, such as ship-carpenters, caulkers, ropemakers, dry
coopers, sailmakers, anchorsmiths, and other smiths; blockmakers,
carvers, gunsmiths, ship-chandlers, ship-carvers, and the like.
The masters of those perhaps might live upon their substance, but
the traders were universally at a stop, and consequently all
their workmen discharged. Add to these that the river was in a
manner without boats, and all or most part of the watermen,
lightermen, boat-builders, and lighter-builders in like manner
idle and laid by.
5. All families retrenched their living as much as possible, as
well those that fled as those that stayed; so that an innumerable
multitude of footmen, serving-men, shopkeepers, journeymen,
merchants’ bookkeepers, and such sort of people, and especially
poor maid-servants, were turned off, and left friendless and
helpless, without employment and without habitation, and this was
really a dismal article.
I might be more particular as to this part, but it may suffice to
mention in general, all trades being stopped, employment ceased:
the labour, and by that the bread, of the poor were cut off; and
at first indeed the cries of the poor were most lamentable to
hear, though by the distribution of charity their misery that way
was greatly abated. Many indeed fled into the counties, but
thousands of them having stayed in London till nothing but
desperation sent them away, death overtook them on the road, and
they served for no better than the messengers of death; indeed,
others carrying the infection along with them, spread it very
unhappily into the remotest parts of the kingdom.
Many of these were the miserable objects of despair which I have
mentioned before, and were removed by the destruction which
followed. These might be said to perish not by the infection
itself but by the consequence of it; indeed, namely, by hunger
and distress and the want of all things: being without lodging,
without money, without friends, without means to get their bread,
or without anyone to give it them; for many of them were without
what we call legal settlements, and so could not claim of the
parishes, and all the support they had was by application to the
magistrates for relief, which relief was (to give the magistrates
their due) carefully and cheerfully administered as they found it
necessary, and those that stayed behind never felt the want and
distress of that kind which they felt who went away in the manner
above noted.
Let any one who is acquainted with what multitudes of people get
their daily bread in this city by their labour, whether
artificers or mere workmen—I say, let any man consider what must
be the miserable condition of this town if, on a sudden, they
should be all turned out of employment, that labour should cease,
and wages for work be no more.
This was the case with us at that time; and had not the sums of
money contributed in charity by well-disposed people of every
kind, as well abroad as at home, been prodigiously great, it had
not been in the power of the Lord Mayor and sheriffs to have kept
the public peace. Nor were they without apprehensions, as it was,
that desperation should push the people upon tumults, and cause
them to rifle the houses of rich men and plunder the markets of
provisions; in which case the country people, who brought
provisions very freely and boldly to town, would have been
terrified from coming any more, and the town would have sunk
under an unavoidable famine.
But the prudence of my Lord Mayor and the Court of Aldermen
within the city, and of the justices of peace in the out-parts,
was such, and they were supported with money from all parts so
well, that the poor people were kept quiet, and their wants
everywhere relieved, as far as was possible to be done.
Two things besides this contributed to prevent the mob doing any
mischief. One was, that really the rich themselves had not laid
up stores of provisions in their houses as indeed they ought to
have done, and which if they had been wise enough to have done,
and locked themselves entirely up, as some few did, they had
perhaps escaped the disease better. But as it appeared they had
not, so the mob had no notion of finding stores of provisions
there if they had broken in as it is plain they were sometimes
very near doing, and which: if they had, they had finished the
ruin of the whole city, for there were no regular troops to have
withstood them, nor could the trained bands have been brought
together to defend the city, no men being to be found to bear
arms.
But the vigilance of the Lord Mayor and such magistrates as could
be had (for some, even of the aldermen, were dead, and some
absent) prevented this; and they did it by the most kind and
gentle methods they could think of, as particularly by relieving
the most desperate with money, and putting others into business,
and particularly that employment of watching houses that were
infected and shut up. And as the number of these were very great
(for it was said there was at one time ten thousand houses shut
up, and every house had two watchmen to guard it, viz., one by
night and the other by day), this gave opportunity to employ a
very great number of poor men at a time.
The women and servants that were turned off from their places
were likewise employed as nurses to tend the sick in all places,
and this took off a very great number of them.
And, which though a melancholy article in itself, yet was a
deliverance in its kind: namely, the plague, which raged in a
dreadful manner from the middle of August to the middle of
October, carried off in that time thirty or forty thousand of
these very people which, had they been left, would certainly have
been an insufferable burden by their poverty; that is to say, the
whole city could not have supported the expense of them, or have
provided food for them; and they would in time have been even
driven to the necessity of plundering either the city itself or
the country adjacent, to have subsisted themselves, which would
first or last have put the whole nation, as well as the city,
into the utmost terror and confusion.
It was observable, then, that this calamity of the people made
them very humble; for now for about nine weeks together there
died near a thousand a day, one day with another, even by the
account of the weekly bills, which yet, I have reason to be
assured, never gave a full account, by many thousands; the
confusion being such, and the carts working in the dark when they
carried the dead, that in some places no account at all was kept,
but they worked on, the clerks and sextons not attending for
weeks together, and not knowing what number they carried. This
account is verified by the following bills of mortality:—
- Of all of the
- Diseases. Plague
From August 8 to August 15 5319 3880
” ” 15 ” 22 5568 4237
” ” 22 ” 29 7496 6102
” ” 29 to September 5 8252 6988
” September 5 ” 12 7690 6544
” ” 12 ” 19 8297 7165
” ” 19 ” 26 6460 5533
” ” 26 to October 3 5720 4979
” October 3 ” 10 5068 4327
- ——- ——-
- 59,870 49,705
So that the gross of the people were carried off in these two
months; for, as the whole number which was brought in to die of
the plague was but 68,590, here is 50,000 of them, within a
trifle, in two months; I say 50,000, because, as there wants 295
in the number above, so there wants two days of two months in the
account of time.
Now when I say that the parish officers did not give in a full
account, or were not to be depended upon for their account, let
any one but consider how men could be exact in such a time of
dreadful distress, and when many of them were taken sick
themselves and perhaps died in the very time when their accounts
were to be given in; I mean the parish clerks, besides inferior
officers; for though these poor men ventured at all hazards, yet
they were far from being exempt from the common calamity,
especially if it be true that the parish of Stepney had, within
the year, 116 sextons, gravediggers, and their assistants; that
is to say, bearers, bellmen, and drivers of carts for carrying
off the dead bodies.
Indeed the work was not of a nature to allow them leisure to take
an exact tale of the dead bodies, which were all huddled together
in the dark into a pit; which pit or trench no man could come
nigh but at the utmost peril. I observed often that in the
parishes of Aldgate and Cripplegate, Whitechappel and Stepney,
there were five, six, seven, and eight hundred in a week in the
bills; whereas if we may believe the opinion of those that lived
in the city all the time as well as I, there died sometimes 2000
a week in those parishes; and I saw it under the hand of one that
made as strict an examination into that part as he could, that
there really died an hundred thousand people of the plague in
that one year whereas in the bills, the articles of the plague,
it was but 68,590.
If I may be allowed to give my opinion, by what I saw with my
eyes and heard from other people that were eye-witnesses, I do
verily believe the same, viz., that there died at least 100,000
of the plague only, besides other distempers and besides those
which died in the fields and highways and secret Places out of
the compass of the communication, as it was called, and who were
not put down in the bills though they really belonged to the body
of the inhabitants. It was known to us all that abundance of poor
despairing creatures who had the distemper upon them, and were
grown stupid or melancholy by their misery, as many were,
wandered away into the fields and Woods, and into secret uncouth
places almost anywhere, to creep into a bush or hedge and die.
The inhabitants of the villages adjacent would, in pity, carry
them food and set it at a distance, that they might fetch it, if
they were able; and sometimes they were not able, and the next
time they went they should find the poor wretches lie dead and
the food untouched. The number of these miserable objects were
many, and I know so many that perished thus, and so exactly
where, that I believe I could go to the very place and dig their
bones up still; for the country people would go and dig a hole at
a distance from them, and then with long poles, and hooks at the
end of them, drag the bodies into these pits, and then throw the
earth in from as far as they could cast it, to cover them, taking
notice how the wind blew, and so coming on that side which the
seamen call to windward, that the scent of the bodies might blow
from them; and thus great numbers went out of the world who were
never known, or any account of them taken, as well within the
bills of mortality as without.
This, indeed, I had in the main only from the relation of others,
for I seldom walked into the fields, except towards Bethnal Green
and Hackney, or as hereafter. But when I did walk, I always saw a
great many poor wanderers at a distance; but I could know little
of their cases, for whether it were in the street or in the
fields, if we had seen anybody coming, it was a general method to
walk away; yet I believe the account is exactly true.
As this puts me upon mentioning my walking the streets and
fields, I cannot omit taking notice what a desolate place the
city was at that time. The great street I lived in (which is
known to be one of the broadest of all the streets of London, I
mean of the suburbs as well as the liberties) all the side where
the butchers lived, especially without the bars, was more like a
green field than a paved street, and the people generally went in
the middle with the horses and carts. It is true that the
farthest end towards Whitechappel Church was not all paved, but
even the part that was paved was full of grass also; but this
need not seem strange, since the great streets within the city,
such as Leadenhall Street, Bishopsgate Street, Cornhill, and even
the Exchange itself, had grass growing in them in several places;
neither cart or coach were seen in the streets from morning to
evening, except some country carts to bring roots and beans, or
peas, hay, and straw, to the market, and those but very few
compared to what was usual. As for coaches, they were scarce used
but to carry sick people to the pest-house, and to other
hospitals, and some few to carry physicians to such places as
they thought fit to venture to visit; for really coaches were
dangerous things, and people did not care to venture into them,
because they did not know who might have been carried in them
last, and sick, infected people were, as I have said, ordinarily
carried in them to the pest-houses, and sometimes people expired
in them as they went along.
It is true, when the infection came to such a height as I have
now mentioned, there were very few physicians which cared to stir
abroad to sick houses, and very many of the most eminent of the
faculty were dead, as well as the surgeons also; for now it was
indeed a dismal time, and for about a month together, not taking
any notice of the bills of mortality, I believe there did not die
less than 1500 or 1700 a day, one day with another.
One of the worst days we had in the whole time, as I thought, was
in the beginning of September, when, indeed, good people began to
think that God was resolved to make a full end of the people in
this miserable city. This was at that time when the plague was
fully come into the eastern parishes. The parish of Aldgate, if I
may give my opinion, buried above a thousand a week for two
weeks, though the bills did not say so many;—but it surrounded me
at so dismal a rate that there was not a house in twenty
uninfected in the Minories, in Houndsditch, and in those parts of
Aldgate parish about the Butcher Row and the alleys over against
me. I say, in those places death reigned in every corner.
Whitechappel parish was in the same condition, and though much
less than the parish I lived in, yet buried near 600 a week by
the bills, and in my opinion near twice as many. Whole families,
and indeed whole streets of families, were swept away together;
insomuch that it was frequent for neighbours to call to the
bellman to go to such-and-such houses and fetch out the people,
for that they were all dead.
And, indeed, the work of removing the dead bodies by carts was
now grown so very odious and dangerous that it was complained of
that the bearers did not take care to clear such houses where all
the inhabitants were dead, but that sometimes the bodies lay
several days unburied, till the neighbouring families were
offended with the stench, and consequently infected; and this
neglect of the officers was such that the churchwardens and
constables were summoned to look after it, and even the justices
of the Hamlets were obliged to venture their lives among them to
quicken and encourage them, for innumerable of the bearers died
of the distemper, infected by the bodies they were obliged to
come so near. And had it not been that the number of poor people
who wanted employment and wanted bread (as I have said before)
was so great that necessity drove them to undertake anything and
venture anything, they would never have found people to be
employed. And then the bodies of the dead would have lain above
ground, and have perished and rotted in a dreadful manner.
But the magistrates cannot be enough commended in this, that they
kept such good order for the burying of the dead, that as fast as
any of these they employed to carry off and bury the dead fell
sick or died, as was many times the case, they immediately
supplied the places with others, which, by reason of the great
number of poor that was left out of business, as above, was not
hard to do. This occasioned, that notwithstanding the infinite
number of people which died and were sick, almost all together,
yet they were always cleared away and carried off every night, so
that it was never to be said of London that the living were not
able to bury the dead.
As the desolation was greater during those terrible times, so the
amazement of the people increased, and a thousand unaccountable
things they would do in the violence of their fright, as others
did the same in the agonies of their distemper, and this part was
very affecting. Some went roaring and crying and wringing their
hands along the street; some would go praying and lifting up
their hands to heaven, calling upon God for mercy. I cannot say,
indeed, whether this was not in their distraction, but, be it so,
it was still an indication of a more serious mind, when they had
the use of their senses, and was much better, even as it was,
than the frightful yellings and cryings that every day, and
especially in the evenings, were heard in some streets. I suppose
the world has heard of the famous Solomon Eagle, an enthusiast.
He, though not infected at all but in his head, went about
denouncing of judgement upon the city in a frightful manner,
sometimes quite naked, and with a pan of burning charcoal on his
head. What he said, or pretended, indeed I could not learn.
I will not say whether that clergyman was distracted or not, or
whether he did it in pure zeal for the poor people, who went
every evening through the streets of Whitechappel, and, with his
hands lifted up, repeated that part of the Liturgy of the Church
continually, ‘Spare us, good Lord; spare Thy people, whom Thou
has redeemed with Thy most precious blood.’ I say, I cannot speak
positively of these things, because these were only the dismal
objects which represented themselves to me as I looked through my
chamber windows (for I seldom opened the casements), while I
confined myself within doors during that most violent raging of
the pestilence; when, indeed, as I have said, many began to
think, and even to say, that there would none escape; and indeed
I began to think so too, and therefore kept within doors for
about a fortnight and never stirred out. But I could not hold it.
Besides, there were some people who, notwithstanding the danger,
did not omit publicly to attend the worship of God, even in the
most dangerous times; and though it is true that a great many
clergymen did shut up their churches, and fled, as other people
did, for the safety of their lives, yet all did not do so. Some
ventured to officiate and to keep up the assemblies of the people
by constant prayers, and sometimes sermons or brief exhortations
to repentance and reformation, and this as long as any would come
to hear them. And Dissenters did the like also, and even in the
very churches where the parish ministers were either dead or
fled; nor was there any room for making difference at such a time
as this was.
It was indeed a lamentable thing to hear the miserable
lamentations of poor dying creatures calling out for ministers to
comfort them and pray with them, to counsel them and to direct
them, calling out to God for pardon and mercy, and confessing
aloud their past sins. It would make the stoutest heart bleed to
hear how many warnings were then given by dying penitents to
others not to put off and delay their repentance to the day of
distress; that such a time of calamity as this was no time for
repentance, was no time to call upon God. I wish I could repeat
the very sound of those groans and of those exclamations that I
heard from some poor dying creatures when in the height of their
agonies and distress, and that I could make him that reads this
hear, as I imagine I now hear them, for the sound seems still to
ring in my ears.
If I could but tell this part in such moving accents as should
alarm the very soul of the reader, I should rejoice that I
recorded those things, however short and imperfect.
It pleased God that I was still spared, and very hearty and sound
in health, but very impatient of being pent up within doors
without air, as I had been for fourteen days or thereabouts; and
I could not restrain myself, but I would go to carry a letter for
my brother to the post-house. Then it was indeed that I observed
a profound silence in the streets. When I came to the post-house,
as I went to put in my letter I saw a man stand in one corner of
the yard and talking to another at a window, and a third had
opened a door belonging to the office. In the middle of the yard
lay a small leather purse with two keys hanging at it, with money
in it, but nobody would meddle with it. I asked how long it had
lain there; the man at the window said it had lain almost an
hour, but that they had not meddled with it, because they did not
know but the person who dropped it might come back to look for
it. I had no such need of money, nor was the sum so big that I
had any inclination to meddle with it, or to get the money at the
hazard it might be attended with; so I seemed to go away, when
the man who had opened the door said he would take it up, but so
that if the right owner came for it he should be sure to have it.
So he went in and fetched a pail of water and set it down hard by
the purse, then went again and fetch some gunpowder, and cast a
good deal of powder upon the purse, and then made a train from
that which he had thrown loose upon the purse. The train reached
about two yards. After this he goes in a third time and fetches
out a pair of tongs red hot, and which he had prepared, I
suppose, on purpose; and first setting fire to the train of
powder, that singed the purse and also smoked the air
sufficiently. But he was not content with that, but he then takes
up the purse with the tongs, holding it so long till the tongs
burnt through the purse, and then he shook the money out into the
pail of water, so he carried it in. The money, as I remember, was
about thirteen shilling and some smooth groats and brass
farthings.
There might perhaps have been several poor people, as I have
observed above, that would have been hardy enough to have
ventured for the sake of the money; but you may easily see by
what I have observed that the few people who were spared were
very careful of themselves at that time when the distress was so
exceeding great.
Much about the same time I walked out into the fields towards
Bow; for I had a great mind to see how things were managed in the
river and among the ships; and as I had some concern in shipping,
I had a notion that it had been one of the best ways of securing
one’s self from the infection to have retired into a ship; and
musing how to satisfy my curiosity in that point, I turned away
over the fields from Bow to Bromley, and down to Blackwall to the
stairs which are there for landing or taking water.
Here I saw a poor man walking on the bank, or sea-wall, as they
call it, by himself. I walked a while also about, seeing the
houses all shut up. At last I fell into some talk, at a distance,
with this poor man; first I asked him how people did thereabouts.
‘Alas, sir!’ says he, ‘almost desolate; all dead or sick. Here
are very few families in this part, or in that village’ (pointing
at Poplar), ‘where half of them are not dead already, and the
rest sick.’ Then he pointing to one house, ‘There they are all
dead’, said he, ‘and the house stands open; nobody dares go into
it. A poor thief’, says he, ‘ventured in to steal something, but
he paid dear for his theft, for he was carried to the churchyard
too last night.’ Then he pointed to several other houses.
‘There’, says he, ‘they are all dead, the man and his wife, and
five children. There’, says he, ‘they are shut up; you see a
watchman at the door’; and so of other houses. ‘Why,’ says I,
‘what do you here all alone?’ ‘Why,’ says he, ‘I am a poor,
desolate man; it has pleased God I am not yet visited, though my
family is, and one of my children dead.’ ‘How do you mean, then,’
said I, ‘that you are not visited?’ ‘Why,’ says he, ‘that’s my
house’ (pointing to a very little, low-boarded house), ‘and there
my poor wife and two children live,’ said he, ‘if they may be
said to live, for my wife and one of the children are visited,
but I do not come at them.’ And with that word I saw the tears
run very plentifully down his face; and so they did down mine
too, I assure you.
‘But,’ said I, ‘why do you not come at them? How can you abandon
your own flesh and blood?’ ‘Oh, sir,’ says he, ‘the Lord forbid!
I do not abandon them; I work for them as much as I am able; and,
blessed be the Lord, I keep them from want’; and with that I
observed he lifted up his eyes to heaven, with a countenance that
presently told me I had happened on a man that was no hypocrite,
but a serious, religious, good man, and his ejaculation was an
expression of thankfulness that, in such a condition as he was
in, he should be able to say his family did not want. ‘Well,’
says I, ‘honest man, that is a great mercy as things go now with
the poor. But how do you live, then, and how are you kept from
the dreadful calamity that is now upon us all?’ ‘Why, sir,’ says
he, ‘I am a waterman, and there’s my boat,’ says he, ‘and the
boat serves me for a house. I work in it in the day, and I sleep
in it in the night; and what I get I lay down upon that stone,’
says he, showing me a broad stone on the other side of the
street, a good way from his house; ‘and then,’ says he, ‘I
halloo, and call to them till I make them hear; and they come and
fetch it.’
‘Well, friend,’ says I, ‘but how can you get any money as a
waterman? Does any body go by water these times?’ ‘Yes, sir,’
says he, ‘in the way I am employed there does. Do you see there,’
says he, ‘five ships lie at anchor’ (pointing down the river a
good way below the town), ‘and do you see’, says he, ‘eight or
ten ships lie at the chain there, and at anchor yonder?’
(pointing above the town). ‘All those ships have families on
board, of their merchants and owners, and such-like, who have
locked themselves up and live on board, close shut in, for fear
of the infection; and I tend on them to fetch things for them,
carry letters, and do what is absolutely necessary, that they may
not be obliged to come on shore; and every night I fasten my boat
on board one of the ship’s boats, and there I sleep by myself,
and, blessed be God, I am preserved hitherto.’
‘Well,’ said I, ‘friend, but will they let you come on board
after you have been on shore here, when this is such a terrible
place, and so infected as it is?’
‘Why, as to that,’ said he, ‘I very seldom go up the ship-side,
but deliver what I bring to their boat, or lie by the side, and
they hoist it on board. If I did, I think they are in no danger
from me, for I never go into any house on shore, or touch
anybody, no, not of my own family; but I fetch provisions for
them.’
‘Nay,’ says I, ‘but that may be worse, for you must have those
provisions of somebody or other; and since all this part of the
town is so infected, it is dangerous so much as to speak with
anybody, for the village’, said I, ‘is, as it were, the beginning
of London, though it be at some distance from it.’
‘That is true,’ added he; ‘but you do not understand me right; I
do not buy provisions for them here. I row up to Greenwich and
buy fresh meat there, and sometimes I row down the river to
Woolwich and buy there; then I go to single farm-houses on the
Kentish side, where I am known, and buy fowls and eggs and
butter, and bring to the ships, as they direct me, sometimes one,
sometimes the other. I seldom come on shore here, and I came now
only to call on my wife and hear how my family do, and give them
a little money, which I received last night.’
‘Poor man!’ said I; ‘and how much hast thou gotten for them?’
‘I have gotten four shillings,’ said he, ‘which is a great sum,
as things go now with poor men; but they have given me a bag of
bread too, and a salt fish and some flesh; so all helps out.’
‘Well,’ said I, ‘and have you given it them yet?’
‘No,’ said he; ‘but I have called, and my wife has answered that
she cannot come out yet, but in half-an-hour she hopes to come,
and I am waiting for her. Poor woman!’ says he, ‘she is brought
sadly down. She has a swelling, and it is broke, and I hope she
will recover; but I fear the child will die, but it is the Lord—’
Here he stopped, and wept very much.
‘Well, honest friend,’ said I, ‘thou hast a sure Comforter, if
thou hast brought thyself to be resigned to the will of God; He
is dealing with us all in judgement.’
‘Oh, sir!’ says he, ‘it is infinite mercy if any of us are
spared, and who am I to repine!’
‘Sayest thou so?’ said I, ‘and how much less is my faith than
thine?’ And here my heart smote me, suggesting how much better
this poor man’s foundation was on which he stayed in the danger
than mine; that he had nowhere to fly; that he had a family to
bind him to attendance, which I had not; and mine was mere
presumption, his a true dependence and a courage resting on God;
and yet that he used all possible caution for his safety.
I turned a little way from the man while these thoughts engaged
me, for, indeed, I could no more refrain from tears than he.
At length, after some further talk, the poor woman opened the
door and called, ‘Robert, Robert’. He answered, and bid her stay
a few moments and he would come; so he ran down the common stairs
to his boat and fetched up a sack, in which was the provisions he
had brought from the ships; and when he returned he hallooed
again. Then he went to the great stone which he showed me and
emptied the sack, and laid all out, everything by themselves, and
then retired; and his wife came with a little boy to fetch them
away, and called and said such a captain had sent such a thing,
and such a captain such a thing, and at the end adds, ‘God has
sent it all; give thanks to Him.’ When the poor woman had taken
up all, she was so weak she could not carry it at once in, though
the weight was not much neither; so she left the biscuit, which
was in a little bag, and left a little boy to watch it till she
came again.
‘Well, but’, says I to him, ‘did you leave her the four shillings
too, which you said was your week’s pay?’
‘Yes, yes,’ says he; ‘you shall hear her own it.’ So he calls
again, ‘Rachel, Rachel,’ which it seems was her name, ‘did you
take up the money?’ ‘Yes,’ said she. ‘How much was it?’ said he.
‘Four shillings and a groat,’ said she. ‘Well, well,’ says he,
‘the Lord keep you all’; and so he turned to go away.
As I could not refrain contributing tears to this man’s story, so
neither could I refrain my charity for his assistance. So I
called him, ‘Hark thee, friend,’ said I, ‘come hither, for I
believe thou art in health, that I may venture thee’; so I pulled
out my hand, which was in my pocket before, ‘Here,’ says I, ‘go
and call thy Rachel once more, and give her a little more comfort
from me. God will never forsake a family that trust in Him as
thou dost.’ So I gave him four other shillings, and bid him go
lay them on the stone and call his wife.
I have not words to express the poor man’s thankfulness, neither
could he express it himself but by tears running down his face.
He called his wife, and told her God had moved the heart of a
stranger, upon hearing their condition, to give them all that
money, and a great deal more such as that he said to her. The
woman, too, made signs of the like thankfulness, as well to
Heaven as to me, and joyfully picked it up; and I parted with no
money all that year that I thought better bestowed.
I then asked the poor man if the distemper had not reached to
Greenwich. He said it had not till about a fortnight before; but
that then he feared it had, but that it was only at that end of
the town which lay south towards Deptford Bridge; that he went
only to a butcher’s shop and a grocer’s, where he generally
bought such things as they sent him for, but was very careful.
I asked him then how it came to pass that those people who had so
shut themselves up in the ships had not laid in sufficient stores
of all things necessary. He said some of them had—but, on the
other hand, some did not come on board till they were frighted
into it and till it was too dangerous for them to go to the
proper people to lay in quantities of things, and that he waited
on two ships, which he showed me, that had laid in little or
nothing but biscuit bread and ship beer, and that he had bought
everything else almost for them. I asked him if there was any
more ships that had separated themselves as those had done. He
told me yes, all the way up from the point, right against
Greenwich, to within the shore of Limehouse and Redriff, all the
ships that could have room rid two and two in the middle of the
stream, and that some of them had several families on board. I
asked him if the distemper had not reached them. He said he
believed it had not, except two or three ships whose people had
not been so watchful to keep the seamen from going on shore as
others had been, and he said it was a very fine sight to see how
the ships lay up the Pool.
When he said he was going over to Greenwich as soon as the tide
began to come in, I asked if he would let me go with him and
bring me back, for that I had a great mind to see how the ships
were ranged, as he had told me. He told me, if I would assure him
on the word of a Christian and of an honest man that I had not
the distemper, he would. I assured him that I had not; that it
had pleased God to preserve me; that I lived in Whitechappel, but
was too impatient of being so long within doors, and that I had
ventured out so far for the refreshment of a little air, but that
none in my house had so much as been touched with it.
Well, sir,’ says he, ‘as your charity has been moved to pity me
and my poor family, sure you cannot have so little pity left as
to put yourself into my boat if you were not sound in health
which would be nothing less than killing me and ruining my whole
family.’ The poor man troubled me so much when he spoke of his
family with such a sensible concern and in such an affectionate
manner, that I could not satisfy myself at first to go at all. I
told him I would lay aside my curiosity rather than make him
uneasy, though I was sure, and very thankful for it, that I had
no more distemper upon me than the freshest man in the world.
Well, he would not have me put it off neither, but to let me see
how confident he was that I was just to him, now importuned me to
go; so when the tide came up to his boat I went in, and he
carried me to Greenwich. While he bought the things which he had
in his charge to buy, I walked up to the top of the hill under
which the town stands, and on the east side of the town, to get a
prospect of the river. But it was a surprising sight to see the
number of ships which lay in rows, two and two, and some places
two or three such lines in the breadth of the river, and this not
only up quite to the town, between the houses which we call
Ratcliff and Redriff, which they name the Pool, but even down the
whole river as far as the head of Long Reach, which is as far as
the hills give us leave to see it.
I cannot guess at the number of ships, but I think there must be
several hundreds of sail; and I could not but applaud the
contrivance: for ten thousand people and more who attended ship
affairs were certainly sheltered here from the violence of the
contagion, and lived very safe and very easy.
I returned to my own dwelling very well satisfied with my day’s
journey, and particularly with the poor man; also I rejoiced to
see that such little sanctuaries were provided for so many
families in a time of such desolation. I observed also that, as
the violence of the plague had increased, so the ships which had
families on board removed and went farther off, till, as I was
told, some went quite away to sea, and put into such harbours and
safe roads on the north coast as they could best come at.
But it was also true that all the people who thus left the land
and lived on board the ships were not entirely safe from the
infection, for many died and were thrown overboard into the
river, some in coffins, and some, as I heard, without coffins,
whose bodies were seen sometimes to drive up and down with the
tide in the river.
But I believe I may venture to say that in those ships which were
thus infected it either happened where the people had recourse to
them too late, and did not fly to the ship till they had stayed
too long on shore and had the distemper upon them (though perhaps
they might not perceive it) and so the distemper did not come to
them on board the ships, but they really carried it with them; or
it was in these ships where the poor waterman said they had not
had time to furnish themselves with provisions, but were obliged
to send often on shore to buy what they had occasion for, or
suffered boats to come to them from the shore. And so the
distemper was brought insensibly among them.
And here I cannot but take notice that the strange temper of the
people of London at that time contributed extremely to their own
destruction. The plague began, as I have observed, at the other
end of the town, namely, in Long Acre, Drury Lane, &c., and came
on towards the city very gradually and slowly. It was felt at
first in December, then again in February, then again in April,
and always but a very little at a time; then it stopped till May,
and even the last week in May there was but seventeen, and all at
that end of the town; and all this while, even so long as till
there died above 3000 a week, yet had the people in Redriff, and
in Wapping and Ratcliff, on both sides of the river, and almost
all Southwark side, a mighty fancy that they should not be
visited, or at least that it would not be so violent among them.
Some people fancied the smell of the pitch and tar, and such
other things as oil and rosin and brimstone, which is so much
used by all trades relating to shipping, would preserve them.
Others argued it, because it was in its extreamest violence in
Westminster and the parish of St Giles and St Andrew, &c., and
began to abate again before it came among them—which was true
indeed, in part. For example—
From the 8th to the 15th August—
- St Giles-in-the-Fields 242
- Cripplegate 886
- Stepney 197
- St Margaret, Bermondsey 24
- Rotherhithe 3
- Total this week 4030
From the 15th to the 22nd August—
- St Giles-in-the-Fields 175
- Cripplegate 847
- Stepney 273
- St Margaret, Bermondsey 36
- Rotherhithe 2
- Total this week 5319
N.B.—That it was observed the numbers mentioned in Stepney parish
at that time were generally all on that side where Stepney parish
joined to Shoreditch, which we now call Spittlefields, where the
parish of Stepney comes up to the very wall of Shoreditch
Churchyard, and the plague at this time was abated at St
Giles-in-the-Fields, and raged most violently in Cripplegate,
Bishopsgate, and Shoreditch parishes; but there was not ten
people a week that died of it in all that part of Stepney parish
which takes in Limehouse, Ratcliff Highway, and which are now the
parishes of Shadwell and Wapping, even to St Katherine’s by the
Tower, till after the whole month of August was expired. But they
paid for it afterwards, as I shall observe by-and-by.
This, I say, made the people of Redriff and Wapping, Ratcliff and
Limehouse, so secure, and flatter themselves so much with the
plague’s going off without reaching them, that they took no care
either to fly into the country or shut themselves up. Nay, so far
were they from stirring that they rather received their friends
and relations from the city into their houses, and several from
other places really took sanctuary in that part of the town as a
Place of safety, and as a place which they thought God would pass
over, and not visit as the rest was visited.
And this was the reason that when it came upon them they were
more surprised, more unprovided, and more at a loss what to do
than they were in other places; for when it came among them
really and with violence, as it did indeed in September and
October, there was then no stirring out into the country, nobody
would suffer a stranger to come near them, no, nor near the towns
where they dwelt; and, as I have been told, several that wandered
into the country on Surrey side were found starved to death in
the woods and commons, that country being more open and more
woody than any other part so near London, especially about
Norwood and the parishes of Camberwell, Dullege, and Lusum,
where, it seems, nobody durst relieve the poor distressed people
for fear of the infection.
This notion having, as I said, prevailed with the people in that
part of the town, was in part the occasion, as I said before,
that they had recourse to ships for their retreat; and where they
did this early and with prudence, furnishing themselves so with
provisions that they had no need to go on shore for supplies or
suffer boats to come on board to bring them,—I say, where they
did so they had certainly the safest retreat of any people
whatsoever; but the distress was such that people ran on board,
in their fright, without bread to eat, and some into ships that
had no men on board to remove them farther off, or to take the
boat and go down the river to buy provisions where it might be
done safely, and these often suffered and were infected on board
as much as on shore.
As the richer sort got into ships, so the lower rank got into
hoys, smacks, lighters, and fishing-boats; and many, especially
watermen, lay in their boats; but those made sad work of it,
especially the latter, for, going about for provision, and
perhaps to get their subsistence, the infection got in among them
and made a fearful havoc; many of the watermen died alone in
their wherries as they rid at their roads, as well as above
bridge as below, and were not found sometimes till they were not
in condition for anybody to touch or come near them.
Indeed, the distress of the people at this seafaring end of the
town was very deplorable, and deserved the greatest
commiseration. But, alas! this was a time when every one’s
private safety lay so near them that they had no room to pity the
distresses of others; for every one had death, as it were, at his
door, and many even in their families, and knew not what to do or
whither to fly.
This, I say, took away all compassion; self-preservation, indeed,
appeared here to be the first law. For the children ran away from
their parents as they languished in the utmost distress. And in
some places, though not so frequent as the other, parents did the
like to their children; nay, some dreadful examples there were,
and particularly two in one week, of distressed mothers, raving
and distracted, killing their own children; one whereof was not
far off from where I dwelt, the poor lunatic creature not living
herself long enough to be sensible of the sin of what she had
done, much less to be punished for it.
It is not, indeed, to be wondered at: for the danger of immediate
death to ourselves took away all bowels of love, all concern for
one another. I speak in general, for there were many instances of
immovable affection, pity, and duty in many, and some that came
to my knowledge, that is to say, by hearsay; for I shall not take
upon me to vouch the truth of the particulars.
To introduce one, let me first mention that one of the most
deplorable cases in all the present calamity was that of women
with child, who, when they came to the hour of their sorrows, and
their pains come upon them, could neither have help of one kind
or another; neither midwife or neighbouring women to come near
them. Most of the midwives were dead, especially of such as
served the poor; and many, if not all the midwives of note, were
fled into the country; so that it was next to impossible for a
poor woman that could not pay an immoderate price to get any
midwife to come to her—and if they did, those they could get were
generally unskilful and ignorant creatures; and the consequence
of this was that a most unusual and incredible number of women
were reduced to the utmost distress. Some were delivered and
spoiled by the rashness and ignorance of those who pretended to
lay them. Children without number were, I might say, murdered by
the same but a more justifiable ignorance: pretending they would
save the mother, whatever became of the child; and many times
both mother and child were lost in the same manner; and
especially where the mother had the distemper, there nobody would
come near them and both sometimes perished. Sometimes the mother
has died of the plague, and the infant, it may be, half born, or
born but not parted from the mother. Some died in the very pains
of their travail, and not delivered at all; and so many were the
cases of this kind that it is hard to judge of them.
Something of it will appear in the unusual numbers which are put
into the weekly bills (though I am far from allowing them to be
able to give anything of a full account) under the articles of—
Child-bed. Abortive and Still-born. Chrisoms and Infants.
Take the weeks in which the plague was most violent, and compare
them with the weeks before the distemper began, even in the same
year. For example:—
Child-bed. Abortive. Still-born.
From January 3 to January 10 7 1 13
” ” 10 ” 17 8 6 11
” ” 17 ” 24 9 5 15
” ” 24 ” 31 3 2 9
” ” 31 to February 7 3 3 8
” February 7 ” 14 6 2 11
” ” 14 ” 21 5 2 13
” ” 21 ” 28 2 2 10
” ” 28 to March 7 5 1 10
- —- —- ——
- 48 24 100
From August 1 to August 8 25 5 11
” ” 8 ” 15 23 6 8
” ” 15 ” 22 28 4 4
” ” 22 ” 29 40 6 10
” ” 29 to September 5 38 2 11
September 5 ” 12 39 23 ...
” ” 12 ” 19 42 5 17
” ” 19 ” 26 42 6 10
” ” 26 to October 3 14 4 9
- —- — —-
- 291 61 80
To the disparity of these numbers it is to be considered and
allowed for, that according to our usual opinion who were then
upon the spot, there were not one-third of the people in the town
during the months of August and September as were in the months
of January and February. In a word, the usual number that used to
die of these three articles, and, as I hear, did die of them the
year before, was thus:—
1664. 1665.
Child-bed 189 Child-bed 625
Abortive and still-born 458 Abortive and still-born 617
- —— ——
- 647 1242
This inequality, I say, is exceedingly augmented when the numbers
of people are considered. I pretend not to make any exact
calculation of the numbers of people which were at this time in
the city, but I shall make a probable conjecture at that part
by-and-by. What I have said now is to explain the misery of those
poor creatures above; so that it might well be said, as in the
Scripture, Woe be to those who are with child, and to those which
give suck in that day. For, indeed, it was a woe to them in
particular.
I was not conversant in many particular families where these
things happened, but the outcries of the miserable were heard
afar off. As to those who were with child, we have seen some
calculation made; 291 women dead in child-bed in nine weeks, out
of one-third part of the number of whom there usually died in
that time but eighty-four of the same disaster. Let the reader
calculate the proportion.
There is no room to doubt but the misery of those that gave suck
was in proportion as great. Our bills of mortality could give but
little light in this, yet some it did. There were several more
than usual starved at nurse, but this was nothing. The misery was
where they were, first, starved for want of a nurse, the mother
dying and all the family and the infants found dead by them,
merely for want; and, if I may speak my opinion, I do believe
that many hundreds of poor helpless infants perished in this
manner. Secondly, not starved, but poisoned by the nurse. Nay,
even where the mother has been nurse, and having received the
infection, has poisoned, that is, infected the infant with her
milk even before they knew they were infected themselves; nay,
and the infant has died in such a case before the mother. I
cannot but remember to leave this admonition upon record, if ever
such another dreadful visitation should happen in this city, that
all women that are with child or that give suck should be gone,
if they have any possible means, out of the place, because their
misery, if infected, will so much exceed all other people’s.
I could tell here dismal stories of living infants being found
sucking the breasts of their mothers, or nurses, after they have
been dead of the plague. Of a mother in the parish where I lived,
who, having a child that was not well, sent for an apothecary to
view the child; and when he came, as the relation goes, was
giving the child suck at her breast, and to all appearance was
herself very well; but when the apothecary came close to her he
saw the tokens upon that breast with which she was suckling the
child. He was surprised enough, to be sure, but, not willing to
fright the poor woman too much, he desired she would give the
child into his hand; so he takes the child, and going to a cradle
in the room, lays it in, and opening its cloths, found the tokens
upon the child too, and both died before he could get home to
send a preventive medicine to the father of the child, to whom he
had told their condition. Whether the child infected the
nurse-mother or the mother the child was not certain, but the
last most likely. Likewise of a child brought home to the parents
from a nurse that had died of the plague, yet the tender mother
would not refuse to take in her child, and laid it in her bosom,
by which she was infected; and died with the child in her arms
dead also.
It would make the hardest heart move at the instances that were
frequently found of tender mothers tending and watching with
their dear children, and even dying before them, and sometimes
taking the distemper from them and dying, when the child for whom
the affectionate heart had been sacrificed has got over it and
escaped.
The like of a tradesman in East Smithfield, whose wife was big
with child of her first child, and fell in labour, having the
plague upon her. He could neither get midwife to assist her or
nurse to tend her, and two servants which he kept fled both from
her. He ran from house to house like one distracted, but could
get no help; the utmost he could get was, that a watchman, who
attended at an infected house shut up, promised to send a nurse
in the morning. The poor man, with his heart broke, went back,
assisted his wife what he could, acted the part of the midwife,
brought the child dead into the world, and his wife in about an
hour died in his arms, where he held her dead body fast till the
morning, when the watchman came and brought the nurse as he had
promised; and coming up the stairs (for he had left the door
open, or only latched), they found the man sitting with his dead
wife in his arms, and so overwhelmed with grief that he died in a
few hours after without any sign of the infection upon him, but
merely sunk under the weight of his grief.
I have heard also of some who, on the death of their relations,
have grown stupid with the insupportable sorrow; and of one, in
particular, who was so absolutely overcome with the pressure upon
his spirits that by degrees his head sank into his body, so
between his shoulders that the crown of his head was very little
seen above the bone of his shoulders; and by degrees losing both
voice and sense, his face, looking forward, lay against his
collarbone and could not be kept up any otherwise, unless held up
by the hands of other people; and the poor man never came to
himself again, but languished near a year in that condition, and
died. Nor was he ever once seen to lift up his eyes or to look
upon any particular object.
I cannot undertake to give any other than a summary of such
passages as these, because it was not possible to come at the
particulars, where sometimes the whole families where such things
happened were carried off by the distemper. But there were
innumerable cases of this kind which presented to the eye and the
ear, even in passing along the streets, as I have hinted above.
Nor is it easy to give any story of this or that family which
there was not divers parallel stories to be met with of the same
kind.
But as I am now talking of the time when the plague raged at the
easternmost part of the town—how for a long time the people of
those parts had flattered themselves that they should escape, and
how they were surprised when it came upon them as it did; for,
indeed, it came upon them like an armed man when it did come;—I
say, this brings me back to the three poor men who wandered from
Wapping, not knowing whither to go or what to do, and whom I
mentioned before; one a biscuit-baker, one a sailmaker, and the
other a joiner, all of Wapping, or there-abouts.
The sleepiness and security of that part, as I have observed, was
such that they not only did not shift for themselves as others
did, but they boasted of being safe, and of safety being with
them; and many people fled out of the city, and out of the
infected suburbs, to Wapping, Ratcliff, Limehouse, Poplar, and
such Places, as to Places of security; and it is not at all
unlikely that their doing this helped to bring the plague that
way faster than it might otherwise have come. For though I am
much for people flying away and emptying such a town as this upon
the first appearance of a like visitation, and that all people
who have any possible retreat should make use of it in time and
be gone, yet I must say, when all that will fly are gone, those
that are left and must stand it should stand stock-still where
they are, and not shift from one end of the town or one part of
the town to the other; for that is the bane and mischief of the
whole, and they carry the plague from house to house in their
very clothes.
Wherefore were we ordered to kill all the dogs and cats, but
because as they were domestic animals, and are apt to run from
house to house and from street to street, so they are capable of
carrying the effluvia or infectious streams of bodies infected
even in their furs and hair? And therefore it was that, in the
beginning of the infection, an order was published by the Lord
Mayor, and by the magistrates, according to the advice of the
physicians, that all the dogs and cats should be immediately
killed, and an officer was appointed for the execution.
It is incredible, if their account is to be depended upon, what a
prodigious number of those creatures were destroyed. I think they
talked of forty thousand dogs, and five times as many cats; few
houses being without a cat, some having several, sometimes five
or six in a house. All possible endeavours were used also to
destroy the mice and rats, especially the latter, by laying
ratsbane and other poisons for them, and a prodigious multitude
of them were also destroyed.
I often reflected upon the unprovided condition that the whole
body of the people were in at the first coming of this calamity
upon them, and how it was for want of timely entering into
measures and managements, as well public as private, that all the
confusions that followed were brought upon us, and that such a
prodigious number of people sank in that disaster, which, if
proper steps had been taken, might, Providence concurring, have
been avoided, and which, if posterity think fit, they may take a
caution and warning from. But I shall come to this part again.
I come back to my three men. Their story has a moral in every
part of it, and their whole conduct, and that of some whom they
joined with, is a pattern for all poor men to follow, or women
either, if ever such a time comes again; and if there was no
other end in recording it, I think this a very just one, whether
my account be exactly according to fact or no.
Two of them are said to be brothers, the one an old soldier, but
now a biscuit-maker; the other a lame sailor, but now a
sailmaker; the third a joiner. Says John the biscuit-maker one
day to Thomas his brother, the sailmaker, ‘Brother Tom, what will
become of us? The plague grows hot in the city, and increases
this way. What shall we do?’
‘Truly,’ says Thomas, ‘I am at a great loss what to do, for I
find if it comes down into Wapping I shall be turned out of my
lodging.’ And thus they began to talk of it beforehand.
John. Turned out of your lodging, Tom! If you are, I don’t know
who will take you in; for people are so afraid of one another
now, there’s no getting a lodging anywhere.
Thomas. Why, the people where I lodge are good, civil people, and
have kindness enough for me too; but they say I go abroad every
day to my work, and it will be dangerous; and they talk of
locking themselves up and letting nobody come near them.
John. Why, they are in the right, to be sure, if they resolve to
venture staying in town.
Thomas. Nay, I might even resolve to stay within doors too, for,
except a suit of sails that my master has in hand, and which I am
just finishing, I am like to get no more work a great while.
There’s no trade stirs now. Workmen and servants are turned off
everywhere, so that I might be glad to be locked up too; but I do
not see they will be willing to consent to that, any more than to
the other.
John. Why, what will you do then, brother? And what shall I do?
for I am almost as bad as you. The people where I lodge are all
gone into the country but a maid, and she is to go next week, and
to shut the house quite up, so that I shall be turned adrift to
the wide world before you, and I am resolved to go away too, if I
knew but where to go.
Thomas. We were both distracted we did not go away at first; then
we might have travelled anywhere. There’s no stirring now; we
shall be starved if we pretend to go out of town. They won’t let
us have victuals, no, not for our money, nor let us come into the
towns, much less into their houses.
John. And that which is almost as bad, I have but little money to
help myself with neither.
Thomas. As to that, we might make shift, I have a little, though
not much; but I tell you there’s no stirring on the road. I know
a couple of poor honest men in our street have attempted to
travel, and at Barnet, or Whetstone, or thereabouts, the people
offered to fire at them if they pretended to go forward, so they
are come back again quite discouraged.
John. I would have ventured their fire if I had been there. If I
had been denied food for my money they should have seen me take
it before their faces, and if I had tendered money for it they
could not have taken any course with me by law.
Thomas. You talk your old soldier’s language, as if you were in
the Low Countries now, but this is a serious thing. The people
have good reason to keep anybody off that they are not satisfied
are sound, at such a time as this, and we must not plunder them.
John. No, brother, you mistake the case, and mistake me too. I
would plunder nobody; but for any town upon the road to deny me
leave to pass through the town in the open highway, and deny me
provisions for my money, is to say the town has a right to starve
me to death, which cannot be true.
Thomas. But they do not deny you liberty to go back again from
whence you came, and therefore they do not starve you.
John. But the next town behind me will, by the same rule, deny me
leave to go back, and so they do starve me between them. Besides,
there is no law to prohibit my travelling wherever I will on the
road.
Thomas. But there will be so much difficulty in disputing with
them at every town on the road that it is not for poor men to do
it or undertake it, at such a time as this is especially.
John. Why, brother, our condition at this rate is worse than
anybody else’s, for we can neither go away nor stay here. I am of
the same mind with the lepers of Samaria: ‘If we stay here we are
sure to die’, I mean especially as you and I are stated, without
a dwelling-house of our own, and without lodging in anybody
else’s. There is no lying in the street at such a time as this;
we had as good go into the dead-cart at once. Therefore I say, if
we stay here we are sure to die, and if we go away we can but
die; I am resolved to be gone.
Thomas. You will go away. Whither will you go, and what can you
do? I would as willingly go away as you, if I knew whither. But
we have no acquaintance, no friends. Here we were born, and here
we must die.
John. Look you, Tom, the whole kingdom is my native country as
well as this town. You may as well say I must not go out of my
house if it is on fire as that I must not go out of the town I
was born in when it is infected with the plague. I was born in
England, and have a right to live in it if I can.
Thomas. But you know every vagrant person may by the laws of
England be taken up, and passed back to their last legal
settlement.
John. But how shall they make me vagrant? I desire only to travel
on, upon my lawful occasions.
Thomas. What lawful occasions can we pretend to travel, or rather
wander upon? They will not be put off with words.
John. Is not flying to save our lives a lawful occasion? And do
they not all know that the fact is true? We cannot be said to
dissemble.
Thomas. But suppose they let us pass, whither shall we go?
John. Anywhere, to save our lives; it is time enough to consider
that when we are got out of this town. If I am once out of this
dreadful place, I care not where I go.
Thomas. We shall be driven to great extremities. I know not what
to think of it.
John. Well, Tom, consider of it a little.
This was about the beginning of July; and though the plague was
come forward in the west and north parts of the town, yet all
Wapping, as I have observed before, and Redriff, and Ratdiff, and
Limehouse, and Poplar, in short, Deptford and Greenwich, all both
sides of the river from the Hermitage, and from over against it,
quite down to Blackwall, was entirely free; there had not one
person died of the plague in all Stepney parish, and not one on
the south side of Whitechappel Road, no, not in any parish; and
yet the weekly bill was that very week risen up to 1006.
It was a fortnight after this before the two brothers met again,
and then the case was a little altered, and the plague was
exceedingly advanced and the number greatly increased; the bill
was up at 2785, and prodigiously increasing, though still both
sides of the river, as below, kept pretty well. But some began to
die in Redriff, and about five or six in Ratcliff Highway, when
the sailmaker came to his brother John express, and in some
fright; for he was absolutely warned out of his lodging, and had
only a week to provide himself. His brother John was in as bad a
case, for he was quite out, and had only begged leave of his
master, the biscuit-maker, to lodge in an outhouse belonging to
his workhouse, where he only lay upon straw, with some
biscuit-sacks, or bread-sacks, as they called them, laid upon it,
and some of the same sacks to cover him.
Here they resolved (seeing all employment being at an end, and no
work or wages to be had), they would make the best of their way
to get out of the reach of the dreadful infection, and, being as
good husbands as they could, would endeavour to live upon what
they had as long as it would last, and then work for more if they
could get work anywhere, of any kind, let it be what it would.
While they were considering to put this resolution in practice in
the best manner they could, the third man, who was acquainted
very well with the sailmaker, came to know of the design, and got
leave to be one of the number; and thus they prepared to set out.
It happened that they had not an equal share of money; but as the
sailmaker, who had the best stock, was, besides his being lame,
the most unfit to expect to get anything by working in the
country, so he was content that what money they had should all go
into one public stock, on condition that whatever any one of them
could gain more than another, it should without any grudging be
all added to the public stock.
They resolved to load themselves with as little baggage as
possible because they resolved at first to travel on foot, and to
go a great way that they might, if possible, be effectually safe;
and a great many consultations they had with themselves before
they could agree about what way they should travel, which they
were so far from adjusting that even to the morning they set out
they were not resolved on it.
At last the seaman put in a hint that determined it. ‘First,’
says he, ‘the weather is very hot, and therefore I am for
travelling north, that we may not have the sun upon our faces and
beating on our breasts, which will heat and suffocate us; and I
have been told’, says he, ‘that it is not good to overheat our
blood at a time when, for aught we know, the infection may be in
the very air. In the next place,’ says he, ‘I am for going the
way that may be contrary to the wind, as it may blow when we set
out, that we may not have the wind blow the air of the city on
our backs as we go.’ These two cautions were approved of, if it
could be brought so to hit that the wind might not be in the
south when they set out to go north.
John the baker, who had been a soldier, then put in his opinion.
‘First,’ says he, ‘we none of us expect to get any lodging on the
road, and it will be a little too hard to lie just in the open
air. Though it be warm weather, yet it may be wet and damp, and
we have a double reason to take care of our healths at such a
time as this; and therefore,’ says he, ‘you, brother Tom, that
are a sailmaker, might easily make us a little tent, and I will
undertake to set it up every night, and take it down, and a fig
for all the inns in England; if we have a good tent over our
heads we shall do well enough.’
The joiner opposed this, and told them, let them leave that to
him; he would undertake to build them a house every night with
his hatchet and mallet, though he had no other tools, which
should be fully to their satisfaction, and as good as a tent.
The soldier and the joiner disputed that point some time, but at
last the soldier carried it for a tent. The only objection
against it was, that it must be carried with them, and that would
increase their baggage too much, the weather being hot; but the
sailmaker had a piece of good hap, fell in which made that easy,
for his master whom he worked for, having a rope-walk as well as
sailmaking trade, had a little, poor horse that he made no use of
then; and being willing to assist the three honest men, he gave
them the horse for the carrying their baggage; also for a small
matter of three days’ work that his man did for him before he
went, he let him have an old top-gallant sail that was worn out,
but was sufficient and more than enough to make a very good tent.
The soldier showed how to shape it, and they soon by his
direction made their tent, and fitted it with poles or staves for
the purpose; and thus they were furnished for their journey,
viz., three men, one tent, one horse, one gun—for the soldier
would not go without arms, for now he said he was no more a
biscuit-baker, but a trooper.
The joiner had a small bag of tools such as might be useful if he
should get any work abroad, as well for their subsistence as his
own. What money they had they brought all into one public stock,
and thus they began their journey. It seems that in the morning
when they set out the wind blew, as the sailor said, by his
pocket-compass, at N.W. by W. So they directed, or rather
resolved to direct, their course N.W.
But then a difficulty came in their way, that, as they set out
from the hither end of Wapping, near the Hermitage, and that the
plague was now very violent, especially on the north side of the
city, as in Shoreditch and Cripplegate parish, they did not think
it safe for them to go near those parts; so they went away east
through Ratcliff Highway as far as Ratcliff Cross, and leaving
Stepney Church still on their left hand, being afraid to come up
from Ratcliff Cross to Mile End, because they must come just by
the churchyard, and because the wind, that seemed to blow more
from the west, blew directly from the side of the city where the
plague was hottest. So, I say, leaving Stepney they fetched a
long compass, and going to Poplar and Bromley, came into the
great road just at Bow.
Here the watch placed upon Bow Bridge would have questioned them,
but they, crossing the road into a narrow way that turns out of
the hither end of the town of Bow to Old Ford, avoided any
inquiry there, and travelled to Old Ford. The constables
everywhere were upon their guard not so much, It seems, to stop
people passing by as to stop them from taking up their abode in
their towns, and withal because of a report that was newly raised
at that time: and that, indeed, was not very improbable, viz.,
that the poor people in London, being distressed and starved for
want of work, and by that means for want of bread, were up in
arms and had raised a tumult, and that they would come out to all
the towns round to plunder for bread. This, I say, was only a
rumour, and it was very well it was no more. But it was not so
far off from being a reality as it has been thought, for in a few
weeks more the poor people became so desperate by the calamity
they suffered that they were with great difficulty kept from
going out into the fields and towns, and tearing all in pieces
wherever they came; and, as I have observed before, nothing
hindered them but that the plague raged so violently and fell in
upon them so furiously that they rather went to the grave by
thousands than into the fields in mobs by thousands; for, in the
parts about the parishes of St Sepulcher, Clarkenwell,
Cripplegate, Bishopsgate, and Shoreditch, which were the places
where the mob began to threaten, the distemper came on so
furiously that there died in those few parishes even then, before
the plague was come to its height, no less than 5361 people in
the first three weeks in August; when at the same time the parts
about Wapping, Radcliff, and Rotherhithe were, as before
described, hardly touched, or but very lightly; so that in a word
though, as I said before, the good management of the Lord Mayor
and justices did much to prevent the rage and desperation of the
people from breaking out in rabbles and tumults, and in short
from the poor plundering the rich,—I say, though they did much,
the dead-carts did more: for as I have said that in five parishes
only there died above 5000 in twenty days, so there might be
probably three times that number sick all that time; for some
recovered, and great numbers fell sick every day and died
afterwards. Besides, I must still be allowed to say that if the
bills of mortality said five thousand, I always believed it was
near twice as many in reality, there being no room to believe
that the account they gave was right, or that indeed they were
among such confusions as I saw them in, in any condition to keep
an exact account.
But to return to my travellers. Here they were only examined, and
as they seemed rather coming from the country than from the city,
they found the people the easier with them; that they talked to
them, let them come into a public-house where the constable and
his warders were, and gave them drink and some victuals which
greatly refreshed and encouraged them; and here it came into
their heads to say, when they should be inquired of afterwards,
not that they came from London, but that they came out of Essex.
To forward this little fraud, they obtained so much favour of the
constable at Old Ford as to give them a certificate of their
passing from Essex through that village, and that they had not
been at London; which, though false in the common acceptance of
London in the county, yet was literally true, Wapping or Ratcliff
being no part either of the city or liberty.
This certificate directed to the next constable that was at
Homerton, one of the hamlets of the parish of Hackney, was so
serviceable to them that it procured them, not a free passage
there only, but a full certificate of health from a justice of
the peace, who upon the constable’s application granted it
without much difficulty; and thus they passed through the long
divided town of Hackney (for it lay then in several separated
hamlets), and travelled on till they came into the great north
road on the top of Stamford Hill.
By this time they began to be weary, and so in the back-road from
Hackney, a little before it opened into the said great road, they
resolved to set up their tent and encamp for the first night,
which they did accordingly, with this addition, that finding a
barn, or a building like a barn, and first searching as well as
they could to be sure there was nobody in it, they set up their
tent, with the head of it against the barn. This they did also
because the wind blew that night very high, and they were but
young at such a way of lodging, as well as at the managing their
tent.
Here they went to sleep; but the joiner, a grave and sober man,
and not pleased with their lying at this loose rate the first
night, could not sleep, and resolved, after trying to sleep to no
purpose, that he would get out, and, taking the gun in his hand,
stand sentinel and guard his companions. So with the gun in his
hand, he walked to and again before the barn, for that stood in
the field near the road, but within the hedge. He had not been
long upon the scout but he heard a noise of people coming on, as
if it had been a great number, and they came on, as he thought,
directly towards the barn. He did not presently awake his
companions; but in a few minutes more, their noise growing louder
and louder, the biscuit-baker called to him and asked him what
was the matter, and quickly started out too. The other, being the
lame sailmaker and most weary, lay still in the tent.
As they expected, so the people whom they had heard came on
directly to the barn, when one of our travellers challenged, like
soldiers upon the guard, with ‘Who comes there?’ The people did
not answer immediately, but one of them speaking to another that
was behind him, ‘Alas! alas! we are all disappointed,’ says he.
‘Here are some people before us; the barn is taken up.’
They all stopped upon that, as under some surprise, and it seems
there was about thirteen of them in all, and some women among
them. They consulted together what they should do, and by their
discourse our travellers soon found they were poor, distressed
people too, like themselves, seeking shelter and safety; and
besides, our travellers had no need to be afraid of their coming
up to disturb them, for as soon as they heard the words, ‘Who
comes there?’ these could hear the women say, as if frighted, ‘Do
not go near them. How do you know but they may have the plague?’
And when one of the men said, ‘Let us but speak to them’, the
women said, ‘No, don’t by any means. We have escaped thus far by
the goodness of God; do not let us run into danger now, we
beseech you.’
Our travellers found by this that they were a good, sober sort of
people, and flying for their lives, as they were; and, as they
were encouraged by it, so John said to the joiner, his comrade,
‘Let us encourage them too as much as we can’; so he called to
them, ‘Hark ye, good people,’ says the joiner, ‘we find by your
talk that you are flying from the same dreadful enemy as we are.
Do not be afraid of us; we are only three poor men of us. If you
are free from the distemper you shall not be hurt by us. We are
not in the barn, but in a little tent here in the outside, and we
will remove for you; we can set up our tent again immediately
anywhere else’; and upon this a parley began between the joiner,
whose name was Richard, and one of their men, who said his name
was Ford.
Ford. And do you assure us that you are all sound men?
Richard. Nay, we are concerned to tell you of it, that you may
not be uneasy or think yourselves in danger; but you see we do
not desire you should put yourselves into any danger, and
therefore I tell you that we have not made use of the barn, so we
will remove from it, that you may be safe and we also.
Ford. That is very kind and charitable; but if we have reason to
be satisfied that you are sound and free from the visitation, why
should we make you remove now you are settled in your lodging,
and, it may be, are laid down to rest? We will go into the barn,
if you please, to rest ourselves a while, and we need not disturb
you.
Richard. Well, but you are more than we are. I hope you will
assure us that you are all of you sound too, for the danger is as
great from you to us as from us to you.
Ford. Blessed be God that some do escape, though it is but few;
what may be our portion still we know not, but hitherto we are
preserved.
Richard. What part of the town do you come from? Was the plague
come to the places where you lived?
Ford. Ay, ay, in a most frightful and terrible manner, or else we
had not fled away as we do; but we believe there will be very few
left alive behind us.
Richard. What part do you come from?
Ford. We are most of us of Cripplegate parish, only two or three
of Clerkenwell parish, but on the hither side.
Richard. How then was it that you came away no sooner?
Ford. We have been away some time, and kept together as well as
we could at the hither end of Islington, where we got leave to
lie in an old uninhabited house, and had some bedding and
conveniences of our own that we brought with us; but the plague
is come up into Islington too, and a house next door to our poor
dwelling was infected and shut up; and we are come away in a
fright.
Richard. And what way are you going?
Ford. As our lot shall cast us; we know not whither, but God will
guide those that look up to Him.
They parleyed no further at that time, but came all up to the
barn, and with some difficulty got into it. There was nothing but
hay in the barn, but it was almost full of that, and they
accommodated themselves as well as they could, and went to rest;
but our travellers observed that before they went to sleep an
ancient man who it seems was father of one of the women, went to
prayer with all the company, recommending themselves to the
blessing and direction of Providence, before they went to sleep.
It was soon day at that time of the year, and as Richard the
joiner had kept guard the first part of the night, so John the
soldier relieved him, and he had the post in the morning, and
they began to be acquainted with one another. It seems when they
left Islington they intended to have gone north, away to
Highgate, but were stopped at Holloway, and there they would not
let them pass; so they crossed over the fields and hills to the
eastward, and came out at the Boarded River, and so avoiding the
towns, they left Hornsey on the left hand and Newington on the
right hand, and came into the great road about Stamford Hill on
that side, as the three travellers had done on the other side.
And now they had thoughts of going over the river in the marshes,
and make forwards to Epping Forest, where they hoped they should
get leave to rest. It seems they were not poor, at least not so
poor as to be in want; at least they had enough to subsist them
moderately for two or three months, when, as they said, they were
in hopes the cold weather would check the infection, or at least
the violence of it would have spent itself, and would abate, if
it were only for want of people left alive to be infected.
This was much the fate of our three travellers, only that they
seemed to be the better furnished for travelling, and had it in
their view to go farther off; for as to the first, they did not
propose to go farther than one day’s journey, that so they might
have intelligence every two or three days how things were at
London.
But here our travellers found themselves under an unexpected
inconvenience: namely that of their horse, for by means of the
horse to carry their baggage they were obliged to keep in the
road, whereas the people of this other band went over the fields
or roads, path or no path, way or no way, as they pleased;
neither had they any occasion to pass through any town, or come
near any town, other than to buy such things as they wanted for
their necessary subsistence, and in that indeed they were put to
much difficulty; of which in its place.
But our three travellers were obliged to keep the road, or else
they must commit spoil, and do the country a great deal of damage
in breaking down fences and gates to go over enclosed fields,
which they were loth to do if they could help it.
Our three travellers, however, had a great mind to join
themselves to this company and take their lot with them; and
after some discourse they laid aside their first design which
looked northward, and resolved to follow the other into Essex; so
in the morning they took up their tent and loaded their horse,
and away they travelled all together.
They had some difficulty in passing the ferry at the river-side,
the ferryman being afraid of them; but after some parley at a
distance, the ferryman was content to bring his boat to a place
distant from the usual ferry, and leave it there for them to take
it; so putting themselves over, he directed them to leave the
boat, and he, having another boat, said he would fetch it again,
which it seems, however, he did not do for above eight days.
Here, giving the ferryman money beforehand, they had a supply of
victuals and drink, which he brought and left in the boat for
them; but not without, as I said, having received the money
beforehand. But now our travellers were at a great loss and
difficulty how to get the horse over, the boat being small and
not fit for it: and at last could not do it without unloading the
baggage and making him swim over.
From the river they travelled towards the forest, but when they
came to Walthamstow the people of that town denied to admit them,
as was the case everywhere. The constables and their watchmen
kept them off at a distance and parleyed with them. They gave the
same account of themselves as before, but these gave no credit to
what they said, giving it for a reason that two or three
companies had already come that way and made the like pretences,
but that they had given several people the distemper in the towns
where they had passed; and had been afterwards so hardly used by
the country (though with justice, too, as they had deserved) that
about Brentwood, or that way, several of them perished in the
fields—whether of the plague or of mere want and distress they
could not tell.
This was a good reason indeed why the people of Walthamstow
should be very cautious, and why they should resolve not to
entertain anybody that they were not well satisfied of. But, as
Richard the joiner and one of the other men who parleyed with
them told them, it was no reason why they should block up the
roads and refuse to let people pass through the town, and who
asked nothing of them but to go through the street; that if their
people were afraid of them, they might go into their houses and
shut their doors; they would neither show them civility nor
incivility, but go on about their business.
The constables and attendants, not to be persuaded by reason,
continued obstinate, and would hearken to nothing; so the two men
that talked with them went back to their fellows to consult what
was to be done. It was very discouraging in the whole, and they
knew not what to do for a good while; but at last John the
soldier and biscuit-maker, considering a while, ‘Come,’ says he,
‘leave the rest of the parley to me.’ He had not appeared yet, so
he sets the joiner, Richard, to work to cut some poles out of the
trees and shape them as like guns as he could, and in a little
time he had five or six fair muskets, which at a distance would
not be known; and about the part where the lock of a gun is he
caused them to wrap cloth and rags such as they had, as soldiers
do in wet weather to preserve the locks of their pieces from
rust; the rest was discoloured with clay or mud, such as they
could get; and all this while the rest of them sat under the
trees by his direction, in two or three bodies, where they made
fires at a good distance from one another.
While this was doing he advanced himself and two or three with
him, and set up their tent in the lane within sight of the
barrier which the town’s men had made, and set a sentinel just by
it with the real gun, the only one they had, and who walked to
and fro with the gun on his shoulder, so as that the people of
the town might see them. Also, he tied the horse to a gate in the
hedge just by, and got some dry sticks together and kindled a
fire on the other side of the tent, so that the people of the
town could see the fire and the smoke, but could not see what
they were doing at it.
After the country people had looked upon them very earnestly a
great while, and, by all that they could see, could not but
suppose that they were a great many in company, they began to be
uneasy, not for their going away, but for staying where they
were; and above all, perceiving they had horses and arms, for
they had seen one horse and one gun at the tent, and they had
seen others of them walk about the field on the inside of the
hedge by the side of the lane with their muskets, as they took
them to be, shouldered; I say, upon such a sight as this, you may
be assured they were alarmed and terribly frighted, and it seems
they went to a justice of the peace to know what they should do.
What the justice advised them to I know not, but towards the
evening they called from the barrier, as above, to the sentinel
at the tent.
‘What do you want?’ says John.[1]
[1] It seems John was in the tent, but hearing them call, he
steps out, and taking the gun upon his shoulder, talked to them
as if he had been the sentinel placed there upon the guard by
some officer that was his superior. [Footnote in the original.]
‘Why, what do you intend to do?’ says the constable. ‘To do,’
says John; ‘what would you have us to do?’ Constable. Why don’t
you be gone? What do you stay there for?
John. Why do you stop us on the king’s highway, and pretend to
refuse us leave to go on our way?
Constable. We are not bound to tell you our reason, though we did
let you know it was because of the plague.
John. We told you we were all sound and free from the plague,
which we were not bound to have satisfied you of, and yet you
pretend to stop us on the highway.
Constable. We have a right to stop it up, and our own safety
obliges us to it. Besides, this is not the king’s highway; ’tis a
way upon sufferance. You see here is a gate, and if we do let
people pass here, we make them pay toll.
John. We have a right to seek our own safety as well as you, and
you may see we are flying for our lives: and ’tis very
unchristian and unjust to stop us.
Constable. You may go back from whence you came; we do not hinder
you from that.
John. No; it is a stronger enemy than you that keeps us from
doing that, or else we should not have come hither.
Constable. Well, you may go any other way, then.
John. No, no; I suppose you see we are able to send you going,
and all the people of your parish, and come through your town
when we will; but since you have stopped us here, we are content.
You see we have encamped here, and here we will live. We hope you
will furnish us with victuals.
Constable. We furnish you! What mean you by that?
John. Why, you would not have us starve, would you? If you stop
us here, you must keep us.
Constable. You will be ill kept at our maintenance.
John. If you stint us, we shall make ourselves the better
allowance.
Constable. Why, you will not pretend to quarter upon us by force,
will you?
John. We have offered no violence to you yet. Why do you seem to
oblige us to it? I am an old soldier, and cannot starve, and if
you think that we shall be obliged to go back for want of
provisions, you are mistaken.
Constable. Since you threaten us, we shall take care to be strong
enough for you. I have orders to raise the county upon you.
John. It is you that threaten, not we. And since you are for
mischief, you cannot blame us if we do not give you time for it;
we shall begin our march in a few minutes.[2]
[2] This frighted the constable and the people that were with
him, that they immediately changed their note.
Constable. What is it you demand of us?
John. At first we desired nothing of you but leave to go through
the town; we should have offered no injury to any of you, neither
would you have had any injury or loss by us. We are not thieves,
but poor people in distress, and flying from the dreadful plague
in London, which devours thousands every week. We wonder how you
could be so unmerciful!
Constable. Self-preservation obliges us.
John. What! To shut up your compassion in a case of such distress
as this?
Constable. Well, if you will pass over the fields on your left
hand, and behind that part of the town, I will endeavour to have
gates opened for you.
John. Our horsemen[3] cannot pass with our baggage that way; it
does not lead into the road that we want to go, and why should
you force us out of the road? Besides, you have kept us here all
day without any provisions but such as we brought with us. I
think you ought to send us some provisions for our relief.
[3] They had but one horse among them. [Footnotes in the
original.]
Constable. If you will go another way we will send you some
provisions.
John. That is the way to have all the towns in the county stop up
the ways against us.
Constable. If they all furnish you with food, what will you be
the worse? I see you have tents; you want no lodging.
John. Well, what quantity of provisions will you send us?
Constable. How many are you?
John. Nay, we do not ask enough for all our company; we are in
three companies. If you will send us bread for twenty men and
about six or seven women for three days, and show us the way over
the field you speak of, we desire not to put your people into any
fear for us; we will go out of our way to oblige you, though we
are as free from infection as you are.[4]
[4] Here he called to one of his men, and bade him order Captain
Richard and his people to march the lower way on the side of the
marches, and meet them in the forest; which was all a sham, for
they had no Captain Richard, or any such company. [Footnote in
the original.]
Constable. And will you assure us that your other people shall
offer us no new disturbance?
John. No, no you may depend on it.
Constable. You must oblige yourself, too, that none of your
people shall come a step nearer than where the provisions we send
you shall be set down.
John. I answer for it we will not.
Accordingly they sent to the place twenty loaves of bread and
three or four large pieces of good beef, and opened some gates,
through which they passed; but none of them had courage so much
as to look out to see them go, and, as it was evening, if they
had looked they could not have seen them as to know how few they
were.
This was John the soldier’s management. But this gave such an
alarm to the county, that had they really been two or three
hundred the whole county would have been raised upon them, and
they would have been sent to prison, or perhaps knocked on the
head.
They were soon made sensible of this, for two days afterwards
they found several parties of horsemen and footmen also about, in
pursuit of three companies of men, armed, as they said, with
muskets, who were broke out from London and had the plague upon
them, and that were not only spreading the distemper among the
people, but plundering the country.
As they saw now the consequence of their case, they soon saw the
danger they were in; so they resolved by the advice also of the
old soldier to divide themselves again. John and his two
comrades, with the horse, went away, as if towards Waltham; the
other in two companies, but all a little asunder, and went
towards Epping.
The first night they encamped all in the forest, and not far off
of one another, but not setting up the tent, lest that should
discover them. On the other hand, Richard went to work with his
axe and his hatchet, and cutting down branches of trees, he built
three tents or hovels, in which they all encamped with as much
convenience as they could expect.
The provisions they had at Walthamstow served them very
plentifully this night; and as for the next, they left it to
Providence. They had fared so well with the old soldier’s conduct
that they now willingly made him their leader, and the first of
his conduct appeared to be very good. He told them that they were
now at a proper distance enough from London; that as they need
not be immediately beholden to the country for relief, so they
ought to be as careful the country did not infect them as that
they did not infect the country; that what little money they had,
they must be as frugal of as they could; that as he would not
have them think of offering the country any violence, so they
must endeavour to make the sense of their condition go as far
with the country as it could. They all referred themselves to his
direction, so they left their three houses standing, and the next
day went away towards Epping. The captain also (for so they now
called him), and his two fellow-travellers, laid aside their
design of going to Waltham, and all went together.
When they came near Epping they halted, choosing out a proper
place in the open forest, not very near the highway, but not far
out of it on the north side, under a little cluster of low
pollard-trees. Here they pitched their little camp—which
consisted of three large tents or huts made of poles which their
carpenter, and such as were his assistants, cut down and fixed in
the ground in a circle, binding all the small ends together at
the top and thickening the sides with boughs of trees and bushes,
so that they were completely close and warm. They had, besides
this, a little tent where the women lay by themselves, and a hut
to put the horse in.
It happened that the next day, or next but one, was market-day at
Epping, when Captain John and one of the other men went to market
and bought some provisions; that is to say, bread, and some
mutton and beef; and two of the women went separately, as if they
had not belonged to the rest, and bought more. John took the
horse to bring it home, and the sack which the carpenter carried
his tools in, to put it in. The carpenter went to work and made
them benches and stools to sit on, such as the wood he could get
would afford, and a kind of table to dine on.
They were taken no notice of for two or three days, but after
that abundance of people ran out of the town to look at them, and
all the country was alarmed about them. The people at first
seemed afraid to come near them; and, on the other hand, they
desired the people to keep off, for there was a rumour that the
plague was at Waltham, and that it had been in Epping two or
three days; so John called out to them not to come to them,
‘for,’ says he, ‘we are all whole and sound people here, and we
would not have you bring the plague among us, nor pretend we
brought it among you.’
After this the parish officers came up to them and parleyed with
them at a distance, and desired to know who they were, and by
what authority they pretended to fix their stand at that place.
John answered very frankly, they were poor distressed people from
London who, foreseeing the misery they should be reduced to if
plague spread into the city, had fled out in time for their
lives, and, having no acquaintance or relations to fly to, had
first taken up at Islington; but, the plague being come into that
town, were fled farther; and as they supposed that the people of
Epping might have refused them coming into their town, they had
pitched their tents thus in the open field and in the forest,
being willing to bear all the hardships of such a disconsolate
lodging rather than have any one think or be afraid that they
should receive injury by them.
At first the Epping people talked roughly to them, and told them
they must remove; that this was no place for them; and that they
pretended to be sound and well, but that they might be infected
with the plague for aught they knew, and might infect the whole
country, and they could not suffer them there.
John argued very calmly with them a great while, and told them
that London was the place by which they—that is, the townsmen of
Epping and all the country round them—subsisted; to whom they
sold the produce of their lands, and out of whom they made their
rent of their farms; and to be so cruel to the inhabitants of
London, or to any of those by whom they gained so much, was very
hard, and they would be loth to have it remembered hereafter, and
have it told how barbarous, how inhospitable, and how unkind they
were to the people of London when they fled from the face of the
most terrible enemy in the world; that it would be enough to make
the name of an Epping man hateful through all the city, and to
have the rabble stone them in the very streets whenever they came
so much as to market; that they were not yet secure from being
visited themselves, and that, as he heard, Waltham was already;
that they would think it very hard that when any of them fled for
fear before they were touched, they should be denied the liberty
of lying so much as in the open fields.
The Epping men told them again, that they, indeed, said they were
sound and free from the infection, but that they had no assurance
of it; and that it was reported that there had been a great
rabble of people at Walthamstow, who made such pretences of being
sound as they did, but that they threatened to plunder the town
and force their way, whether the parish officers would or no;
that there were near two hundred of them, and had arms and tents
like Low Country soldiers; that they extorted provisions from the
town, by threatening them with living upon them at free quarter,
showing their arms, and talking in the language of soldiers; and
that several of them being gone away toward Rumford and
Brentwood, the country had been infected by them, and the plague
spread into both those large towns, so that the people durst not
go to market there as usual; that it was very likely they were
some of that party; and if so, they deserved to be sent to the
county jail, and be secured till they had made satisfaction for
the damage they had done, and for the terror and fright they had
put the country into.
John answered that what other people had done was nothing to
them; that they assured them they were all of one company; that
they had never been more in number than they saw them at that
time (which, by the way, was very true); that they came out in
two separate companies, but joined by the way, their cases being
the same; that they were ready to give what account of themselves
anybody could desire of them, and to give in their names and
places of abode, that so they might be called to an account for
any disorder that they might be guilty of; that the townsmen
might see they were content to live hardly, and only desired a
little room to breathe in on the forest where it was wholesome;
for where it was not they could not stay, and would decamp if
they found it otherwise there.
‘But,’ said the townsmen, ‘we have a great charge of poor upon
our hands already, and we must take care not to increase it; we
suppose you can give us no security against your being chargeable
to our parish and to the inhabitants, any more than you can of
being dangerous to us as to the infection.’
‘Why, look you,’ says John, ‘as to being chargeable to you, we
hope we shall not. If you will relieve us with provisions for our
present necessity, we will be very thankful; as we all lived
without charity when we were at home, so we will oblige ourselves
fully to repay you, if God pleases to bring us back to our own
families and houses in safety, and to restore health to the
people of London.
‘As to our dying here: we assure you, if any of us die, we that
survive will bury them, and put you to no expense, except it
should be that we should all die; and then, indeed, the last man
not being able to bury himself, would put you to that single
expense which I am persuaded’, says John, ‘he would leave enough
behind him to pay you for the expense of.
‘On the other hand,’ says John, ‘if you shut up all bowels of
compassion, and not relieve us at all, we shall not extort
anything by violence or steal from any one; but when what little
we have is spent, if we perish for want, God’s will be done.’
John wrought so upon the townsmen, by talking thus rationally and
smoothly to them, that they went away; and though they did not
give any consent to their staying there, yet they did not molest
them; and the poor people continued there three or four days
longer without any disturbance. In this time they had got some
remote acquaintance with a victualling-house at the outskirts of
the town, to whom they called at a distance to bring some little
things that they wanted, and which they caused to be set down at
a distance, and always paid for very honestly.
During this time the younger people of the town came frequently
pretty near them, and would stand and look at them, and sometimes
talk with them at some space between; and particularly it was
observed that the first Sabbath-day the poor people kept retired,
worshipped God together, and were heard to sing psalms.
These things, and a quiet, inoffensive behaviour, began to get
them the good opinion of the country, and people began to pity
them and speak very well of them; the consequence of which was,
that upon the occasion of a very wet, rainy night, a certain
gentleman who lived in the neighbourhood sent them a little cart
with twelve trusses or bundles of straw, as well for them to
lodge upon as to cover and thatch their huts and to keep them
dry. The minister of a parish not far off, not knowing of the
other, sent them also about two bushels of wheat and half a
bushel of white peas.
They were very thankful, to be sure, for this relief, and
particularly the straw was a—very great comfort to them; for
though the ingenious carpenter had made frames for them to lie in
like troughs, and filled them with leaves of trees, and such
things as they could get, and had cut all their tent-cloth out to
make them coverlids, yet they lay damp and hard and unwholesome
till this straw came, which was to them like feather-beds, and,
as John said, more welcome than feather-beds would have been at
another time.
This gentleman and the minister having thus begun, and given an
example of charity to these wanderers, others quickly followed,
and they received every day some benevolence or other from the
people, but chiefly from the gentlemen who dwelt in the country
round them. Some sent them chairs, stools, tables, and such
household things as they gave notice they wanted; some sent them
blankets, rugs, and coverlids, some earthenware, and some kitchen
ware for ordering their food.
Encouraged by this good usage, their carpenter in a few days
built them a large shed or house with rafters, and a roof in
form, and an upper floor, in which they lodged warm: for the
weather began to be damp and cold in the beginning of September.
But this house, being well thatched, and the sides and roof made
very thick, kept out the cold well enough. He made, also, an
earthen wall at one end with a chimney in it, and another of the
company, with a vast deal of trouble and pains, made a funnel to
the chimney to carry out the smoke.
Here they lived comfortably, though coarsely, till the beginning
of September, when they had the bad news to hear, whether true or
not, that the plague, which was very hot at Waltham Abbey on one
side and at Rumford and Brentwood on the other side, was also
coming to Epping, to Woodford, and to most of the towns upon the
Forest, and which, as they said, was brought down among them
chiefly by the higlers, and such people as went to and from
London with provisions.
If this was true, it was an evident contradiction to that report
which was afterwards spread all over England, but which, as I
have said, I cannot confirm of my own knowledge: namely, that the
market-people carrying provisions to the city never got the
infection or carried it back into the country; both which, I have
been assured, has been false.
It might be that they were preserved even beyond expectation,
though not to a miracle, that abundance went and came and were
not touched; and that was much for the encouragement of the poor
people of London, who had been completely miserable if the people
that brought provisions to the markets had not been many times
wonderfully preserved, or at least more preserved than could be
reasonably expected.
But now these new inmates began to be disturbed more effectually,
for the towns about them were really infected, and they began to
be afraid to trust one another so much as to go abroad for such
things as they wanted, and this pinched them very hard, for now
they had little or nothing but what the charitable gentlemen of
the country supplied them with. But, for their encouragement, it
happened that other gentlemen in the country who had not sent
them anything before, began to hear of them and supply them, and
one sent them a large pig—that is to say, a porker—another two
sheep, and another sent them a calf. In short, they had meat
enough, and sometimes had cheese and milk, and all such things.
They were chiefly put to it for bread, for when the gentlemen
sent them corn they had nowhere to bake it or to grind it. This
made them eat the first two bushel of wheat that was sent them in
parched corn, as the Israelites of old did, without grinding or
making bread of it.
At last they found means to carry their corn to a windmill near
Woodford, where they had it ground, and afterwards the
biscuit-maker made a hearth so hollow and dry that he could bake
biscuit-cakes tolerably well; and thus they came into a condition
to live without any assistance or supplies from the towns; and it
was well they did, for the country was soon after fully infected,
and about 120 were said to have died of the distemper in the
villages near them, which was a terrible thing to them.
On this they called a new council, and now the towns had no need
to be afraid they should settle near them; but, on the contrary,
several families of the poorer sort of the inhabitants quitted
their houses and built huts in the forest after the same manner
as they had done. But it was observed that several of these poor
people that had so removed had the sickness even in their huts or
booths; the reason of which was plain, namely, not because they
removed into the air, but, (1) because they did not remove time
enough; that is to say, not till, by openly conversing with the
other people their neighbours, they had the distemper upon them,
or (as may be said) among them, and so carried it about them
whither they went. Or (2) because they were not careful enough,
after they were safely removed out of the towns, not to come in
again and mingle with the diseased people.
But be it which of these it will, when our travellers began to
perceive that the plague was not only in the towns, but even in
the tents and huts on the forest near them, they began then not
only to be afraid, but to think of decamping and removing; for
had they stayed they would have been in manifest danger of their
lives.
It is not to be wondered that they were greatly afflicted at
being obliged to quit the place where they had been so kindly
received, and where they had been treated with so much humanity
and charity; but necessity and the hazard of life, which they
came out so far to preserve, prevailed with them, and they saw no
remedy. John, however, thought of a remedy for their present
misfortune: namely, that he would first acquaint that gentleman
who was their principal benefactor with the distress they were
in, and to crave his assistance and advice.
The good, charitable gentleman encouraged them to quit the Place
for fear they should be cut off from any retreat at all by the
violence of the distemper; but whither they should go, that he
found very hard to direct them to. At last John asked of him
whether he, being a justice of the peace, would give them
certificates of health to other justices whom they might come
before; that so whatever might be their lot, they might not be
repulsed now they had been also so long from London. This his
worship immediately granted, and gave them proper letters of
health, and from thence they were at liberty to travel whither
they pleased.
Accordingly they had a full certificate of health, intimating
that they had resided in a village in the county of Essex so long
that, being examined and scrutinised sufficiently, and having
been retired from all conversation for above forty days, without
any appearance of sickness, they were therefore certainly
concluded to be sound men, and might be safely entertained
anywhere, having at last removed rather for fear of the plague
which was come into such a town, rather than for having any
signal of infection upon them, or upon any belonging to them.
With this certificate they removed, though with great reluctance;
and John inclining not to go far from home, they moved towards
the marshes on the side of Waltham. But here they found a man
who, it seems, kept a weir or stop upon the river, made to raise
the water for the barges which go up and down the river, and he
terrified them with dismal stories of the sickness having been
spread into all the towns on the river and near the river, on the
side of Middlesex and Hertfordshire; that is to say, into
Waltham, Waltham Cross, Enfield, and Ware, and all the towns on
the road, that they were afraid to go that way; though it seems
the man imposed upon them, for that the thing was not really
true.
However, it terrified them, and they resolved to move across the
forest towards Rumford and Brentwood; but they heard that there
were numbers of people fled out of London that way, who lay up
and down in the forest called Henalt Forest, reaching near
Rumford, and who, having no subsistence or habitation, not only
lived oddly and suffered great extremities in the woods and
fields for want of relief, but were said to be made so desperate
by those extremities as that they offered many violences to the
county, robbed and plundered, and killed cattle, and the like;
that others, building huts and hovels by the roadside, begged,
and that with an importunity next door to demanding relief; so
that the county was very uneasy, and had been obliged to take
some of them up.
This in the first place intimated to them, that they would be
sure to find the charity and kindness of the county, which they
had found here where they were before, hardened and shut up
against them; and that, on the other hand, they would be
questioned wherever they came, and would be in danger of violence
from others in like cases as themselves.
Upon all these considerations John, their captain, in all their
names, went back to their good friend and benefactor, who had
relieved them before, and laying their case truly before him,
humbly asked his advice; and he as kindly advised them to take up
their old quarters again, or if not, to remove but a little
farther out of the road, and directed them to a proper place for
them; and as they really wanted some house rather than huts to
shelter them at that time of the year, it growing on towards
Michaelmas, they found an old decayed house which had been
formerly some cottage or little habitation but was so out of
repair as scarce habitable; and by the consent of a farmer to
whose farm it belonged, they got leave to make what use of it
they could.
The ingenious joiner, and all the rest, by his directions went to
work with it, and in a very few days made it capable to shelter
them all in case of bad weather; and in which there was an old
chimney and old oven, though both lying in ruins; yet they made
them both fit for use, and, raising additions, sheds, and leantos
on every side, they soon made the house capable to hold them all.
They chiefly wanted boards to make window-shutters, floors,
doors, and several other things; but as the gentlemen above
favoured them, and the country was by that means made easy with
them, and above all, that they were known to be all sound and in
good health, everybody helped them with what they could spare.
Here they encamped for good and all, and resolved to remove no
more. They saw plainly how terribly alarmed that county was
everywhere at anybody that came from London, and that they should
have no admittance anywhere but with the utmost difficulty; at
least no friendly reception and assistance as they had received
here.
Now, although they received great assistance and encouragement
from the country gentlemen and from the people round about them,
yet they were put to great straits: for the weather grew cold and
wet in October and November, and they had not been used to so
much hardship; so that they got colds in their limbs, and
distempers, but never had the infection; and thus about December
they came home to the city again.
I give this story thus at large, principally to give an account
what became of the great numbers of people which immediately
appeared in the city as soon as the sickness abated; for, as I
have said, great numbers of those that were able and had retreats
in the country fled to those retreats. So, when it was increased
to such a frightful extremity as I have related, the middling
people who had not friends fled to all parts of the country where
they could get shelter, as well those that had money to relieve
themselves as those that had not. Those that had money always
fled farthest, because they were able to subsist themselves; but
those who were empty suffered, as I have said, great hardships,
and were often driven by necessity to relieve their wants at the
expense of the country. By that means the country was made very
uneasy at them, and sometimes took them up; though even then they
scarce knew what to do with them, and were always very backward
to punish them, but often, too, they forced them from place to
place till they were obliged to come back again to London.
I have, since my knowing this story of John and his brother,
inquired and found that there were a great many of the poor
disconsolate people, as above, fled into the country every way;
and some of them got little sheds and barns and outhouses to live
in, where they could obtain so much kindness of the country, and
especially where they had any the least satisfactory account to
give of themselves, and particularly that they did not come out
of London too late. But others, and that in great numbers, built
themselves little huts and retreats in the fields and woods, and
lived like hermits in holes and caves, or any place they could
find, and where, we may be sure, they suffered great extremities,
such that many of them were obliged to come back again whatever
the danger was; and so those little huts were often found empty,
and the country people supposed the inhabitants lay dead in them
of the plague, and would not go near them for fear—no, not in a
great while; nor is it unlikely but that some of the unhappy
wanderers might die so all alone, even sometimes for want of
help, as particularly in one tent or hut was found a man dead,
and on the gate of a field just by was cut with his knife in
uneven letters the following words, by which it may be supposed
the other man escaped, or that, one dying first, the other buried
him as well as he could:—
O mIsErY!
We BoTH ShaLL DyE,
WoE, WoE.
I have given an account already of what I found to have been the
case down the river among the seafaring men; how the ships lay in
the offing, as it’s called, in rows or lines astern of one
another, quite down from the Pool as far as I could see. I have
been told that they lay in the same manner quite down the river
as low as Gravesend, and some far beyond: even everywhere or in
every place where they could ride with safety as to wind and
weather; nor did I ever hear that the plague reached to any of
the people on board those ships—except such as lay up in the
Pool, or as high as Deptford Reach, although the people went
frequently on shore to the country towns and villages and
farmers’ houses, to buy fresh provisions, fowls, pigs, calves,
and the like for their supply.
Likewise I found that the watermen on the river above the bridge
found means to convey themselves away up the river as far as they
could go, and that they had, many of them, their whole families
in their boats, covered with tilts and bales, as they call them,
and furnished with straw within for their lodging, and that they
lay thus all along by the shore in the marshes, some of them
setting up little tents with their sails, and so lying under them
on shore in the day, and going into their boats at night; and in
this manner, as I have heard, the river-sides were lined with
boats and people as long as they had anything to subsist on, or
could get anything of the country; and indeed the country people,
as well Gentlemen as others, on these and all other occasions,
were very forward to relieve them—but they were by no means
willing to receive them into their towns and houses, and for that
we cannot blame them.
There was one unhappy citizen within my knowledge who had been
visited in a dreadful manner, so that his wife and all his
children were dead, and himself and two servants only left, with
an elderly woman, a near relation, who had nursed those that were
dead as well as she could. This disconsolate man goes to a
village near the town, though not within the bills of mortality,
and finding an empty house there, inquires out the owner, and
took the house. After a few days he got a cart and loaded it with
goods, and carries them down to the house; the people of the
village opposed his driving the cart along; but with some
arguings and some force, the men that drove the cart along got
through the street up to the door of the house. There the
constable resisted them again, and would not let them be brought
in. The man caused the goods to be unloaden and laid at the door,
and sent the cart away; upon which they carried the man before a
justice of peace; that is to say, they commanded him to go, which
he did. The justice ordered him to cause the cart to fetch away
the goods again, which he refused to do; upon which the justice
ordered the constable to pursue the carters and fetch them back,
and make them reload the goods and carry them away, or to set
them in the stocks till they came for further orders; and if they
could not find them, nor the man would not consent to take them
away, they should cause them to be drawn with hooks from the
house-door and burned in the street. The poor distressed man upon
this fetched the goods again, but with grievous cries and
lamentations at the hardship of his case. But there was no
remedy; self-preservation obliged the people to those severities
which they would not otherwise have been concerned in. Whether
this poor man lived or died I cannot tell, but it was reported
that he had the plague upon him at that time; and perhaps the
people might report that to justify their usage of him; but it
was not unlikely that either he or his goods, or both, were
dangerous, when his whole family had been dead of the distempers
so little a while before.
I know that the inhabitants of the towns adjacent to London were
much blamed for cruelty to the poor people that ran from the
contagion in their distress, and many very severe things were
done, as may be seen from what has been said; but I cannot but
say also that, where there was room for charity and assistance to
the people, without apparent danger to themselves, they were
willing enough to help and relieve them. But as every town were
indeed judges in their own case, so the poor people who ran
abroad in their extremities were often ill-used and driven back
again into the town; and this caused infinite exclamations and
outcries against the country towns, and made the clamour very
popular.
And yet, more or less, (with) all the caution, there was not a
town of any note within ten (or, I believe, twenty) miles of the
city but what was more or less infected and had some died among
them. I have heard the accounts of several, such as they were
reckoned up, as follows:—
In Enfield 32 In Uxbridge 117
” Hornsey 58 ” Hertford 90
” Newington 17 ” Ware 160
” Tottenham 42 ” Hodsdon 30
” Edmonton 19 ” Waltham Abbey 23
” Barnet and Hadly 19 ” Epping 26
” St Albans 121 ” Deptford 623
” Watford 45 ” Greenwich 231
” Eltham and Lusum 85 ” Kingston 122
” Croydon 61 ” Stanes 82
” Brentwood 70 ” Chertsey 18
” Rumford 109 ” Windsor 103
” Barking Abbot 200
” Brentford 432 Cum aliis.
Another thing might render the country more strict with respect
to the citizens, and especially with respect to the poor, and
this was what I hinted at before: namely, that there was a
seeming propensity or a wicked inclination in those that were
infected to infect others.
There have been great debates among our physicians as to the
reason of this. Some will have it to be in the nature of the
disease, and that it impresses every one that is seized upon by
it with a kind of a rage, and a hatred against their own kind—as
if there was a malignity not only in the distemper to communicate
itself, but in the very nature of man, prompting him with evil
will or an evil eye, that, as they say in the case of a mad dog,
who though the gentlest creature before of any of his kind, yet
then will fly upon and bite any one that comes next him, and
those as soon as any who had been most observed by him before.
Others placed it to the account of the corruption of human
nature, who cannot bear to see itself more miserable than others
of its own species, and has a kind of involuntary wish that all
men were as unhappy or in as bad a condition as itself.
Others say it was only a kind of desperation, not knowing or
regarding what they did, and consequently unconcerned at the
danger or safety not only of anybody near them, but even of
themselves also. And indeed, when men are once come to a
condition to abandon themselves, and be unconcerned for the
safety or at the danger of themselves, it cannot be so much
wondered that they should be careless of the safety of other
people.
But I choose to give this grave debate a quite different turn,
and answer it or resolve it all by saying that I do not grant the
fact. On the contrary, I say that the thing is not really so, but
that it was a general complaint raised by the people inhabiting
the outlying villages against the citizens to justify, or at
least excuse, those hardships and severities so much talked of,
and in which complaints both sides may be said to have injured
one another; that is to say, the citizens pressing to be received
and harboured in time of distress, and with the plague upon them,
complain of the cruelty and injustice of the country people in
being refused entrance and forced back again with their goods and
families; and the inhabitants, finding themselves so imposed
upon, and the citizens breaking in as it were upon them whether
they would or no, complain that when they were infected they were
not only regardless of others, but even willing to infect them;
neither of which were really true—that is to say, in the colours
they were described in.
It is true there is something to be said for the frequent alarms
which were given to the country of the resolution of the people
of London to come out by force, not only for relief, but to
plunder and rob; that they ran about the streets with the
distemper upon them without any control; and that no care was
taken to shut up houses, and confine the sick people from
infecting others; whereas, to do the Londoners justice, they
never practised such things, except in such particular cases as I
have mentioned above, and such like. On the other hand,
everything was managed with so much care, and such excellent
order was observed in the whole city and suburbs by the care of
the Lord Mayor and aldermen and by the justices of the peace,
church-wardens, &c., in the outparts, that London may be a
pattern to all the cities in the world for the good government
and the excellent order that was everywhere kept, even in the
time of the most violent infection, and when the people were in
the utmost consternation and distress. But of this I shall speak
by itself.
One thing, it is to be observed, was owing principally to the
prudence of the magistrates, and ought to be mentioned to their
honour: viz., the moderation which they used in the great and
difficult work of shutting up of houses. It is true, as I have
mentioned, that the shutting up of houses was a great subject of
discontent, and I may say indeed the only subject of discontent
among the people at that time; for the confining the sound in the
same house with the sick was counted very terrible, and the
complaints of people so confined were very grievous. They were
heard into the very streets, and they were sometimes such that
called for resentment, though oftener for compassion. They had no
way to converse with any of their friends but out at their
windows, where they would make such piteous lamentations as often
moved the hearts of those they talked with, and of others who,
passing by, heard their story; and as those complaints oftentimes
reproached the severity, and sometimes the insolence, of the
watchmen placed at their doors, those watchmen would answer
saucily enough, and perhaps be apt to affront the people who were
in the street talking to the said families; for which, or for
their ill-treatment of the families, I think seven or eight of
them in several places were killed; I know not whether I should
say murdered or not, because I cannot enter into the particular
cases. It is true the watchmen were on their duty, and acting in
the post where they were placed by a lawful authority; and
killing any public legal officer in the execution of his office
is always, in the language of the law, called murder. But as they
were not authorised by the magistrates’ instructions, or by the
power they acted under, to be injurious or abusive either to the
people who were under their observation or to any that concerned
themselves for them; so when they did so, they might be said to
act themselves, not their office; to act as private persons, not
as persons employed; and consequently, if they brought mischief
upon themselves by such an undue behaviour, that mischief was
upon their own heads; and indeed they had so much the hearty
curses of the people, whether they deserved it or not, that
whatever befell them nobody pitied them, and everybody was apt to
say they deserved it, whatever it was. Nor do I remember that
anybody was ever punished, at least to any considerable degree,
for whatever was done to the watchmen that guarded their houses.
What variety of stratagems were used to escape and get out of
houses thus shut up, by which the watchmen were deceived or
overpowered, and that the people got away, I have taken notice of
already, and shall say no more to that. But I say the magistrates
did moderate and ease families upon many occasions in this case,
and particularly in that of taking away, or suffering to be
removed, the sick persons out of such houses when they were
willing to be removed either to a pest-house or other Places; and
sometimes giving the well persons in the family so shut up, leave
to remove upon information given that they were well, and that
they would confine themselves in such houses where they went so
long as should be required of them. The concern, also, of the
magistrates for the supplying such poor families as were
infected—I say, supplying them with necessaries, as well physic
as food—was very great, and in which they did not content
themselves with giving the necessary orders to the officers
appointed, but the aldermen in person, and on horseback,
frequently rode to such houses and caused the people to be asked
at their windows whether they were duly attended or not; also,
whether they wanted anything that was necessary, and if the
officers had constantly carried their messages and fetched them
such things as they wanted or not. And if they answered in the
affirmative, all was well; but if they complained that they were
ill supplied, and that the officer did not do his duty, or did
not treat them civilly, they (the officers) were generally
removed, and others placed in their stead.
It is true such complaint might be unjust, and if the officer had
such arguments to use as would convince the magistrate that he
was right, and that the people had injured him, he was continued
and they reproved. But this part could not well bear a particular
inquiry, for the parties could very ill be well heard and
answered in the street from the windows, as was the case then.
The magistrates, therefore, generally chose to favour the people
and remove the man, as what seemed to be the least wrong and of
the least ill consequence; seeing if the watchman was injured,
yet they could easily make him amends by giving him another post
of the like nature; but if the family was injured, there was no
satisfaction could be made to them, the damage perhaps being
irreparable, as it concerned their lives.
A great variety of these cases frequently happened between the
watchmen and the poor people shut up, besides those I formerly
mentioned about escaping. Sometimes the watchmen were absent,
sometimes drunk, sometimes asleep when the people wanted them,
and such never failed to be punished severely, as indeed they
deserved.
But after all that was or could be done in these cases, the
shutting up of houses, so as to confine those that were well with
those that were sick, had very great inconveniences in it, and
some that were very tragical, and which merited to have been
considered if there had been room for it. But it was authorised
by a law, it had the public good in view as the end chiefly aimed
at, and all the private injuries that were done by the putting it
in execution must be put to the account of the public benefit.
It is doubtful to this day whether, in the whole, it contributed
anything to the stop of the infection; and indeed I cannot say it
did, for nothing could run with greater fury and rage than the
infection did when it was in its chief violence, though the
houses infected were shut up as exactly and as effectually as it
was possible. Certain it is that if all the infected persons were
effectually shut in, no sound person could have been infected by
them, because they could not have come near them. But the case
was this (and I shall only touch it here): namely, that the
infection was propagated insensibly, and by such persons as were
not visibly infected, who neither knew whom they infected or who
they were infected by.
A house in Whitechappel was shut up for the sake of one infected
maid, who had only spots, not the tokens come out upon her, and
recovered; yet these people obtained no liberty to stir, neither
for air or exercise, forty days. Want of breath, fear, anger,
vexation, and all the other gifts attending such an injurious
treatment cast the mistress of the family into a fever, and
visitors came into the house and said it was the plague, though
the physicians declared it was not. However, the family were
obliged to begin their quarantine anew on the report of the
visitors or examiner, though their former quarantine wanted but a
few days of being finished. This oppressed them so with anger and
grief, and, as before, straitened them also so much as to room,
and for want of breathing and free air, that most of the family
fell sick, one of one distemper, one of another, chiefly
scorbutic ailments; only one, a violent colic; till, after
several prolongings of their confinement, some or other of those
that came in with the visitors to inspect the persons that were
ill, in hopes of releasing them, brought the distemper with them
and infected the whole house; and all or most of them died, not
of the plague as really upon them before, but of the plague that
those people brought them, who should have been careful to have
protected them from it. And this was a thing which frequently
happened, and was indeed one of the worst consequences of
shutting houses up.
I had about this time a little hardship put upon me, which I was
at first greatly afflicted at, and very much disturbed about
though, as it proved, it did not expose me to any disaster; and
this was being appointed by the alderman of Portsoken Ward one of
the examiners of the houses in the precinct where I lived. We had
a large parish, and had no less than eighteen examiners, as the
order called us; the people called us visitors. I endeavoured
with all my might to be excused from such an employment, and used
many arguments with the alderman’s deputy to be excused;
particularly I alleged that I was against shutting up houses at
all, and that it would be very hard to oblige me to be an
instrument in that which was against my judgement, and which I
did verily believe would not answer the end it was intended for;
but all the abatement I could get was only, that whereas the
officer was appointed by my Lord Mayor to continue two months, I
should be obliged to hold it but three weeks, on condition
nevertheless that I could then get some other sufficient
housekeeper to serve the rest of the time for me—which was, in
short, but a very small favour, it being very difficult to get
any man to accept of such an employment, that was fit to be
entrusted with it.
It is true that shutting up of houses had one effect, which I am
sensible was of moment, namely, it confined the distempered
people, who would otherwise have been both very troublesome and
very dangerous in their running about streets with the distemper
upon them—which, when they were delirious, they would have done
in a most frightful manner, and as indeed they began to do at
first very much, till they were thus restrained; nay, so very
open they were that the poor would go about and beg at people’s
doors, and say they had the plague upon them, and beg rags for
their sores, or both, or anything that delirious nature happened
to think of.
A poor, unhappy gentlewoman, a substantial citizen’s wife, was
(if the story be true) murdered by one of these creatures in
Aldersgate Street, or that way. He was going along the street,
raving mad to be sure, and singing; the people only said he was
drunk, but he himself said he had the plague upon him, which it
seems was true; and meeting this gentlewoman, he would kiss her.
She was terribly frighted, as he was only a rude fellow, and she
ran from him, but the street being very thin of people, there was
nobody near enough to help her. When she saw he would overtake
her, she turned and gave him a thrust so forcibly, he being but
weak, and pushed him down backward. But very unhappily, she being
so near, he caught hold of her and pulled her down also, and
getting up first, mastered her and kissed her; and which was
worst of all, when he had done, told her he had the plague, and
why should not she have it as well as he? She was frighted enough
before, being also young with child; but when she heard him say
he had the plague, she screamed out and fell down into a swoon,
or in a fit, which, though she recovered a little, yet killed her
in a very few days; and I never heard whether she had the plague
or no.
Another infected person came and knocked at the door of a
citizen’s house where they knew him very well; the servant let
him in, and being told the master of the house was above, he ran
up and came into the room to them as the whole family was at
supper. They began to rise up, a little surprised, not knowing
what the matter was; but he bid them sit still, he only came to
take his leave of them. They asked him, ‘Why, Mr—, where are you
going?’ ‘Going,’ says he; ‘I have got the sickness, and shall die
tomorrow night.’ ’Tis easy to believe, though not to describe,
the consternation they were all in. The women and the man’s
daughters, which were but little girls, were frighted almost to
death and got up, one running out at one door and one at another,
some downstairs and some upstairs, and getting together as well
as they could, locked themselves into their chambers and screamed
out at the window for help, as if they had been frighted out of
their wits. The master, more composed than they, though both
frighted and provoked, was going to lay hands on him and throw
him downstairs, being in a passion; but then, considering a
little the condition of the man and the danger of touching him,
horror seized his mind, and he stood still like one astonished.
The poor distempered man all this while, being as well diseased
in his brain as in his body, stood still like one amazed. At
length he turns round: ‘Ay!’ says he, with all the seeming
calmness imaginable, ‘is it so with you all? Are you all
disturbed at me? Why, then I’ll e’en go home and die there.’ And
so he goes immediately downstairs. The servant that had let him
in goes down after him with a candle, but was afraid to go past
him and open the door, so he stood on the stairs to see what he
would do. The man went and opened the door, and went out and
flung the door after him. It was some while before the family
recovered the fright, but as no ill consequence attended, they
have had occasion since to speak of it (You may be sure) with
great satisfaction. Though the man was gone, it was some
time—nay, as I heard, some days before they recovered themselves
of the hurry they were in; nor did they go up and down the house
with any assurance till they had burnt a great variety of fumes
and perfumes in all the rooms, and made a great many smokes of
pitch, of gunpowder, and of sulphur, all separately shifted, and
washed their clothes, and the like. As to the poor man, whether
he lived or died I don’t remember.
It is most certain that, if by the shutting up of houses the sick
had not been confined, multitudes who in the height of their
fever were delirious and distracted would have been continually
running up and down the streets; and even as it was a very great
number did so, and offered all sorts of violence to those they
met, even just as a mad dog runs on and bites at every one he
meets; nor can I doubt but that, should one of those infected,
diseased creatures have bitten any man or woman while the frenzy
of the distemper was upon them, they, I mean the person so
wounded, would as certainly have been incurably infected as one
that was sick before, and had the tokens upon him.
I heard of one infected creature who, running out of his bed in
his shirt in the anguish and agony of his swellings, of which he
had three upon him, got his shoes on and went to put on his coat;
but the nurse resisting, and snatching the coat from him, he
threw her down, ran over her, ran downstairs and into the street,
directly to the Thames in his shirt; the nurse running after him,
and calling to the watch to stop him; but the watchman, frighted
at the man, and afraid to touch him, let him go on; upon which he
ran down to the Stillyard stairs, threw away his shirt, and
plunged into the Thames, and, being a good swimmer, swam quite
over the river; and the tide being coming in, as they call it
(that is, running westward) he reached the land not till he came
about the Falcon stairs, where landing, and finding no people
there, it being in the night, he ran about the streets there,
naked as he was, for a good while, when, it being by that time
high water, he takes the river again, and swam back to the
Stillyard, landed, ran up the streets again to his own house,
knocking at the door, went up the stairs and into his bed again;
and that this terrible experiment cured him of the plague, that
is to say, that the violent motion of his arms and legs stretched
the parts where the swellings he had upon him were, that is to
say, under his arms and his groin, and caused them to ripen and
break; and that the cold of the water abated the fever in his
blood.
I have only to add that I do not relate this any more than some
of the other, as a fact within my own knowledge, so as that I can
vouch the truth of them, and especially that of the man being
cured by the extravagant adventure, which I confess I do not
think very possible; but it may serve to confirm the many
desperate things which the distressed people falling into
deliriums, and what we call light-headedness, were frequently run
upon at that time, and how infinitely more such there would have
been if such people had not been confined by the shutting up of
houses; and this I take to be the best, if not the only good
thing which was performed by that severe method.
On the other hand, the complaints and the murmurings were very
bitter against the thing itself. It would pierce the hearts of
all that came by to hear the piteous cries of those infected
people, who, being thus out of their understandings by the
violence of their pain or the heat of their blood, were either
shut in or perhaps tied in their beds and chairs, to prevent
their doing themselves hurt—and who would make a dreadful outcry
at their being confined, and at their being not permitted to die
at large, as they called it, and as they would have done before.
This running of distempered people about the streets was very
dismal, and the magistrates did their utmost to prevent it; but
as it was generally in the night and always sudden when such
attempts were made, the officers could not be at hand to prevent
it; and even when any got out in the day, the officers appointed
did not care to meddle with them, because, as they were all
grievously infected, to be sure, when they were come to that
height, so they were more than ordinarily infectious, and it was
one of the most dangerous things that could be to touch them. On
the other hand, they generally ran on, not knowing what they did,
till they dropped down stark dead, or till they had exhausted
their spirits so as that they would fall and then die in perhaps
half-an-hour or an hour; and, which was most piteous to hear,
they were sure to come to themselves entirely in that half-hour
or hour, and then to make most grievous and piercing cries and
lamentations in the deep, afflicting sense of the condition they
were in. This was much of it before the order for shutting up of
houses was strictly put in execution, for at first the watchmen
were not so vigorous and severe as they were afterward in the
keeping the people in; that is to say, before they were (I mean
some of them) severely punished for their neglect, failing in
their duty, and letting people who were under their care slip
away, or conniving at their going abroad, whether sick or well.
But after they saw the officers appointed to examine into their
conduct were resolved to have them do their duty or be punished
for the omission, they were more exact, and the people were
strictly restrained; which was a thing they took so ill and bore
so impatiently that their discontents can hardly be described.
But there was an absolute necessity for it, that must be
confessed, unless some other measures had been timely entered
upon, and it was too late for that.
Had not this particular (of the sick being restrained as above)
been our case at that time, London would have been the most
dreadful place that ever was in the world; there would, for aught
I know, have as many people died in the streets as died in their
houses; for when the distemper was at its height it generally
made them raving and delirious, and when they were so they would
never be persuaded to keep in their beds but by force; and many
who were not tied threw themselves out of windows when they found
they could not get leave to go out of their doors.
It was for want of people conversing one with another, in this
time of calamity, that it was impossible any particular person
could come at the knowledge of all the extraordinary cases that
occurred in different families; and particularly I believe it was
never known to this day how many people in their deliriums
drowned themselves in the Thames, and in the river which runs
from the marshes by Hackney, which we generally called Ware
River, or Hackney River. As to those which were set down in the
weekly bill, they were indeed few; nor could it be known of any
of those whether they drowned themselves by accident or not. But
I believe I might reckon up more who within the compass of my
knowledge or observation really drowned themselves in that year,
than are put down in the bill of all put together: for many of
the bodies were never found who yet were known to be lost; and
the like in other methods of self-destruction. There was also one
man in or about Whitecross Street burned himself to death in his
bed; some said it was done by himself, others that it was by the
treachery of the nurse that attended him; but that he had the
plague upon him was agreed by all.
It was a merciful disposition of Providence also, and which I
have many times thought of at that time, that no fires, or no
considerable ones at least, happened in the city during that
year, which, if it had been otherwise, would have been very
dreadful; and either the people must have let them alone
unquenched, or have come together in great crowds and throngs,
unconcerned at the danger of the infection, not concerned at the
houses they went into, at the goods they handled, or at the
persons or the people they came among. But so it was, that
excepting that in Cripplegate parish, and two or three little
eruptions of fires, which were presently extinguished, there was
no disaster of that kind happened in the whole year. They told us
a story of a house in a place called Swan Alley, passing from
Goswell Street, near the end of Old Street, into St John Street,
that a family was infected there in so terrible a manner that
every one of the house died. The last person lay dead on the
floor, and, as it is supposed, had lain herself all along to die
just before the fire; the fire, it seems, had fallen from its
place, being of wood, and had taken hold of the boards and the
joists they lay on, and burnt as far as just to the body, but had
not taken hold of the dead body (though she had little more than
her shift on) and had gone out of itself, not burning the rest of
the house, though it was a slight timber house. How true this
might be I do not determine, but the city being to suffer
severely the next year by fire, this year it felt very little of
that calamity.
Indeed, considering the deliriums which the agony threw people
into, and how I have mentioned in their madness, when they were
alone, they did many desperate things, it was very strange there
were no more disasters of that kind.
It has been frequently asked me, and I cannot say that I ever
knew how to give a direct answer to it, how it came to pass that
so many infected people appeared abroad in the streets at the
same time that the houses which were infected were so vigilantly
searched, and all of them shut up and guarded as they were.
I confess I know not what answer to give to this, unless it be
this: that in so great and populous a city as this is it was
impossible to discover every house that was infected as soon as
it was so, or to shut up all the houses that were infected; so
that people had the liberty of going about the streets, even
where they Pleased, unless they were known to belong to
such-and-such infected houses.
It is true that, as several physicians told my Lord Mayor, the
fury of the contagion was such at some particular times, and
people sickened so fast and died so soon, that it was impossible,
and indeed to no purpose, to go about to inquire who was sick and
who was well, or to shut them up with such exactness as the thing
required, almost every house in a whole street being infected,
and in many places every person in some of the houses; and that
which was still worse, by the time that the houses were known to
be infected, most of the persons infected would be stone dead,
and the rest run away for fear of being shut up; so that it was
to very small purpose to call them infected houses and shut them
up, the infection having ravaged and taken its leave of the house
before it was really known that the family was any way touched.
This might be sufficient to convince any reasonable person that
as it was not in the power of the magistrates or of any human
methods of policy, to prevent the spreading the infection, so
that this way of shutting up of houses was perfectly insufficient
for that end. Indeed it seemed to have no manner of public good
in it, equal or proportionable to the grievous burden that it was
to the particular families that were so shut up; and, as far as I
was employed by the public in directing that severity, I
frequently found occasion to see that it was incapable of
answering the end. For example, as I was desired, as a visitor or
examiner, to inquire into the particulars of several families
which were infected, we scarce came to any house where the plague
had visibly appeared in the family but that some of the family
were fled and gone. The magistrates would resent this, and charge
the examiners with being remiss in their examination or
inspection. But by that means houses were long infected before it
was known. Now, as I was in this dangerous office but half the
appointed time, which was two months, it was long enough to
inform myself that we were no way capable of coming at the
knowledge of the true state of any family but by inquiring at the
door or of the neighbours. As for going into every house to
search, that was a part no authority would offer to impose on the
inhabitants, or any citizen would undertake: for it would have
been exposing us to certain infection and death, and to the ruin
of our own families as well as of ourselves; nor would any
citizen of probity, and that could be depended upon, have stayed
in the town if they had been made liable to such a severity.
Seeing then that we could come at the certainty of things by no
method but that of inquiry of the neighbours or of the family,
and on that we could not justly depend, it was not possible but
that the uncertainty of this matter would remain as above.
It is true masters of families were bound by the order to give
notice to the examiner of the place wherein he lived, within two
hours after he should discover it, of any person being sick in
his house (that is to say, having signs of the infection)—but
they found so many ways to evade this and excuse their negligence
that they seldom gave that notice till they had taken measures to
have every one escape out of the house who had a mind to escape,
whether they were sick or sound; and while this was so, it is
easy to see that the shutting up of houses was no way to be
depended upon as a sufficient method for putting a stop to the
infection because, as I have said elsewhere, many of those that
so went out of those infected houses had the plague really upon
them, though they might really think themselves sound. And some
of these were the people that walked the streets till they fell
down dead, not that they were suddenly struck with the distemper
as with a bullet that killed with the stroke, but that they
really had the infection in their blood long before; only, that
as it preyed secretly on the vitals, it appeared not till it
seized the heart with a mortal power, and the patient died in a
moment, as with a sudden fainting or an apoplectic fit.
I know that some even of our physicians thought for a time that
those people that so died in the streets were seized but that
moment they fell, as if they had been touched by a stroke from
heaven as men are killed by a flash of lightning—but they found
reason to alter their opinion afterward; for upon examining the
bodies of such after they were dead, they always either had
tokens upon them or other evident proofs of the distemper having
been longer upon them than they had otherwise expected.
This often was the reason that, as I have said, we that were
examiners were not able to come at the knowledge of the infection
being entered into a house till it was too late to shut it up,
and sometimes not till the people that were left were all dead.
In Petticoat Lane two houses together were infected, and several
people sick; but the distemper was so well concealed, the
examiner, who was my neighbour, got no knowledge of it till
notice was sent him that the people were all dead, and that the
carts should call there to fetch them away. The two heads of the
families concerted their measures, and so ordered their matters
as that when the examiner was in the neighbourhood they appeared
generally at a time, and answered, that is, lied, for one
another, or got some of the neighbourhood to say they were all in
health—and perhaps knew no better—till, death making it
impossible to keep it any longer as a secret, the dead-carts were
called in the night to both the houses, and so it became public.
But when the examiner ordered the constable to shut up the houses
there was nobody left in them but three people, two in one house
and one in the other, just dying, and a nurse in each house who
acknowledged that they had buried five before, that the houses
had been infected nine or ten days, and that for all the rest of
the two families, which were many, they were gone, some sick,
some well, or whether sick or well could not be known.
In like manner, at another house in the same lane, a man having
his family infected but very unwilling to be shut up, when he
could conceal it no longer, shut up himself; that is to say, he
set the great red cross upon his door with the words, ‘Lord have
mercy upon us’, and so deluded the examiner, who supposed it had
been done by the constable by order of the other examiner, for
there were two examiners to every district or precinct. By this
means he had free egress and regress into his house again and out
of it, as he pleased, notwithstanding it was infected, till at
length his stratagem was found out; and then he, with the sound
part of his servants and family, made off and escaped, so they
were not shut up at all.
These things made it very hard, if not impossible, as I have
said, to prevent the spreading of an infection by the shutting up
of houses—unless the people would think the shutting of their
houses no grievance, and be so willing to have it done as that
they would give notice duly and faithfully to the magistrates of
their being infected as soon as it was known by themselves; but
as that cannot be expected from them, and the examiners cannot be
supposed, as above, to go into their houses to visit and search,
all the good of shutting up houses will be defeated, and few
houses will be shut up in time, except those of the poor, who
cannot conceal it, and of some people who will be discovered by
the terror and consternation which the things put them into.
I got myself discharged of the dangerous office I was in as soon
as I could get another admitted, whom I had obtained for a little
money to accept of it; and so, instead of serving the two months,
which was directed, I was not above three weeks in it; and a
great while too, considering it was in the month of August, at
which time the distemper began to rage with great violence at our
end of the town.
In the execution of this office I could not refrain speaking my
opinion among my neighbours as to this shutting up the people in
their houses; in which we saw most evidently the severities that
were used, though grievous in themselves, had also this
particular objection against them: namely, that they did not
answer the end, as I have said, but that the distempered people
went day by day about the streets; and it was our united opinion
that a method to have removed the sound from the sick, in case of
a particular house being visited, would have been much more
reasonable on many accounts, leaving nobody with the sick persons
but such as should on such occasion request to stay and declare
themselves content to be shut up with them.
Our scheme for removing those that were sound from those that
were sick was only in such houses as were infected, and confining
the sick was no confinement; those that could not stir would not
complain while they were in their senses and while they had the
power of judging. Indeed, when they came to be delirious and
light-headed, then they would cry out of the cruelty of being
confined; but for the removal of those that were well, we thought
it highly reasonable and just, for their own sakes, they should
be removed from the sick, and that for other people’s safety they
should keep retired for a while, to see that they were sound, and
might not infect others; and we thought twenty or thirty days
enough for this.
Now, certainly, if houses had been provided on purpose for those
that were sound to perform this demi-quarantine in, they would
have much less reason to think themselves injured in such a
restraint than in being confined with infected people in the
houses where they lived.
It is here, however, to be observed that after the funerals
became so many that people could not toll the bell, mourn or
weep, or wear black for one another, as they did before; no, nor
so much as make coffins for those that died; so after a while the
fury of the infection appeared to be so increased that, in short,
they shut up no houses at all. It seemed enough that all the
remedies of that kind had been used till they were found
fruitless, and that the plague spread itself with an irresistible
fury; so that as the fire the succeeding year spread itself, and
burned with such violence that the citizens, in despair, gave
over their endeavours to extinguish it, so in the plague it came
at last to such violence that the people sat still looking at one
another, and seemed quite abandoned to despair; whole streets
seemed to be desolated, and not to be shut up only, but to be
emptied of their inhabitants; doors were left open, windows stood
shattering with the wind in empty houses for want of people to
shut them. In a word, people began to give up themselves to their
fears and to think that all regulations and methods were in vain,
and that there was nothing to be hoped for but an universal
desolation; and it was even in the height of this general despair
that it Pleased God to stay His hand, and to slacken the fury of
the contagion in such a manner as was even surprising, like its
beginning, and demonstrated it to be His own particular hand, and
that above, if not without the agency of means, as I shall take
notice of in its proper place.
But I must still speak of the plague as in its height, raging
even to desolation, and the people under the most dreadful
consternation, even, as I have said, to despair. It is hardly
credible to what excess the passions of men carried them in this
extremity of the distemper, and this part, I think, was as moving
as the rest. What could affect a man in his full power of
reflection, and what could make deeper impressions on the soul,
than to see a man almost naked, and got out of his house, or
perhaps out of his bed, into the street, come out of Harrow
Alley, a populous conjunction or collection of alleys, courts,
and passages in the Butcher Row in Whitechappel,—I say, what
could be more affecting than to see this poor man come out into
the open street, run dancing and singing and making a thousand
antic gestures, with five or six women and children running after
him, crying and calling upon him for the Lord’s sake to come
back, and entreating the help of others to bring him back, but
all in vain, nobody daring to lay a hand upon him or to come near
him?
This was a most grievous and afflicting thing to me, who saw it
all from my own windows; for all this while the poor afflicted
man was, as I observed it, even then in the utmost agony of pain,
having (as they said) two swellings upon him which could not be
brought to break or to suppurate; but, by laying strong caustics
on them, the surgeons had, it seems, hopes to break them—which
caustics were then upon him, burning his flesh as with a hot
iron. I cannot say what became of this poor man, but I think he
continued roving about in that manner till he fell down and died.
No wonder the aspect of the city itself was frightful. The usual
concourse of people in the streets, and which used to be supplied
from our end of the town, was abated. The Exchange was not kept
shut, indeed, but it was no more frequented. The fires were lost;
they had been almost extinguished for some days by a very smart
and hasty rain. But that was not all; some of the physicians
insisted that they were not only no benefit, but injurious to the
health of people. This they made a loud clamour about, and
complained to the Lord Mayor about it. On the other hand, others
of the same faculty, and eminent too, opposed them, and gave
their reasons why the fires were, and must be, useful to assuage
the violence of the distemper. I cannot give a full account of
their arguments on both sides; only this I remember, that they
cavilled very much with one another. Some were for fires, but
that they must be made of wood and not coal, and of particular
sorts of wood too, such as fir in particular, or cedar, because
of the strong effluvia of turpentine; others were for coal and
not wood, because of the sulphur and bitumen; and others were for
neither one or other. Upon the whole, the Lord Mayor ordered no
more fires, and especially on this account, namely, that the
plague was so fierce that they saw evidently it defied all means,
and rather seemed to increase than decrease upon any application
to check and abate it; and yet this amazement of the magistrates
proceeded rather from want of being able to apply any means
successfully than from any unwillingness either to expose
themselves or undertake the care and weight of business; for, to
do them justice, they neither spared their pains nor their
persons. But nothing answered; the infection raged, and the
people were now frighted and terrified to the last degree: so
that, as I may say, they gave themselves up, and, as I mentioned
above, abandoned themselves to their despair.
But let me observe here that, when I say the people abandoned
themselves to despair, I do not mean to what men call a religious
despair, or a despair of their eternal state, but I mean a
despair of their being able to escape the infection or to outlive
the plague which they saw was so raging and so irresistible in
its force that indeed few people that were touched with it in its
height, about August and September, escaped; and, which is very
particular, contrary to its ordinary operation in June and July,
and the beginning of August, when, as I have observed, many were
infected, and continued so many days, and then went off after
having had the poison in their blood a long time; but now, on the
contrary, most of the people who were taken during the two last
weeks in August and in the three first weeks in September,
generally died in two or three days at furthest, and many the
very same day they were taken; whether the dog-days, or, as our
astrologers pretended to express themselves, the influence of the
dog-star, had that malignant effect, or all those who had the
seeds of infection before in them brought it up to a maturity at
that time altogether, I know not; but this was the time when it
was reported that above 3000 people died in one night; and they
that would have us believe they more critically observed it
pretend to say that they all died within the space of two hours,
viz., between the hours of one and three in the morning.
As to the suddenness of people’s dying at this time, more than
before, there were innumerable instances of it, and I could name
several in my neighbourhood. One family without the Bars, and not
far from me, were all seemingly well on the Monday, being ten in
family. That evening one maid and one apprentice were taken ill
and died the next morning—when the other apprentice and two
children were touched, whereof one died the same evening, and the
other two on Wednesday. In a word, by Saturday at noon the
master, mistress, four children, and four servants were all gone,
and the house left entirely empty, except an ancient woman who
came in to take charge of the goods for the master of the
family’s brother, who lived not far off, and who had not been
sick.
Many houses were then left desolate, all the people being carried
away dead, and especially in an alley farther on the same side
beyond the Bars, going in at the sign of Moses and Aaron, there
were several houses together which, they said, had not one person
left alive in them; and some that died last in several of those
houses were left a little too long before they were fetched out
to be buried; the reason of which was not, as some have written
very untruly, that the living were not sufficient to bury the
dead, but that the mortality was so great in the yard or alley
that there was nobody left to give notice to the buriers or
sextons that there were any dead bodies there to be buried. It
was said, how true I know not, that some of those bodies were so
much corrupted and so rotten that it was with difficulty they
were carried; and as the carts could not come any nearer than to
the Alley Gate in the High Street, it was so much the more
difficult to bring them along; but I am not certain how many
bodies were then left. I am sure that ordinarily it was not so.
As I have mentioned how the people were brought into a condition
to despair of life and abandon themselves, so this very thing had
a strange effect among us for three or four weeks; that is, it
made them bold and venturous: they were no more shy of one
another, or restrained within doors, but went anywhere and
everywhere, and began to converse. One would say to another, ‘I
do not ask you how you are, or say how I am; it is certain we
shall all go; so ’tis no matter who is all sick or who is sound’;
and so they ran desperately into any place or any company.
As it brought the people into public company, so it was
surprising how it brought them to crowd into the churches. They
inquired no more into whom they sat near to or far from, what
offensive smells they met with, or what condition the people
seemed to be in; but, looking upon themselves all as so many dead
corpses, they came to the churches without the least caution, and
crowded together as if their lives were of no consequence
compared to the work which they came about there. Indeed, the
zeal which they showed in coming, and the earnestness and
affection they showed in their attention to what they heard, made
it manifest what a value people would all put upon the worship of
God if they thought every day they attended at the church that it
would be their last.
Nor was it without other strange effects, for it took away, all
manner of prejudice at or scruple about the person whom they
found in the pulpit when they came to the churches. It cannot be
doubted but that many of the ministers of the parish churches
were cut off, among others, in so common and dreadful a calamity;
and others had not courage enough to stand it, but removed into
the country as they found means for escape. As then some parish
churches were quite vacant and forsaken, the people made no
scruple of desiring such Dissenters as had been a few years
before deprived of their livings by virtue of the Act of
Parliament called the Act of Uniformity to preach in the
churches; nor did the church ministers in that case make any
difficulty of accepting their assistance; so that many of those
whom they called silenced ministers had their mouths opened on
this occasion and preached publicly to the people.
Here we may observe and I hope it will not be amiss to take
notice of it that a near view of death would soon reconcile men
of good principles one to another, and that it is chiefly owing
to our easy situation in life and our putting these things far
from us that our breaches are fomented, ill blood continued,
prejudices, breach of charity and of Christian union, so much
kept and so far carried on among us as it is. Another plague year
would reconcile all these differences; a close conversing with
death, or with diseases that threaten death, would scum off the
gall from our tempers, remove the animosities among us, and bring
us to see with differing eyes than those which we looked on
things with before. As the people who had been used to join with
the Church were reconciled at this time with the admitting the
Dissenters to preach to them, so the Dissenters, who with an
uncommon prejudice had broken off from the communion of the
Church of England, were now content to come to their parish
churches and to conform to the worship which they did not approve
of before; but as the terror of the infection abated, those
things all returned again to their less desirable channel and to
the course they were in before.
I mention this but historically. I have no mind to enter into
arguments to move either or both sides to a more charitable
compliance one with another. I do not see that it is probable
such a discourse would be either suitable or successful; the
breaches seem rather to widen, and tend to a widening further,
than to closing, and who am I that I should think myself able to
influence either one side or other? But this I may repeat again,
that ’tis evident death will reconcile us all; on the other side
the grave we shall be all brethren again. In heaven, whither I
hope we may come from all parties and persuasions, we shall find
neither prejudice or scruple; there we shall be of one principle
and of one opinion. Why we cannot be content to go hand in hand
to the Place where we shall join heart and hand without the least
hesitation, and with the most complete harmony and affection—I
say, why we cannot do so here I can say nothing to, neither shall
I say anything more of it but that it remains to be lamented.
I could dwell a great while upon the calamities of this dreadful
time, and go on to describe the objects that appeared among us
every day, the dreadful extravagancies which the distraction of
sick people drove them into; how the streets began now to be
fuller of frightful objects, and families to be made even a
terror to themselves. But after I have told you, as I have above,
that one man, being tied in his bed, and finding no other way to
deliver himself, set the bed on fire with his candle, which
unhappily stood within his reach, and burnt himself in his bed;
and how another, by the insufferable torment he bore, danced and
sung naked in the streets, not knowing one ecstasy from another;
I say, after I have mentioned these things, what can be added
more? What can be said to represent the misery of these times
more lively to the reader, or to give him a more perfect idea of
a complicated distress?
I must acknowledge that this time was terrible, that I was
sometimes at the end of all my resolutions, and that I had not
the courage that I had at the beginning. As the extremity brought
other people abroad, it drove me home, and except having made my
voyage down to Blackwall and Greenwich, as I have related, which
was an excursion, I kept afterwards very much within doors, as I
had for about a fortnight before. I have said already that I
repented several times that I had ventured to stay in town, and
had not gone away with my brother and his family, but it was too
late for that now; and after I had retreated and stayed within
doors a good while before my impatience led me abroad, then they
called me, as I have said, to an ugly and dangerous office which
brought me out again; but as that was expired while the height of
the distemper lasted, I retired again, and continued close ten or
twelve days more, during which many dismal spectacles represented
themselves in my view out of my own windows and in our own
street—as that particularly from Harrow Alley, of the poor
outrageous creature which danced and sung in his agony; and many
others there were. Scarce a day or night passed over but some
dismal thing or other happened at the end of that Harrow Alley,
which was a place full of poor people, most of them belonging to
the butchers or to employments depending upon the butchery.
Sometimes heaps and throngs of people would burst out of the
alley, most of them women, making a dreadful clamour, mixed or
compounded of screeches, cryings, and calling one another, that
we could not conceive what to make of it. Almost all the dead
part of the night the dead-cart stood at the end of that alley,
for if it went in it could not well turn again, and could go in
but a little way. There, I say, it stood to receive dead bodies,
and as the churchyard was but a little way off, if it went away
full it would soon be back again. It is impossible to describe
the most horrible cries and noise the poor people would make at
their bringing the dead bodies of their children and friends out
of the cart, and by the number one would have thought there had
been none left behind, or that there were people enough for a
small city living in those places. Several times they cried
‘Murder’, sometimes ‘Fire’; but it was easy to perceive it was
all distraction, and the complaints of distressed and distempered
people.
I believe it was everywhere thus as that time, for the plague
raged for six or seven weeks beyond all that I have expressed,
and came even to such a height that, in the extremity, they began
to break into that excellent order of which I have spoken so much
in behalf of the magistrates; namely, that no dead bodies were
seen in the street or burials in the daytime: for there was a
necessity in this extremity to bear with its being otherwise for
a little while.
One thing I cannot omit here, and indeed I thought it was
extraordinary, at least it seemed a remarkable hand of Divine
justice: viz., that all the predictors, astrologers,
fortune-tellers, and what they called cunning-men, conjurers, and
the like: calculators of nativities and dreamers of dream, and
such people, were gone and vanished; not one of them was to be
found. I am verily persuaded that a great number of them fell in
the heat of the calamity, having ventured to stay upon the
prospect of getting great estates; and indeed their gain was but
too great for a time, through the madness and folly of the
people. But now they were silent; many of them went to their long
home, not able to foretell their own fate or to calculate their
own nativities. Some have been critical enough to say that every
one of them died. I dare not affirm that; but this I must own,
that I never heard of one of them that ever appeared after the
calamity was over.
But to return to my particular observations during this dreadful
part of the visitation. I am now come, as I have said, to the
month of September, which was the most dreadful of its kind, I
believe, that ever London saw; for, by all the accounts which I
have seen of the preceding visitations which have been in London,
nothing has been like it, the number in the weekly bill amounting
to almost 40,000 from the 22nd of August to the 26th of
September, being but five weeks. The particulars of the bills are
as follows, viz.:—
From August the 22nd to the 29th 7496
” ” 29th ” 5th September 8252
” September the 5th ” 12th 7690
” ” 12th ” 19th 8297
” ” 19th ” 26th 6460
————
38,195
This was a prodigious number of itself, but if I should add the
reasons which I have to believe that this account was deficient,
and how deficient it was, you would, with me, make no scruple to
believe that there died above ten thousand a week for all those
weeks, one week with another, and a proportion for several weeks
both before and after. The confusion among the people, especially
within the city, at that time, was inexpressible. The terror was
so great at last that the courage of the people appointed to
carry away the dead began to fail them; nay, several of them
died, although they had the distemper before and were recovered,
and some of them dropped down when they have been carrying the
bodies even at the pit side, and just ready to throw them in; and
this confusion was greater in the city because they had flattered
themselves with hopes of escaping, and thought the bitterness of
death was past. One cart, they told us, going up Shoreditch was
forsaken of the drivers, or being left to one man to drive, he
died in the street; and the horses going on overthrew the cart,
and left the bodies, some thrown out here, some there, in a
dismal manner. Another cart was, it seems, found in the great pit
in Finsbury Fields, the driver being dead, or having been gone
and abandoned it, and the horses running too near it, the cart
fell in and drew the horses in also. It was suggested that the
driver was thrown in with it and that the cart fell upon him, by
reason his whip was seen to be in the pit among the bodies; but
that, I suppose, could not be certain.
In our parish of Aldgate the dead-carts were several times, as I
have heard, found standing at the churchyard gate full of dead
bodies, but neither bellman or driver or any one else with it;
neither in these or many other cases did they know what bodies
they had in their cart, for sometimes they were let down with
ropes out of balconies and out of windows, and sometimes the
bearers brought them to the cart, sometimes other people; nor, as
the men themselves said, did they trouble themselves to keep any
account of the numbers.
The vigilance of the magistrates was now put to the utmost
trial—and, it must be confessed, can never be enough acknowledged
on this occasion also; whatever expense or trouble they were at,
two things were never neglected in the city or suburbs either:—
(1) Provisions were always to be had in full plenty, and the
price not much raised neither, hardly worth speaking.
(2) No dead bodies lay unburied or uncovered; and if one walked
from one end of the city to another, no funeral or sign of it was
to be seen in the daytime, except a little, as I have said above,
in the three first weeks in September.
This last article perhaps will hardly be believed when some
accounts which others have published since that shall be seen,
wherein they say that the dead lay unburied, which I am assured
was utterly false; at least, if it had been anywhere so, it must
have been in houses where the living were gone from the dead
(having found means, as I have observed, to escape) and where no
notice was given to the officers. All which amounts to nothing at
all in the case in hand; for this I am positive in, having myself
been employed a little in the direction of that part in the
parish in which I lived, and where as great a desolation was made
in proportion to the number of inhabitants as was anywhere; I
say, I am sure that there were no dead bodies remained unburied;
that is to say, none that the proper officers knew of; none for
want of people to carry them off, and buriers to put them into
the ground and cover them; and this is sufficient to the
argument; for what might lie in houses and holes, as in Moses and
Aaron Alley, is nothing; for it is most certain they were buried
as soon as they were found. As to the first article (namely, of
provisions, the scarcity or dearness), though I have mentioned it
before and shall speak of it again, yet I must observe here:—
(1) The price of bread in particular was not much raised; for in
the beginning of the year, viz., in the first week in March, the
penny wheaten loaf was ten ounces and a half; and in the height
of the contagion it was to be had at nine ounces and a half, and
never dearer, no, not all that season. And about the beginning of
November it was sold ten ounces and a half again; the like of
which, I believe, was never heard of in any city, under so
dreadful a visitation, before.
(2) Neither was there (which I wondered much at) any want of
bakers or ovens kept open to supply the people with the bread;
but this was indeed alleged by some families, viz., that their
maidservants, going to the bakehouses with their dough to be
baked, which was then the custom, sometimes came home with the
sickness (that is to say the plague) upon them.
In all this dreadful visitation there were, as I have said
before, but two pest-houses made use of, viz., one in the fields
beyond Old Street and one in Westminster; neither was there any
compulsion used in carrying people thither. Indeed there was no
need of compulsion in the case, for there were thousands of poor
distressed people who, having no help or conveniences or supplies
but of charity, would have been very glad to have been carried
thither and been taken care of; which, indeed, was the only thing
that I think was wanting in the whole public management of the
city, seeing nobody was here allowed to be brought to the
pest-house but where money was given, or security for money,
either at their introducing or upon their being cured and sent
out—for very many were sent out again whole; and very good
physicians were appointed to those places, so that many people
did very well there, of which I shall make mention again. The
principal sort of people sent thither were, as I have said,
servants who got the distemper by going on errands to fetch
necessaries to the families where they lived, and who in that
case, if they came home sick, were removed to preserve the rest
of the house; and they were so well looked after there in all the
time of the visitation that there was but 156 buried in all at
the London pest-house, and 159 at that of Westminster.
By having more pest-houses I am far from meaning a forcing all
people into such places. Had the shutting up of houses been
omitted and the sick hurried out of their dwellings to
pest-houses, as some proposed, it seems, at that time as well as
since, it would certainly have been much worse than it was. The
very removing the sick would have been a spreading of the
infection, and rather because that removing could not effectually
clear the house where the sick person was of the distemper; and
the rest of the family, being then left at liberty, would
certainly spread it among others.
The methods also in private families, which would have been
universally used to have concealed the distemper and to have
concealed the persons being sick, would have been such that the
distemper would sometimes have seized a whole family before any
visitors or examiners could have known of it. On the other hand,
the prodigious numbers which would have been sick at a time would
have exceeded all the capacity of public pest-houses to receive
them, or of public officers to discover and remove them.
This was well considered in those days, and I have heard them
talk of it often. The magistrates had enough to do to bring
people to submit to having their houses shut up, and many ways
they deceived the watchmen and got out, as I have observed. But
that difficulty made it apparent that they would have found it
impracticable to have gone the other way to work, for they could
never have forced the sick people out of their beds and out of
their dwellings. It must not have been my Lord Mayor’s officers,
but an army of officers, that must have attempted it; and the
people, on the other hand, would have been enraged and desperate,
and would have killed those that should have offered to have
meddled with them or with their children and relations, whatever
had befallen them for it; so that they would have made the
people, who, as it was, were in the most terrible distraction
imaginable, I say, they would have made them stark mad; whereas
the magistrates found it proper on several accounts to treat them
with lenity and compassion, and not with violence and terror,
such as dragging the sick out of their houses or obliging them to
remove themselves, would have been.
This leads me again to mention the time when the plague first
began; that is to say, when it became certain that it would
spread over the whole town, when, as I have said, the better sort
of people first took the alarm and began to hurry themselves out
of town. It was true, as I observed in its place, that the throng
was so great, and the coaches, horses, waggons, and carts were so
many, driving and dragging the people away, that it looked as if
all the city was running away; and had any regulations been
published that had been terrifying at that time, especially such
as would pretend to dispose of the people otherwise than they
would dispose of themselves, it would have put both the city and
suburbs into the utmost confusion.
But the magistrates wisely caused the people to be encouraged,
made very good bye-laws for the regulating the citizens, keeping
good order in the streets, and making everything as eligible as
possible to all sorts of people.
In the first place, the Lord Mayor and the sheriffs, the Court of
Aldermen, and a certain number of the Common Council men, or
their deputies, came to a resolution and published it, viz., that
they would not quit the city themselves, but that they would be
always at hand for the preserving good order in every place and
for the doing justice on all occasions; as also for the
distributing the public charity to the poor; and, in a word, for
the doing the duty and discharging the trust reposed in them by
the citizens to the utmost of their power.
In pursuance of these orders, the Lord Mayor, sheriffs, &c., held
councils every day, more or less, for making such dispositions as
they found needful for preserving the civil peace; and though
they used the people with all possible gentleness and clemency,
yet all manner of presumptuous rogues such as thieves,
housebreakers, plunderers of the dead or of the sick, were duly
punished, and several declarations were continually published by
the Lord Mayor and Court of Aldermen against such.
Also all constables and churchwardens were enjoined to stay in
the city upon severe penalties, or to depute such able and
sufficient housekeepers as the deputy aldermen or Common Council
men of the precinct should approve, and for whom they should give
security; and also security in case of mortality that they would
forthwith constitute other constables in their stead.
These things re-established the minds of the people very much,
especially in the first of their fright, when they talked of
making so universal a flight that the city would have been in
danger of being entirely deserted of its inhabitants except the
poor, and the country of being plundered and laid waste by the
multitude. Nor were the magistrates deficient in performing their
part as boldly as they promised it; for my Lord Mayor and the
sheriffs were continually in the streets and at places of the
greatest danger, and though they did not care for having too
great a resort of people crowding about them, yet in emergent
cases they never denied the people access to them, and heard with
patience all their grievances and complaints. My Lord Mayor had a
low gallery built on purpose in his hall, where he stood a little
removed from the crowd when any complaint came to be heard, that
he might appear with as much safety as possible.
Likewise the proper officers, called my Lord Mayor’s officers,
constantly attended in their turns, as they were in waiting; and
if any of them were sick or infected, as some of them were,
others were instantly employed to fill up and officiate in their
places till it was known whether the other should live or die.
In like manner the sheriffs and aldermen did in their several
stations and wards, where they were placed by office, and the
sheriff’s officers or sergeants were appointed to receive orders
from the respective aldermen in their turn, so that justice was
executed in all cases without interruption. In the next place, it
was one of their particular cares to see the orders for the
freedom of the markets observed, and in this part either the Lord
Mayor or one or both of the sheriffs were every market-day on
horseback to see their orders executed and to see that the
country people had all possible encouragement and freedom in
their coming to the markets and going back again, and that no
nuisances or frightful objects should be seen in the streets to
terrify them or make them unwilling to come. Also the bakers were
taken under particular order, and the Master of the Bakers’
Company was, with his court of assistants, directed to see the
order of my Lord Mayor for their regulation put in execution, and
the due assize of bread (which was weekly appointed by my Lord
Mayor) observed; and all the bakers were obliged to keep their
oven going constantly, on pain of losing the privileges of a
freeman of the city of London.
By this means bread was always to be had in plenty, and as cheap
as usual, as I said above; and provisions were never wanting in
the markets, even to such a degree that I often wondered at it,
and reproached myself with being so timorous and cautious in
stirring abroad, when the country people came freely and boldly
to market, as if there had been no manner of infection in the
city, or danger of catching it.
It was indeed one admirable piece of conduct in the said
magistrates that the streets were kept constantly clear and free
from all manner of frightful objects, dead bodies, or any such
things as were indecent or unpleasant—unless where anybody fell
down suddenly or died in the streets, as I have said above; and
these were generally covered with some cloth or blanket, or
removed into the next churchyard till night. All the needful
works that carried terror with them, that were both dismal and
dangerous, were done in the night; if any diseased bodies were
removed, or dead bodies buried, or infected clothes burnt, it was
done in the night; and all the bodies which were thrown into the
great pits in the several churchyards or burying-grounds, as has
been observed, were so removed in the night, and everything was
covered and closed before day. So that in the daytime there was
not the least signal of the calamity to be seen or heard of,
except what was to be observed from the emptiness of the streets,
and sometimes from the passionate outcries and lamentations of
the people, out at their windows, and from the numbers of houses
and shops shut up.
Nor was the silence and emptiness of the streets so much in the
city as in the out-parts, except just at one particular time
when, as I have mentioned, the plague came east and spread over
all the city. It was indeed a merciful disposition of God, that
as the plague began at one end of the town first (as has been
observed at large) so it proceeded progressively to other parts,
and did not come on this way, or eastward, till it had spent its
fury in the West part of the town; and so, as it came on one way,
it abated another. For example, it began at St Giles’s and the
Westminster end of the town, and it was in its height in all that
part by about the middle of July, viz., in St
Giles-in-the-Fields, St Andrew’s, Holborn, St Clement Danes, St
Martin-in-the-Fields, and in Westminster. The latter end of July
it decreased in those parishes; and coming east, it increased
prodigiously in Cripplegate, St Sepulcher’s, St James’s,
Clarkenwell, and St Bride’s and Aldersgate. While it was in all
these parishes, the city and all the parishes of the Southwark
side of the water and all Stepney, Whitechappel, Aldgate,
Wapping, and Ratcliff, were very little touched; so that people
went about their business unconcerned, carried on their trades,
kept open their shops, and conversed freely with one another in
all the city, the east and north-east suburbs, and in Southwark,
almost as if the plague had not been among us.
Even when the north and north-west suburbs were fully infected,
viz., Cripplegate, Clarkenwell, Bishopsgate, and Shoreditch, yet
still all the rest were tolerably well. For example from 25th
July to 1st August the bill stood thus of all diseases:—
St Giles, Cripplegate 554
St Sepulchers 250
Clarkenwell 103
Bishopsgate 116
Shoreditch 110
Stepney parish 127
Aldgate 92
Whitechappel 104
All the ninety-seven parishes within the walls 228
All the parishes in Southwark 205
- ——-
- Total 1889
So that, in short, there died more that week in the two parishes
of Cripplegate and St Sepulcher by forty-eight than in all the
city, all the east suburbs, and all the Southwark parishes put
together. This caused the reputation of the city’s health to
continue all over England—and especially in the counties and
markets adjacent, from whence our supply of provisions chiefly
came even much longer than that health itself continued; for when
the people came into the streets from the country by Shoreditch
and Bishopsgate, or by Old Street and Smithfield, they would see
the out-streets empty and the houses and shops shut, and the few
people that were stirring there walk in the middle of the
streets. But when they came within the city, there things looked
better, and the markets and shops were open, and the people
walking about the streets as usual, though not quite so many; and
this continued till the latter end of August and the beginning of
September.
But then the case altered quite; the distemper abated in the west
and north-west parishes, and the weight of the infection lay on
the city and the eastern suburbs, and the Southwark side, and
this in a frightful manner. Then, indeed, the city began to look
dismal, shops to be shut, and the streets desolate. In the High
Street, indeed, necessity made people stir abroad on many
occasions; and there would be in the middle of the day a pretty
many people, but in the mornings and evenings scarce any to be
seen, even there, no, not in Cornhill and Cheapside.
These observations of mine were abundantly confirmed by the
weekly bills of mortality for those weeks, an abstract of which,
as they respect the parishes which I have mentioned and as they
make the calculations I speak of very evident, take as follows.
The weekly bill, which makes out this decrease of the burials in
the west and north side of the city, stands thus—
From the 12th of September to the 19th—
- St Giles, Cripplegate 456
- St Giles-in-the-Fields 140
- Clarkenwell 77
- St Sepulcher 214
- St Leonard, Shoreditch 183
- Stepney parish 716
- Aldgate 623
- Whitechappel 532
- In the ninety-seven parishes within the walls 1493
- In the eight parishes on Southwark side 1636
- ————
- Total 6060
Here is a strange change of things indeed, and a sad change it
was; and had it held for two months more than it did, very few
people would have been left alive. But then such, I say, was the
merciful disposition of God that, when it was thus, the west and
north part which had been so dreadfully visited at first, grew,
as you see, much better; and as the people disappeared here, they
began to look abroad again there; and the next week or two
altered it still more; that is, more to the encouragement of the
other part of the town. For example:—
From the 19th of September to the 26th—
- St Giles, Cripplegate 277
- St Giles-in-the-Fields 119
- Clarkenwell 76
- St Sepulchers 193
- St Leonard, Shoreditch 146
- Stepney parish 616
- Aldgate 496
- Whitechappel 346
- In the ninety-seven parishes within the walls 1268
- In the eight parishes on Southwark side 1390
- ————
- Total 4927
From the 26th of September to the 3rd of October—
- St Giles, Cripplegate 196
- St Giles-in-the-Fields 95
- Clarkenwell 48
- St Sepulchers 137
- St Leonard, Shoreditch 128
- Stepney parish 674
- Aldgate 372
- Whitechappel 328
- In the ninety-seven parishes within the walls 1149
- In the eight parishes on Southwark side 1201
- ————
- Total 4382
And now the misery of the city and of the said east and south
parts was complete indeed; for, as you see, the weight of the
distemper lay upon those parts, that is to say, the city, the
eight parishes over the river, with the parishes of Aldgate,
Whitechappel, and Stepney; and this was the time that the bills
came up to such a monstrous height as that I mentioned before,
and that eight or nine, and, as I believe, ten or twelve thousand
a week, died; for it is my settled opinion that they never could
come at any just account of the numbers, for the reasons which I
have given already.
Nay, one of the most eminent physicians, who has since published
in Latin an account of those times, and of his observations says
that in one week there died twelve thousand people, and that
particularly there died four thousand in one night; though I do
not remember that there ever was any such particular night so
remarkably fatal as that such a number died in it. However, all
this confirms what I have said above of the uncertainty of the
bills of mortality, &c., of which I shall say more hereafter.
And here let me take leave to enter again, though it may seem a
repetition of circumstances, into a description of the miserable
condition of the city itself, and of those parts where I lived at
this particular time. The city and those other parts,
notwithstanding the great numbers of people that were gone into
the country, was vastly full of people; and perhaps the fuller
because people had for a long time a strong belief that the
plague would not come into the city, nor into Southwark, no, nor
into Wapping or Ratcliff at all; nay, such was the assurance of
the people on that head that many removed from the suburbs on the
west and north sides, into those eastern and south sides as for
safety; and, as I verily believe, carried the plague amongst them
there perhaps sooner than they would otherwise have had it.
Here also I ought to leave a further remark for the use of
posterity, concerning the manner of people’s infecting one
another; namely, that it was not the sick people only from whom
the plague was immediately received by others that were sound,
but the well. To explain myself: by the sick people I mean those
who were known to be sick, had taken their beds, had been under
cure, or had swellings and tumours upon them, and the like; these
everybody could beware of; they were either in their beds or in
such condition as could not be concealed.
By the well I mean such as had received the contagion, and had it
really upon them, and in their blood, yet did not show the
consequences of it in their countenances: nay, even were not
sensible of it themselves, as many were not for several days.
These breathed death in every place, and upon everybody who came
near them; nay, their very clothes retained the infection, their
hands would infect the things they touched, especially if they
were warm and sweaty, and they were generally apt to sweat too.
Now it was impossible to know these people, nor did they
sometimes, as I have said, know themselves to be infected. These
were the people that so often dropped down and fainted in the
streets; for oftentimes they would go about the streets to the
last, till on a sudden they would sweat, grow faint, sit down at
a door and die. It is true, finding themselves thus, they would
struggle hard to get home to their own doors, or at other times
would be just able to go into their houses and die instantly;
other times they would go about till they had the very tokens
come out upon them, and yet not know it, and would die in an hour
or two after they came home, but be well as long as they were
abroad. These were the dangerous people; these were the people of
whom the well people ought to have been afraid; but then, on the
other side, it was impossible to know them.
And this is the reason why it is impossible in a visitation to
prevent the spreading of the plague by the utmost human
vigilance: viz., that it is impossible to know the infected
people from the sound, or that the infected people should
perfectly know themselves. I knew a man who conversed freely in
London all the season of the plague in 1665, and kept about him
an antidote or cordial on purpose to take when he thought himself
in any danger, and he had such a rule to know or have warning of
the danger by as indeed I never met with before or since. How far
it may be depended on I know not. He had a wound in his leg, and
whenever he came among any people that were not sound, and the
infection began to affect him, he said he could know it by that
signal, viz., that his wound in his leg would smart, and look
pale and white; so as soon as ever he felt it smart it was time
for him to withdraw, or to take care of himself, taking his
drink, which he always carried about him for that purpose. Now it
seems he found his wound would smart many times when he was in
company with such who thought themselves to be sound, and who
appeared so to one another; but he would presently rise up and
say publicly, ‘Friends, here is somebody in the room that has the
plague’, and so would immediately break up the company. This was
indeed a faithful monitor to all people that the plague is not to
be avoided by those that converse promiscuously in a town
infected, and people have it when they know it not, and that they
likewise give it to others when they know not that they have it
themselves; and in this case shutting up the well or removing the
sick will not do it, unless they can go back and shut up all
those that the sick had conversed with, even before they knew
themselves to be sick, and none knows how far to carry that back,
or where to stop; for none knows when or where or how they may
have received the infection, or from whom.
This I take to be the reason which makes so many people talk of
the air being corrupted and infected, and that they need not be
cautious of whom they converse with, for that the contagion was
in the air. I have seen them in strange agitations and surprises
on this account. ‘I have never come near any infected body’, says
the disturbed person; ‘I have conversed with none but sound,
healthy people, and yet I have gotten the distemper!’ ‘I am sure
I am struck from Heaven’, says another, and he falls to the
serious part. Again, the first goes on exclaiming, ‘I have come
near no infection or any infected person; I am sure it is the
air. We draw in death when we breathe, and therefore ’tis the
hand of God; there is no withstanding it.’ And this at last made
many people, being hardened to the danger, grow less concerned at
it; and less cautious towards the latter end of the time, and
when it was come to its height, than they were at first. Then,
with a kind of a Turkish predestinarianism, they would say, if it
pleased God to strike them, it was all one whether they went
abroad or stayed at home; they could not escape it, and therefore
they went boldly about, even into infected houses and infected
company; visited sick people; and, in short, lay in the beds with
their wives or relations when they were infected. And what was
the consequence, but the same that is the consequence in Turkey,
and in those countries where they do those things—namely, that
they were infected too, and died by hundreds and thousands?
I would be far from lessening the awe of the judgements of God
and the reverence to His providence which ought always to be on
our minds on such occasions as these. Doubtless the visitation
itself is a stroke from Heaven upon a city, or country, or nation
where it falls; a messenger of His vengeance, and a loud call to
that nation or country or city to humiliation and repentance,
according to that of the prophet Jeremiah (xviii. 7, 8): ‘At what
instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a
kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it; if
that nation against whom I have pronounced turn from their evil,
I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them.’ Now to
prompt due impressions of the awe of God on the minds of men on
such occasions, and not to lessen them, it is that I have left
those minutes upon record.
I say, therefore, I reflect upon no man for putting the reason of
those things upon the immediate hand of God, and the appointment
and direction of His providence; nay, on the contrary, there were
many wonderful deliverances of persons from infection, and
deliverances of persons when infected, which intimate singular
and remarkable providence in the particular instances to which
they refer; and I esteem my own deliverance to be one next to
miraculous, and do record it with thankfulness.
But when I am speaking of the plague as a distemper arising from
natural causes, we must consider it as it was really propagated
by natural means; nor is it at all the less a judgement for its
being under the conduct of human causes and effects; for, as the
Divine Power has formed the whole scheme of nature and maintains
nature in its course, so the same Power thinks fit to let His own
actings with men, whether of mercy or judgement, to go on in the
ordinary course of natural causes; and He is pleased to act by
those natural causes as the ordinary means, excepting and
reserving to Himself nevertheless a power to act in a
supernatural way when He sees occasion. Now ’tis evident that in
the case of an infection there is no apparent extraordinary
occasion for supernatural operation, but the ordinary course of
things appears sufficiently armed, and made capable of all the
effects that Heaven usually directs by a contagion. Among these
causes and effects, this of the secret conveyance of infection,
imperceptible and unavoidable, is more than sufficient to execute
the fierceness of Divine vengeance, without putting it upon
supernaturals and miracle.
The acute penetrating nature of the disease itself was such, and
the infection was received so imperceptibly, that the most exact
caution could not secure us while in the place. But I must be
allowed to believe—and I have so many examples fresh in my memory
to convince me of it, that I think none can resist their
evidence—I say, I must be allowed to believe that no one in this
whole nation ever received the sickness or infection but who
received it in the ordinary way of infection from somebody, or
the clothes or touch or stench of somebody that was infected
before.
The manner of its coming first to London proves this also, viz.,
by goods brought over from Holland, and brought thither from the
Levant; the first breaking of it out in a house in Long Acre
where those goods were carried and first opened; its spreading
from that house to other houses by the visible unwary conversing
with those who were sick; and the infecting the parish officers
who were employed about the persons dead, and the like. These are
known authorities for this great foundation point—that it went on
and proceeded from person to person and from house to house, and
no otherwise. In the first house that was infected there died
four persons. A neighbour, hearing the mistress of the first
house was sick, went to visit her, and went home and gave the
distemper to her family, and died, and all her household. A
minister, called to pray with the first sick person in the second
house, was said to sicken immediately and die with several more
in his house. Then the physicians began to consider, for they did
not at first dream of a general contagion. But the physicians
being sent to inspect the bodies, they assured the people that it
was neither more or less than the plague, with all its terrifying
particulars, and that it threatened an universal infection, so
many people having already conversed with the sick or
distempered, and having, as might be supposed, received infection
from them, that it would be impossible to put a stop to it.
Here the opinion of the physicians agreed with my observation
afterwards, namely, that the danger was spreading insensibly, for
the sick could infect none but those that came within reach of
the sick person; but that one man who may have really received
the infection and knows it not, but goes abroad and about as a
sound person, may give the plague to a thousand people, and they
to greater numbers in proportion, and neither the person giving
the infection or the persons receiving it know anything of it,
and perhaps not feel the effects of it for several days after.
For example, many persons in the time of this visitation never
perceived that they were infected till they found to their
unspeakable surprise, the tokens come out upon them; after which
they seldom lived six hours; for those spots they called the
tokens were really gangrene spots, or mortified flesh in small
knobs as broad as a little silver penny, and hard as a piece of
callus or horn; so that, when the disease was come up to that
length, there was nothing could follow but certain death; and
yet, as I said, they knew nothing of their being infected, nor
found themselves so much as out of order, till those mortal marks
were upon them. But everybody must allow that they were infected
in a high degree before, and must have been so some time, and
consequently their breath, their sweat, their very clothes, were
contagious for many days before. This occasioned a vast variety
of cases which physicians would have much more opportunity to
remember than I; but some came within the compass of my
observation or hearing, of which I shall name a few.
A certain citizen who had lived safe and untouched till the month
of September, when the weight of the distemper lay more in the
city than it had done before, was mighty cheerful, and something
too bold (as I think it was) in his talk of how secure he was,
how cautious he had been, and how he had never come near any sick
body. Says another citizen, a neighbour of his, to him one day,
‘Do not be too confident, Mr—; it is hard to say who is sick and
who is well, for we see men alive and well to outward appearance
one hour, and dead the next.’ ‘That is true’, says the first man,
for he was not a man presumptuously secure, but had escaped a
long while—and men, as I said above, especially in the city began
to be over-easy upon that score. ‘That is true,’ says he; ‘I do
not think myself secure, but I hope I have not been in company
with any person that there has been any danger in.’ ‘No?’ says
his neighbour. ‘Was not you at the Bull Head Tavern in
Gracechurch Street with Mr—the night before last?’ ‘Yes,’ says
the first, ‘I was; but there was nobody there that we had any
reason to think dangerous.’ Upon which his neighbour said no
more, being unwilling to surprise him; but this made him more
inquisitive, and as his neighbour appeared backward, he was the
more impatient, and in a kind of warmth says he aloud, ‘Why, he
is not dead, is he?’ Upon which his neighbour still was silent,
but cast up his eyes and said something to himself; at which the
first citizen turned pale, and said no more but this, ‘Then I am
a dead man too’, and went home immediately and sent for a
neighbouring apothecary to give him something preventive, for he
had not yet found himself ill; but the apothecary, opening his
breast, fetched a sigh, and said no more but this, ‘Look up to
God’; and the man died in a few hours.
Now let any man judge from a case like this if it is possible for
the regulations of magistrates, either by shutting up the sick or
removing them, to stop an infection which spreads itself from man
to man even while they are perfectly well and insensible of its
approach, and may be so for many days.
It may be proper to ask here how long it may be supposed men
might have the seeds of the contagion in them before it
discovered itself in this fatal manner, and how long they might
go about seemingly whole, and yet be contagious to all those that
came near them. I believe the most experienced physicians cannot
answer this question directly any more than I can; and something
an ordinary observer may take notice of, which may pass their
observations. The opinion of physicians abroad seems to be that
it may lie dormant in the spirits or in the blood-vessels a very
considerable time. Why else do they exact a quarantine of those
who came into their harbours and ports from suspected places?
Forty days is, one would think, too long for nature to struggle
with such an enemy as this, and not conquer it or yield to it.
But I could not think, by my own observation, that they can be
infected so as to be contagious to others above fifteen or
sixteen days at furthest; and on that score it was, that when a
house was shut up in the city and any one had died of the plague,
but nobody appeared to be ill in the family for sixteen or
eighteen days after, they were not so strict but that they would
connive at their going privately abroad; nor would people be much
afraid of them afterward, but rather think they were fortified
the better, having not been vulnerable when the enemy was in
their own house; but we sometimes found it had lain much longer
concealed.
Upon the foot of all these observations I must say that though
Providence seemed to direct my conduct to be otherwise, yet it is
my opinion, and I must leave it as a prescription, viz., that the
best physic against the plague is to run away from it. I know
people encourage themselves by saying God is able to keep us in
the midst of danger, and able to overtake us when we think
ourselves out of danger; and this kept thousands in the town
whose carcases went into the great pits by cartloads, and who, if
they had fled from the danger, had, I believe, been safe from the
disaster; at least ’tis probable they had been safe.
And were this very fundamental only duly considered by the people
on any future occasion of this or the like nature, I am persuaded
it would put them upon quite different measures for managing the
people from those that they took in 1665, or than any that have
been taken abroad that I have heard of. In a word, they would
consider of separating the people into smaller bodies, and
removing them in time farther from one another—and not let such a
contagion as this, which is indeed chiefly dangerous to collected
bodies of people, find a million of people in a body together, as
was very near the case before, and would certainly be the case if
it should ever appear again.
The plague, like a great fire, if a few houses only are
contiguous where it happens, can only burn a few houses; or if it
begins in a single, or, as we call it, a lone house, can only
burn that lone house where it begins. But if it begins in a
close-built town or city and gets a head, there its fury
increases: it rages over the whole place, and consumes all it can
reach.
I could propose many schemes on the foot of which the government
of this city, if ever they should be under the apprehensions of
such another enemy (God forbid they should), might ease
themselves of the greatest part of the dangerous people that
belong to them; I mean such as the begging, starving, labouring
poor, and among them chiefly those who, in case of a siege, are
called the useless mouths; who being then prudently and to their
own advantage disposed of, and the wealthy inhabitants disposing
of themselves and of their servants and children, the city and
its adjacent parts would be so effectually evacuated that there
would not be above a tenth part of its people left together for
the disease to take hold upon. But suppose them to be a fifth
part, and that two hundred and fifty thousand people were left:
and if it did seize upon them, they would, by their living so
much at large, be much better prepared to defend themselves
against the infection, and be less liable to the effects of it
than if the same number of people lived close together in one
smaller city such as Dublin or Amsterdam or the like.
It is true hundreds, yea, thousands of families fled away at this
last plague, but then of them, many fled too late, and not only
died in their flight, but carried the distemper with them into
the countries where they went and infected those whom they went
among for safety; which confounded the thing, and made that be a
propagation of the distemper which was the best means to prevent
it; and this too is an evidence of it, and brings me back to what
I only hinted at before, but must speak more fully to here,
namely, that men went about apparently well many days after they
had the taint of the disease in their vitals, and after their
spirits were so seized as that they could never escape it, and
that all the while they did so they were dangerous to others; I
say, this proves that so it was; for such people infected the
very towns they went through, as well as the families they went
among; and it was by that means that almost all the great towns
in England had the distemper among them, more or less, and always
they would tell you such a Londoner or such a Londoner brought it
down.
It must not be omitted that when I speak of those people who were
really thus dangerous, I suppose them to be utterly ignorant of
their own conditions; for if they really knew their circumstances
to be such as indeed they were, they must have been a kind of
wilful murtherers if they would have gone abroad among healthy
people—and it would have verified indeed the suggestion which I
mentioned above, and which I thought seemed untrue: viz., that
the infected people were utterly careless as to giving the
infection to others, and rather forward to do it than not; and I
believe it was partly from this very thing that they raised that
suggestion, which I hope was not really true in fact.
I confess no particular case is sufficient to prove a general,
but I could name several people within the knowledge of some of
their neighbours and families yet living who showed the contrary
to an extreme. One man, a master of a family in my neighbourhood,
having had the distemper, he thought he had it given him by a
poor workman whom he employed, and whom he went to his house to
see, or went for some work that he wanted to have finished; and
he had some apprehensions even while he was at the poor workman’s
door, but did not discover it fully; but the next day it
discovered itself, and he was taken very in, upon which he
immediately caused himself to be carried into an outbuilding
which he had in his yard, and where there was a chamber over a
workhouse (the man being a brazier). Here he lay, and here he
died, and would be tended by none of his neighbours, but by a
nurse from abroad; and would not suffer his wife, nor children,
nor servants to come up into the room, lest they should be
infected—but sent them his blessing and prayers for them by the
nurse, who spoke it to them at a distance, and all this for fear
of giving them the distemper; and without which he knew, as they
were kept up, they could not have it.
And here I must observe also that the plague, as I suppose all
distempers do, operated in a different manner on differing
constitutions; some were immediately overwhelmed with it, and it
came to violent fevers, vomitings, insufferable headaches, pains
in the back, and so up to ravings and ragings with those pains;
others with swellings and tumours in the neck or groin, or
armpits, which till they could be broke put them into
insufferable agonies and torment; while others, as I have
observed, were silently infected, the fever preying upon their
spirits insensibly, and they seeing little of it till they fell
into swooning, and faintings, and death without pain. I am not
physician enough to enter into the particular reasons and manner
of these differing effects of one and the same distemper, and of
its differing operation in several bodies; nor is it my business
here to record the observations which I really made, because the
doctors themselves have done that part much more effectually than
I can do, and because my opinion may in some things differ from
theirs. I am only relating what I know, or have heard, or believe
of the particular cases, and what fell within the compass of my
view, and the different nature of the infection as it appeared in
the particular cases which I have related; but this may be added
too: that though the former sort of those cases, namely, those
openly visited, were the worst for themselves as to pain—I mean
those that had such fevers, vomitings, headaches, pains, and
swellings, because they died in such a dreadful manner—yet the
latter had the worst state of the disease; for in the former they
frequently recovered, especially if the swellings broke; but the
latter was inevitable death; no cure, no help, could be possible,
nothing could follow but death. And it was worse also to others,
because, as above, it secretly and unperceived by others or by
themselves, communicated death to those they conversed with, the
penetrating poison insinuating itself into their blood in a
manner which it is impossible to describe, or indeed conceive.
This infecting and being infected without so much as its being
known to either person is evident from two sorts of cases which
frequently happened at that time; and there is hardly anybody
living who was in London during the infection but must have known
several of the cases of both sorts.
(1) Fathers and mothers have gone about as if they had been well,
and have believed themselves to be so, till they have insensibly
infected and been the destruction of their whole families, which
they would have been far from doing if they had the least
apprehensions of their being unsound and dangerous themselves. A
family, whose story I have heard, was thus infected by the
father; and the distemper began to appear upon some of them even
before he found it upon himself. But searching more narrowly, it
appeared he had been affected some time; and as soon as he found
that his family had been poisoned by himself he went distracted,
and would have laid violent hands upon himself, but was kept from
that by those who looked to him, and in a few days died.
(2) The other particular is, that many people having been well to
the best of their own judgement, or by the best observation which
they could make of themselves for several days, and only finding
a decay of appetite, or a light sickness upon their stomachs;
nay, some whose appetite has been strong, and even craving, and
only a light pain in their heads, have sent for physicians to
know what ailed them, and have been found, to their great
surprise, at the brink of death: the tokens upon them, or the
plague grown up to an incurable height.
It was very sad to reflect how such a person as this last
mentioned above had been a walking destroyer perhaps for a week
or a fortnight before that; how he had ruined those that he would
have hazarded his life to save, and had been breathing death upon
them, even perhaps in his tender kissing and embracings of his
own children. Yet thus certainly it was, and often has been, and
I could give many particular cases where it has been so. If then
the blow is thus insensibly striking—if the arrow flies thus
unseen, and cannot be discovered—to what purpose are all the
schemes for shutting up or removing the sick people? Those
schemes cannot take place but upon those that appear to be sick,
or to be infected; whereas there are among them at the same time
thousands of people who seem to be well, but are all that while
carrying death with them into all companies which they come into.
This frequently puzzled our physicians, and especially the
apothecaries and surgeons, who knew not how to discover the sick
from the sound; they all allowed that it was really so, that many
people had the plague in their very blood, and preying upon their
spirits, and were in themselves but walking putrefied carcases
whose breath was infectious and their sweat poison, and yet were
as well to look on as other people, and even knew it not
themselves; I say, they all allowed that it was really true in
fact, but they knew not how to propose a discovery.
My friend Dr Heath was of opinion that it might be known by the
smell of their breath; but then, as he said, who durst smell to
that breath for his information? since, to know it, he must draw
the stench of the plague up into his own brain, in order to
distinguish the smell! I have heard it was the opinion of others
that it might be distinguished by the party’s breathing upon a
piece of glass, where, the breath condensing, there might living
creatures be seen by a microscope, of strange, monstrous, and
frightful shapes, such as dragons, snakes, serpents, and devils,
horrible to behold. But this I very much question the truth of,
and we had no microscopes at that time, as I remember, to make
the experiment with.
It was the opinion also of another learned man, that the breath
of such a person would poison and instantly kill a bird; not only
a small bird, but even a cock or hen, and that, if it did not
immediately kill the latter, it would cause them to be roupy, as
they call it; particularly that if they had laid any eggs at any
time, they would be all rotten. But those are opinions which I
never found supported by any experiments, or heard of others that
had seen it; so I leave them as I find them; only with this
remark, namely, that I think the probabilities are very strong
for them.
Some have proposed that such persons should breathe hard upon
warm water, and that they would leave an unusual scum upon it, or
upon several other things, especially such as are of a glutinous
substance and are apt to receive a scum and support it.
But from the whole I found that the nature of this contagion was
such that it was impossible to discover it at all, or to prevent
its spreading from one to another by any human skill.
Here was indeed one difficulty which I could never thoroughly get
over to this time, and which there is but one way of answering
that I know of, and it is this, viz., the first person that died
of the plague was on December 20, or thereabouts, 1664, and in or
about long Acre; whence the first person had the infection was
generally said to be from a parcel of silks imported from
Holland, and first opened in that house.
But after this we heard no more of any person dying of the
plague, or of the distemper being in that place, till the 9th of
February, which was about seven weeks after, and then one more
was buried out of the same house. Then it was hushed, and we were
perfectly easy as to the public for a great while; for there were
no more entered in the weekly bill to be dead of the plague till
the 22nd of April, when there was two more buried, not out of the
same house, but out of the same street; and, as near as I can
remember, it was out of the next house to the first. This was
nine weeks asunder, and after this we had no more till a
fortnight, and then it broke out in several streets and spread
every way. Now the question seems to lie thus: Where lay the
seeds of the infection all this while? How came it to stop so
long, and not stop any longer? Either the distemper did not come
immediately by contagion from body to body, or, if it did, then a
body may be capable to continue infected without the disease
discovering itself many days, nay, weeks together; even not a
quarantine of days only, but soixantine; not only forty days, but
sixty days or longer.
It is true there was, as I observed at first, and is well known
to many yet living, a very cold winter and a long frost which
continued three months; and this, the doctors say, might check
the infection; but then the learned must allow me to say that if,
according to their notion, the disease was (as I may say) only
frozen up, it would like a frozen river have returned to its
usual force and current when it thawed—whereas the principal
recess of this infection, which was from February to April, was
after the frost was broken and the weather mild and warm.
But there is another way of solving all this difficulty, which I
think my own remembrance of the thing will supply; and that is,
the fact is not granted—namely, that there died none in those
long intervals, viz., from the 20th of December to the 9th of
February, and from thence to the 22nd of April. The weekly bills
are the only evidence on the other side, and those bills were not
of credit enough, at least with me, to support an hypothesis or
determine a question of such importance as this; for it was our
received opinion at that time, and I believe upon very good
grounds, that the fraud lay in the parish officers, searchers,
and persons appointed to give account of the dead, and what
diseases they died of; and as people were very loth at first to
have the neighbours believe their houses were infected, so they
gave money to procure, or otherwise procured, the dead persons to
be returned as dying of other distempers; and this I know was
practised afterwards in many places, I believe I might say in all
places where the distemper came, as will be seen by the vast
increase of the numbers placed in the weekly bills under other
articles of diseases during the time of the infection. For
example, in the months of July and August, when the plague was
coming on to its highest pitch, it was very ordinary to have from
a thousand to twelve hundred, nay, to almost fifteen hundred a
week of other distempers. Not that the numbers of those
distempers were really increased to such a degree, but the great
number of families and houses where really the infection was,
obtained the favour to have their dead be returned of other
distempers, to prevent the shutting up their houses. For
example:—
Dead of other diseases beside the plague—
From the 18th July to the 25th 942
” 25th July ” 1st August 1004
” 1st August ” 8th 1213
” 8th ” 15th 1439
” 15th ” 22nd 1331
” 22nd ” 29th 1394
” 29th ” 5th September 1264
” 5th September to the 12th 1056
” 12th ” 19th 1132
” 19th ” 26th 927
Now it was not doubted but the greatest part of these, or a great
part of them, were dead of the plague, but the officers were
prevailed with to return them as above, and the numbers of some
particular articles of distempers discovered is as follows:—
Aug. Aug. Aug. Aug. Aug. Sept. Sept. Sept.
1 8 15 22 29 5 12 19
to 8 to 15 to 22 to 29 to Sept.5 to 12 to 19 to 26
Fever 314 353 348 383 364 332 309 268
Spotted 174 190 166 165 157 97 101 65
Fever
Surfeit 85 87 74 99 68 45 49 36
Teeth 90 113 111 133 138 128 121 112
—— —— —— —— —— —— —— ——
663 743 699 780 727 602 580 481
There were several other articles which bore a proportion to
these, and which, it is easy to perceive, were increased on the
same account, as aged, consumptions, vomitings, imposthumes,
gripes, and the like, many of which were not doubted to be
infected people; but as it was of the utmost consequence to
families not to be known to be infected, if it was possible to
avoid it, so they took all the measures they could to have it not
believed, and if any died in their houses, to get them returned
to the examiners, and by the searchers, as having died of other
distempers.
This, I say, will account for the long interval which, as I have
said, was between the dying of the first persons that were
returned in the bill to be dead of the plague and the time when
the distemper spread openly and could not be concealed.
Besides, the weekly bills themselves at that time evidently
discover the truth; for, while there was no mention of the
plague, and no increase after it had been mentioned, yet it was
apparent that there was an increase of those distempers which
bordered nearest upon it; for example, there were eight, twelve,
seventeen of the spotted fever in a week, when there were none,
or but very few, of the plague; whereas before, one, three, or
four were the ordinary weekly numbers of that distemper.
Likewise, as I observed before, the burials increased weekly in
that particular parish and the parishes adjacent more than in any
other parish, although there were none set down of the plague;
all which tells us, that the infection was handed on, and the
succession of the distemper really preserved, though it seemed to
us at that time to be ceased, and to come again in a manner
surprising.
It might be, also, that the infection might remain in other parts
of the same parcel of goods which at first it came in, and which
might not be perhaps opened, or at least not fully, or in the
clothes of the first infected person; for I cannot think that
anybody could be seized with the contagion in a fatal and mortal
degree for nine weeks together, and support his state of health
so well as even not to discover it to themselves; yet if it were
so, the argument is the stronger in favour of what I am saying:
namely, that the infection is retained in bodies apparently well,
and conveyed from them to those they converse with, while it is
known to neither the one nor the other.
Great were the confusions at that time upon this very account,
and when people began to be convinced that the infection was
received in this surprising manner from persons apparently well,
they began to be exceeding shy and jealous of every one that came
near them. Once, on a public day, whether a Sabbath-day or not I
do not remember, in Aldgate Church, in a pew full of people, on a
sudden one fancied she smelt an ill smell. Immediately she
fancies the plague was in the pew, whispers her notion or
suspicion to the next, then rises and goes out of the pew. It
immediately took with the next, and so to them all; and every one
of them, and of the two or three adjoining pews, got up and went
out of the church, nobody knowing what it was offended them, or
from whom.
This immediately filled everybody’s mouths with one preparation
or other, such as the old woman directed, and some perhaps as
physicians directed, in order to prevent infection by the breath
of others; insomuch that if we came to go into a church when it
was anything full of people, there would be such a mixture of
smells at the entrance that it was much more strong, though
perhaps not so wholesome, than if you were going into an
apothecary’s or druggist’s shop. In a word, the whole church was
like a smelling-bottle; in one corner it was all perfumes; in
another, aromatics, balsamics, and variety of drugs and herbs; in
another, salts and spirits, as every one was furnished for their
own preservation. Yet I observed that after people were
possessed, as I have said, with the belief, or rather assurance,
of the infection being thus carried on by persons apparently in
health, the churches and meeting-houses were much thinner of
people than at other times before that they used to be. For this
is to be said of the people of London, that during the whole time
of the pestilence the churches or meetings were never wholly shut
up, nor did the people decline coming out to the public worship
of God, except only in some parishes when the violence of the
distemper was more particularly in that parish at that time, and
even then no longer than it continued to be so.
Indeed nothing was more strange than to see with what courage the
people went to the public service of God, even at that time when
they were afraid to stir out of their own houses upon any other
occasion; this, I mean, before the time of desperation, which I
have mentioned already. This was a proof of the exceeding
populousness of the city at the time of the infection,
notwithstanding the great numbers that were gone into the country
at the first alarm, and that fled out into the forests and woods
when they were further terrified with the extraordinary increase
of it. For when we came to see the crowds and throngs of people
which appeared on the Sabbath-days at the churches, and
especially in those parts of the town where the plague was
abated, or where it was not yet come to its height, it was
amazing. But of this I shall speak again presently. I return in
the meantime to the article of infecting one another at first,
before people came to right notions of the infection, and of
infecting one another. People were only shy of those that were
really sick, a man with a cap upon his head, or with clothes
round his neck, which was the case of those that had swellings
there. Such was indeed frightful; but when we saw a gentleman
dressed, with his band on and his gloves in his hand, his hat
upon his head, and his hair combed, of such we had not the least
apprehensions, and people conversed a great while freely,
especially with their neighbours and such as they knew. But when
the physicians assured us that the danger was as well from the
sound (that is, the seemingly sound) as the sick, and that those
people who thought themselves entirely free were oftentimes the
most fatal, and that it came to be generally understood that
people were sensible of it, and of the reason of it; then, I say,
they began to be jealous of everybody, and a vast number of
people locked themselves up, so as not to come abroad into any
company at all, nor suffer any that had been abroad in
promiscuous company to come into their houses, or near them—at
least not so near them as to be within the reach of their breath
or of any smell from them; and when they were obliged to converse
at a distance with strangers, they would always have
preservatives in their mouths and about their clothes to repel
and keep off the infection.
It must be acknowledged that when people began to use these
cautions they were less exposed to danger, and the infection did
not break into such houses so furiously as it did into others
before; and thousands of families were preserved (speaking with
due reserve to the direction of Divine Providence) by that means.
But it was impossible to beat anything into the heads of the
poor. They went on with the usual impetuosity of their tempers,
full of outcries and lamentations when taken, but madly careless
of themselves, foolhardy and obstinate, while they were well.
Where they could get employment they pushed into any kind of
business, the most dangerous and the most liable to infection;
and if they were spoken to, their answer would be, ‘I must trust
to God for that; if I am taken, then I am provided for, and there
is an end of me’, and the like. Or thus, ‘Why, what must I do? I
can’t starve. I had as good have the plague as perish for want. I
have no work; what could I do? I must do this or beg.’ Suppose it
was burying the dead, or attending the sick, or watching infected
houses, which were all terrible hazards; but their tale was
generally the same. It is true, necessity was a very justifiable,
warrantable plea, and nothing could be better; but their way of
talk was much the same where the necessities were not the same.
This adventurous conduct of the poor was that which brought the
plague among them in a most furious manner; and this, joined to
the distress of their circumstances when taken, was the reason
why they died so by heaps; for I cannot say I could observe one
jot of better husbandry among them, I mean the labouring poor,
while they were all well and getting money than there was before,
but as lavish, as extravagant, and as thoughtless for tomorrow as
ever; so that when they came to be taken sick they were
immediately in the utmost distress, as well for want as for
sickness, as well for lack of food as lack of health.
This misery of the poor I had many occasions to be an eyewitness
of, and sometimes also of the charitable assistance that some
pious people daily gave to such, sending them relief and supplies
both of food, physic, and other help, as they found they wanted;
and indeed it is a debt of justice due to the temper of the
people of that day to take notice here, that not only great sums,
very great sums of money were charitably sent to the Lord Mayor
and aldermen for the assistance and support of the poor
distempered people, but abundance of private people daily
distributed large sums of money for their relief, and sent people
about to inquire into the condition of particular distressed and
visited families, and relieved them; nay, some pious ladies were
so transported with zeal in so good a work, and so confident in
the protection of Providence in discharge of the great duty of
charity, that they went about in person distributing alms to the
poor, and even visiting poor families, though sick and infected,
in their very houses, appointing nurses to attend those that
wanted attending, and ordering apothecaries and surgeons, the
first to supply them with drugs or plasters, and such things as
they wanted; and the last to lance and dress the swellings and
tumours, where such were wanting; giving their blessing to the
poor in substantial relief to them, as well as hearty prayers for
them.
I will not undertake to say, as some do, that none of those
charitable people were suffered to fall under the calamity
itself; but this I may say, that I never knew any one of them
that miscarried, which I mention for the encouragement of others
in case of the like distress; and doubtless, if they that give to
the poor lend to the Lord, and He will repay them, those that
hazard their lives to give to the poor, and to comfort and assist
the poor in such a misery as this, may hope to be protected in
the work.
Nor was this charity so extraordinary eminent only in a few, but
(for I cannot lightly quit this point) the charity of the rich,
as well in the city and suburbs as from the country, was so great
that, in a word, a prodigious number of people who must otherwise
inevitably have perished for want as well as sickness were
supported and subsisted by it; and though I could never, nor I
believe any one else, come to a full knowledge of what was so
contributed, yet I do believe that, as I heard one say that was a
critical observer of that part, there was not only many thousand
pounds contributed, but many hundred thousand pounds, to the
relief of the poor of this distressed, afflicted city; nay, one
man affirmed to me that he could reckon up above one hundred
thousand pounds a week, which was distributed by the
churchwardens at the several parish vestries by the Lord Mayor
and aldermen in the several wards and precincts, and by the
particular direction of the court and of the justices
respectively in the parts where they resided, over and above the
private charity distributed by pious bands in the manner I speak
of; and this continued for many weeks together.
I confess this is a very great sum; but if it be true that there
was distributed in the parish of Cripplegate only, 17,800 in one
week to the relief of the poor, as I heard reported, and which I
really believe was true, the other may not be improbable.
It was doubtless to be reckoned among the many signal good
providences which attended this great city, and of which there
were many other worth recording,—I say, this was a very
remarkable one, that it pleased God thus to move the hearts of
the people in all parts of the kingdom so cheerfully to
contribute to the relief and support of the poor at London, the
good consequences of which were felt many ways, and particularly
in preserving the lives and recovering the health of so many
thousands, and keeping so many thousands of families from
perishing and starving.
And now I am talking of the merciful disposition of Providence in
this time of calamity, I cannot but mention again, though I have
spoken several times of it already on other accounts, I mean that
of the progression of the distemper; how it began at one end of
the town, and proceeded gradually and slowly from one part to
another, and like a dark cloud that passes over our heads, which,
as it thickens and overcasts the air at one end, clears up at the
other end; so, while the plague went on raging from west to east,
as it went forwards east, it abated in the west, by which means
those parts of the town which were not seized, or who were left,
and where it had spent its fury, were (as it were) spared to help
and assist the other; whereas, had the distemper spread itself
over the whole city and suburbs, at once, raging in all places
alike, as it has done since in some places abroad, the whole body
of the people must have been overwhelmed, and there would have
died twenty thousand a day, as they say there did at Naples; nor
would the people have been able to have helped or assisted one
another.
For it must be observed that where the plague was in its full
force, there indeed the people were very miserable, and the
consternation was inexpressible. But a little before it reached
even to that place, or presently after it was gone, they were
quite another sort of people; and I cannot but acknowledge that
there was too much of that common temper of mankind to be found
among us all at that time, namely, to forget the deliverance when
the danger is past. But I shall come to speak of that part again.
It must not be forgot here to take some notice of the state of
trade during the time of this common calamity, and this with
respect to foreign trade, as also to our home trade.
As to foreign trade, there needs little to be said. The trading
nations of Europe were all afraid of us; no port of France, or
Holland, or Spain, or Italy would admit our ships or correspond
with us; indeed we stood on ill terms with the Dutch, and were in
a furious war with them, but though in a bad condition to fight
abroad, who had such dreadful enemies to struggle with at home.
Our merchants were accordingly at a full stop; their ships could
go nowhere—that is to say, to no place abroad; their manufactures
and merchandise—that is to say, of our growth—would not be
touched abroad. They were as much afraid of our goods as they
were of our people; and indeed they had reason: for our woollen
manufactures are as retentive of infection as human bodies, and
if packed up by persons infected, would receive the infection and
be as dangerous to touch as a man would be that was infected; and
therefore, when any English vessel arrived in foreign countries,
if they did take the goods on shore, they always caused the bales
to be opened and aired in places appointed for that purpose. But
from London they would not suffer them to come into port, much
less to unlade their goods, upon any terms whatever, and this
strictness was especially used with them in Spain and Italy. In
Turkey and the islands of the Arches indeed, as they are called,
as well those belonging to the Turks as to the Venetians, they
were not so very rigid. In the first there was no obstruction at
all; and four ships which were then in the river loading for
Italy—that is, for Leghorn and Naples—being denied product, as
they call it, went on to Turkey, and were freely admitted to
unlade their cargo without any difficulty; only that when they
arrived there, some of their cargo was not fit for sale in that
country; and other parts of it being consigned to merchants at
Leghorn, the captains of the ships had no right nor any orders to
dispose of the goods; so that great inconveniences followed to
the merchants. But this was nothing but what the necessity of
affairs required, and the merchants at Leghorn and Naples having
notice given them, sent again from thence to take care of the
effects which were particularly consigned to those ports, and to
bring back in other ships such as were improper for the markets
at Smyrna and Scanderoon.
The inconveniences in Spain and Portugal were still greater, for
they would by no means suffer our ships, especially those from
London, to come into any of their ports, much less to unlade.
There was a report that one of our ships having by stealth
delivered her cargo, among which was some bales of English cloth,
cotton, kerseys, and such-like goods, the Spaniards caused all
the goods to be burned, and punished the men with death who were
concerned in carrying them on shore. This, I believe, was in part
true, though I do not affirm it; but it is not at all unlikely,
seeing the danger was really very great, the infection being so
violent in London.
I heard likewise that the plague was carried into those countries
by some of our ships, and particularly to the port of Faro in the
kingdom of Algarve, belonging to the King of Portugal, and that
several persons died of it there; but it was not confirmed.
On the other hand, though the Spaniards and Portuguese were so
shy of us, it is most certain that the plague (as has been said)
keeping at first much at that end of the town next Westminster,
the merchandising part of the town (such as the city and the
water-side) was perfectly sound till at least the beginning of
July, and the ships in the river till the beginning of August;
for to the 1st of July there had died but seven within the whole
city, and but sixty within the liberties, but one in all the
parishes of Stepney, Aldgate, and Whitechappel, and but two in
the eight parishes of Southwark. But it was the same thing
abroad, for the bad news was gone over the whole world that the
city of London was infected with the plague, and there was no
inquiring there how the infection proceeded, or at which part of
the town it was begun or was reached to.
Besides, after it began to spread it increased so fast, and the
bills grew so high all on a sudden, that it was to no purpose to
lessen the report of it, or endeavour to make the people abroad
think it better than it was; the account which the weekly bills
gave in was sufficient; and that there died two thousand to three
or four thousand a week was sufficient to alarm the whole trading
part of the world; and the following time, being so dreadful also
in the very city itself, put the whole world, I say, upon their
guard against it.
You may be sure, also, that the report of these things lost
nothing in the carriage. The plague was itself very terrible, and
the distress of the people very great, as you may observe of what
I have said. But the rumour was infinitely greater, and it must
not be wondered that our friends abroad (as my brother’s
correspondents in particular were told there, namely, in Portugal
and Italy, where he chiefly traded) [said] that in London there
died twenty thousand in a week; that the dead bodies lay unburied
by heaps; that the living were not sufficient to bury the dead or
the sound to look after the sick; that all the kingdom was
infected likewise, so that it was an universal malady such as was
never heard of in those parts of the world; and they could hardly
believe us when we gave them an account how things really were,
and how there was not above one-tenth part of the people dead;
that there was 500,000, left that lived all the time in the town;
that now the people began to walk the streets again, and those
who were fled to return, there was no miss of the usual throng of
people in the streets, except as every family might miss their
relations and neighbours, and the like. I say they could not
believe these things; and if inquiry were now to be made in
Naples, or in other cities on the coast of Italy, they would tell
you that there was a dreadful infection in London so many years
ago, in which, as above, there died twenty thousand in a week,
&c., just as we have had it reported in London that there was a
plague in the city of Naples in the year 1656, in which there
died 20,000 people in a day, of which I have had very good
satisfaction that it was utterly false.
But these extravagant reports were very prejudicial to our trade,
as well as unjust and injurious in themselves, for it was a long
time after the plague was quite over before our trade could
recover itself in those parts of the world; and the Flemings and
Dutch (but especially the last) made very great advantages of it,
having all the market to themselves, and even buying our
manufactures in several parts of England where the plague was
not, and carrying them to Holland and Flanders, and from thence
transporting them to Spain and to Italy as if they had been of
their own making.
But they were detected sometimes and punished: that is to say,
their goods confiscated and ships also; for if it was true that
our manufactures as well as our people were infected, and that it
was dangerous to touch or to open and receive the smell of them,
then those people ran the hazard by that clandestine trade not
only of carrying the contagion into their own country, but also
of infecting the nations to whom they traded with those goods;
which, considering how many lives might be lost in consequence of
such an action, must be a trade that no men of conscience could
suffer themselves to be concerned in.
I do not take upon me to say that any harm was done, I mean of
that kind, by those people. But I doubt I need not make any such
proviso in the case of our own country; for either by our people
of London, or by the commerce which made their conversing with
all sorts of people in every country and of every considerable
town necessary, I say, by this means the plague was first or last
spread all over the kingdom, as well in London as in all the
cities and great towns, especially in the trading manufacturing
towns and seaports; so that, first or last, all the considerable
places in England were visited more or less, and the kingdom of
Ireland in some places, but not so universally. How it fared with
the people in Scotland I had no opportunity to inquire.
It is to be observed that while the plague continued so violent
in London, the outports, as they are called, enjoyed a very great
trade, especially to the adjacent countries and to our own
plantations. For example, the towns of Colchester, Yarmouth, and
Hull, on that side of England, exported to Holland and Hamburg
the manufactures of the adjacent countries for several months
after the trade with London was, as it were, entirely shut up;
likewise the cities of Bristol and Exeter, with the port of
Plymouth, had the like advantage to Spain, to the Canaries, to
Guinea, and to the West Indies, and particularly to Ireland; but
as the plague spread itself every way after it had been in London
to such a degree as it was in August and September, so all or
most of those cities and towns were infected first or last; and
then trade was, as it were, under a general embargo or at a full
stop—as I shall observe further when I speak of our home trade.
One thing, however, must be observed: that as to ships coming in
from abroad (as many, you may be sure, did) some who were out in
all parts of the world a considerable while before, and some who
when they went out knew nothing of an infection, or at least of
one so terrible—these came up the river boldly, and delivered
their cargoes as they were obliged to do, except just in the two
months of August and September, when the weight of the infection
lying, as I may say, all below Bridge, nobody durst appear in
business for a while. But as this continued but for a few weeks,
the homeward-bound ships, especially such whose cargoes were not
liable to spoil, came to an anchor for a time short of the
Pool,[5] or fresh-water part of the river, even as low as the
river Medway, where several of them ran in; and others lay at the
Nore, and in the Hope below Gravesend. So that by the latter end
of October there was a very great fleet of homeward-bound ships
to come up, such as the like had not been known for many years.
[5] That part of the river where the ships lie up when they come home
is called the Pool, and takes in all the river on both sides of the
water, from the Tower to Cuckold’s Point and Limehouse. [Footnote in
the original.]
Two particular trades were carried on by water-carriage all the
while of the infection, and that with little or no interruption,
very much to the advantage and comfort of the poor distressed
people of the city: and those were the coasting trade for corn
and the Newcastle trade for coals.
The first of these was particularly carried on by small vessels
from the port of Hull and other places on the Humber, by which
great quantities of corn were brought in from Yorkshire and
Lincolnshire. The other part of this corn-trade was from Lynn, in
Norfolk, from Wells and Burnham, and from Yarmouth, all in the
same county; and the third branch was from the river Medway, and
from Milton, Feversham, Margate, and Sandwich, and all the other
little places and ports round the coast of Kent and Essex.
There was also a very good trade from the coast of Suffolk with
corn, butter, and cheese; these vessels kept a constant course of
trade, and without interruption came up to that market known
still by the name of Bear Key, where they supplied the city
plentifully with corn when land-carriage began to fail, and when
the people began to be sick of coming from many places in the
country.
This also was much of it owing to the prudence and conduct of the
Lord Mayor, who took such care to keep the masters and seamen
from danger when they came up, causing their corn to be bought
off at any time they wanted a market (which, however, was very
seldom), and causing the corn-factors immediately to unlade and
deliver the vessels loaden with corn, that they had very little
occasion to come out of their ships or vessels, the money being
always carried on board to them and put into a pail of vinegar
before it was carried.
The second trade was that of coals from Newcastle-upon-Tyne,
without which the city would have been greatly distressed; for
not in the streets only, but in private houses and families,
great quantities of coals were then burnt, even all the summer
long and when the weather was hottest, which was done by the
advice of the physicians. Some indeed opposed it, and insisted
that to keep the houses and rooms hot was a means to propagate
the temper, which was a fermentation and heat already in the
blood; that it was known to spread and increase in hot weather
and abate in cold; and therefore they alleged that all contagious
distempers are the worse for heat, because the contagion was
nourished and gained strength in hot weather, and was, as it
were, propagated in heat.
Others said they granted that heat in the climate might propagate
infection—as sultry, hot weather fills the air with vermin and
nourishes innumerable numbers and kinds of venomous creatures
which breed in our food, in the plants, and even in our bodies,
by the very stench of which infection may be propagated; also
that heat in the air, or heat of weather, as we ordinarily call
it, makes bodies relax and faint, exhausts the spirits, opens the
pores, and makes us more apt to receive infection, or any evil
influence, be it from noxious pestilential vapours or any other
thing in the air; but that the heat of fire, and especially of
coal fires kept in our houses, or near us, had a quite different
operation; the heat being not of the same kind, but quick and
fierce, tending not to nourish but to consume and dissipate all
those noxious fumes which the other kind of heat rather exhaled
and stagnated than separated and burnt up. Besides, it was
alleged that the sulphurous and nitrous particles that are often
found to be in the coal, with that bituminous substance which
burns, are all assisting to clear and purge the air, and render
it wholesome and safe to breathe in after the noxious particles,
as above, are dispersed and burnt up.
The latter opinion prevailed at that time, and, as I must
confess, I think with good reason; and the experience of the
citizens confirmed it, many houses which had constant fires kept
in the rooms having never been infected at all; and I must join
my experience to it, for I found the keeping good fires kept our
rooms sweet and wholesome, and I do verily believe made our whole
family so, more than would otherwise have been.
But I return to the coals as a trade. It was with no little
difficulty that this trade was kept open, and particularly
because, as we were in an open war with the Dutch at that time,
the Dutch capers at first took a great many of our collier-ships,
which made the rest cautious, and made them to stay to come in
fleets together. But after some time the capers were either
afraid to take them, or their masters, the States, were afraid
they should, and forbade them, lest the plague should be among
them, which made them fare the better.
For the security of those northern traders, the coal-ships were
ordered by my Lord Mayor not to come up into the Pool above a
certain number at a time, and ordered lighters and other vessels
such as the woodmongers (that is, the wharf-keepers or
coal-sellers) furnished, to go down and take out the coals as low
as Deptford and Greenwich, and some farther down.
Others delivered great quantities of coals in particular places
where the ships could come to the shore, as at Greenwich,
Blackwall, and other places, in vast heaps, as if to be kept for
sale; but were then fetched away after the ships which brought
them were gone, so that the seamen had no communication with the
river-men, nor so much as came near one another.
Yet all this caution could not effectually prevent the distemper
getting among the colliery: that is to say among the ships, by
which a great many seamen died of it; and that which was still
worse was, that they carried it down to Ipswich and Yarmouth, to
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and other places on the coast—where,
especially at Newcastle and at Sunderland, it carried off a great
number of people.
The making so many fires, as above, did indeed consume an unusual
quantity of coals; and that upon one or two stops of the ships
coming up, whether by contrary weather or by the interruption of
enemies I do not remember, but the price of coals was exceeding
dear, even as high as 4 l. a chalder; but it soon abated when the
ships came in, and as afterwards they had a freer passage, the
price was very reasonable all the rest of that year.
The public fires which were made on these occasions, as I have
calculated it, must necessarily have cost the city about 200
chalders of coals a week, if they had continued, which was indeed
a very great quantity; but as it was thought necessary, nothing
was spared. However, as some of the physicians cried them down,
they were not kept alight above four or five days. The fires were
ordered thus:—
One at the Custom House, one at Billingsgate, one at Queenhith,
and one at the Three Cranes; one in Blackfriars, and one at the
gate of Bridewell; one at the corner of Leadenhal Street and
Gracechurch; one at the north and one at the south gate of the
Royal Exchange; one at Guild Hall, and one at Blackwell Hall
gate; one at the Lord Mayor’s door in St Helen’s, one at the west
entrance into St Paul’s, and one at the entrance into Bow Church.
I do not remember whether there was any at the city gates, but
one at the Bridge-foot there was, just by St Magnus Church.
I know some have quarrelled since that at the experiment, and
said that there died the more people because of those fires; but
I am persuaded those that say so offer no evidence to prove it,
neither can I believe it on any account whatever.
It remains to give some account of the state of trade at home in
England during this dreadful time, and particularly as it relates
to the manufactures and the trade in the city. At the first
breaking out of the infection there was, as it is easy to
suppose, a very great fright among the people, and consequently a
general stop of trade, except in provisions and necessaries of
life; and even in those things, as there was a vast number of
people fled and a very great number always sick, besides the
number which died, so there could not be above two-thirds, if
above one-half, of the consumption of provisions in the city as
used to be.
It pleased God to send a very plentiful year of corn and fruit,
but not of hay or grass—by which means bread was cheap, by reason
of the plenty of corn. Flesh was cheap, by reason of the scarcity
of grass; but butter and cheese were dear for the same reason,
and hay in the market just beyond Whitechappel Bars was sold at 4
pound per load. But that affected not the poor. There was a most
excessive plenty of all sorts of fruit, such as apples, pears,
plums, cherries, grapes, and they were the cheaper because of the
want of people; but this made the poor eat them to excess, and
this brought them into fluxes, griping of the guts, surfeits, and
the like, which often precipitated them into the plague.
But to come to matters of trade. First, foreign exportation being
stopped or at least very much interrupted and rendered difficult,
a general stop of all those manufactures followed of course which
were usually brought for exportation; and though sometimes
merchants abroad were importunate for goods, yet little was sent,
the passages being so generally stopped that the English ships
would not be admitted, as is said already, into their port.
This put a stop to the manufactures that were for exportation in
most parts of England, except in some out-ports; and even that
was soon stopped, for they all had the plague in their turn. But
though this was felt all over England, yet, what was still worse,
all intercourse of trade for home consumption of manufactures,
especially those which usually circulated through the Londoner’s
hands, was stopped at once, the trade of the city being stopped.
All kinds of handicrafts in the city, &c., tradesmen and
mechanics, were, as I have said before, out of employ; and this
occasioned the putting-off and dismissing an innumerable number
of journeymen and workmen of all sorts, seeing nothing was done
relating to such trades but what might be said to be absolutely
necessary.
This caused the multitude of single people in London to be
unprovided for, as also families whose living depended upon the
labour of the heads of those families; I say, this reduced them
to extreme misery; and I must confess it is for the honour of the
city of London, and will be for many ages, as long as this is to
be spoken of, that they were able to supply with charitable
provision the wants of so many thousands of those as afterwards
fell sick and were distressed: so that it may be safely averred
that nobody perished for want, at least that the magistrates had
any notice given them of.
This stagnation of our manufacturing trade in the country would
have put the people there to much greater difficulties, but that
the master-workmen, clothiers and others, to the uttermost of
their stocks and strength, kept on making their goods to keep the
poor at work, believing that soon as the sickness should abate
they would have a quick demand in proportion to the decay of
their trade at that time. But as none but those masters that were
rich could do thus, and that many were poor and not able, the
manufacturing trade in England suffered greatly, and the poor
were pinched all over England by the calamity of the city of
London only.
It is true that the next year made them full amends by another
terrible calamity upon the city; so that the city by one calamity
impoverished and weakened the country, and by another calamity,
even terrible too of its kind, enriched the country and made them
again amends; for an infinite quantity of household Stuff,
wearing apparel, and other things, besides whole warehouses
filled with merchandise and manufactures such as come from all
parts of England, were consumed in the fire of London the next
year after this terrible visitation. It is incredible what a
trade this made all over the whole kingdom, to make good the want
and to supply that loss; so that, in short, all the manufacturing
hands in the nation were set on work, and were little enough for
several years to supply the market and answer the demands. All
foreign markets also were empty of our goods by the stop which
had been occasioned by the plague, and before an open trade was
allowed again; and the prodigious demand at home falling in,
joined to make a quick vent for all sort of goods; so that there
never was known such a trade all over England for the time as was
in the first seven years after the plague, and after the fire of
London.
It remains now that I should say something of the merciful part
of this terrible judgement. The last week in September, the
plague being come to its crisis, its fury began to assuage. I
remember my friend Dr Heath, coming to see me the week before,
told me he was sure that the violence of it would assuage in a
few days; but when I saw the weekly bill of that week, which was
the highest of the whole year, being 8297 of all diseases, I
upbraided him with it, and asked him what he had made his
judgement from. His answer, however, was not so much to seek as I
thought it would have been. ‘Look you,’ says he, ‘by the number
which are at this time sick and infected, there should have been
twenty thousand dead the last week instead of eight thousand, if
the inveterate mortal contagion had been as it was two weeks ago;
for then it ordinarily killed in two or three days, now not under
eight or ten; and then not above one in five recovered, whereas I
have observed that now not above two in five miscarry. And,
observe it from me, the next bill will decrease, and you will see
many more people recover than used to do; for though a vast
multitude are now everywhere infected, and as many every day fall
sick, yet there will not so many die as there did, for the
malignity of the distemper is abated’;—adding that he began now
to hope, nay, more than hope, that the infection had passed its
crisis and was going off; and accordingly so it was, for the next
week being, as I said, the last in September, the bill decreased
almost two thousand.
It is true the plague was still at a frightful height, and the
next bill was no less than 6460, and the next to that, 5720; but
still my friend’s observation was just, and it did appear the
people did recover faster and more in number than they used to
do; and indeed, if it had not been so, what had been the
condition of the city of London? For, according to my friend,
there were not fewer than 60,000 people at that time infected,
whereof, as above, 20,477 died, and near 40,000 recovered;
whereas, had it been as it was before, 50,000 of that number
would very probably have died, if not more, and 50,000 more would
have sickened; for, in a word, the whole mass of people began to
sicken, and it looked as if none would escape.
But this remark of my friend’s appeared more evident in a few
weeks more, for the decrease went on, and another week in October
it decreased 1843, so that the number dead of the plague was but
2665; and the next week it decreased 1413 more, and yet it was
seen plainly that there was abundance of people sick, nay,
abundance more than ordinary, and abundance fell sick every day
but (as above) the malignity of the disease abated.
Such is the precipitant disposition of our people (whether it is
so or not all over the world, that’s none of my particular
business to inquire), but I saw it apparently here, that as upon
the first fright of the infection they shunned one another, and
fled from one another’s houses and from the city with an
unaccountable and, as I thought, unnecessary fright, so now, upon
this notion spreading, viz., that the distemper was not so
catching as formerly, and that if it was catched it was not so
mortal, and seeing abundance of people who really fell sick
recover again daily, they took to such a precipitant courage, and
grew so entirely regardless of themselves and of the infection,
that they made no more of the plague than of an ordinary fever,
nor indeed so much. They not only went boldly into company with
those who had tumours and carbuncles upon them that were running,
and consequently contagious, but ate and drank with them, nay,
into their houses to visit them, and even, as I was told, into
their very chambers where they lay sick.
This I could not see rational. My friend Dr Heath allowed, and it
was plain to experience, that the distemper was as catching as
ever, and as many fell sick, but only he alleged that so many of
those that fell sick did not die; but I think that while many did
die, and that at best the distemper itself was very terrible, the
sores and swellings very tormenting, and the danger of death not
left out of the circumstances of sickness, though not so frequent
as before; all those things, together with the exceeding
tediousness of the cure, the loathsomeness of the disease, and
many other articles, were enough to deter any man living from a
dangerous mixture with the sick people, and make them as anxious
almost to avoid the infections as before.
Nay, there was another thing which made the mere catching of the
distemper frightful, and that was the terrible burning of the
caustics which the surgeons laid on the swellings to bring them
to break and to run, without which the danger of death was very
great, even to the last. Also, the insufferable torment of the
swellings, which, though it might not make people raving and
distracted, as they were before, and as I have given several
instances of already, yet they put the patient to inexpressible
torment; and those that fell into it, though they did escape with
life, yet they made bitter complaints of those that had told them
there was no danger, and sadly repented their rashness and folly
in venturing to run into the reach of it.
Nor did this unwary conduct of the people end here, for a great
many that thus cast off their cautions suffered more deeply
still, and though many escaped, yet many died; and at least it
had this public mischief attending it, that it made the decrease
of burials slower than it would otherwise have been. For as this
notion ran like lightning through the city, and people’s heads
were possessed with it, even as soon as the first great decrease
in the bills appeared, we found that the two next bills did not
decrease in proportion; the reason I take to be the people’s
running so rashly into danger, giving up all their former
cautions and care, and all the shyness which they used to
practise, depending that the sickness would not reach them—or
that if it did, they should not die.
The physicians opposed this thoughtless humour of the people with
all their might, and gave out printed directions, spreading them
all over the city and suburbs, advising the people to continue
reserved, and to use still the utmost caution in their ordinary
conduct, notwithstanding the decrease of the distemper,
terrifying them with the danger of bringing a relapse upon the
whole city, and telling them how such a relapse might be more
fatal and dangerous than the whole visitation that had been
already; with many arguments and reasons to explain and prove
that part to them, and which are too long to repeat here.
But it was all to no purpose; the audacious creatures were so
possessed with the first joy and so surprised with the
satisfaction of seeing a vast decrease in the weekly bills, that
they were impenetrable by any new terrors, and would not be
persuaded but that the bitterness of death was past; and it was
to no more purpose to talk to them than to an east wind; but they
opened shops, went about streets, did business, and conversed
with anybody that came in their way to converse with, whether
with business or without, neither inquiring of their health or so
much as being apprehensive of any danger from them, though they
knew them not to be sound.
This imprudent, rash conduct cost a great many their lives who
had with great care and caution shut themselves up and kept
retired, as it were, from all mankind, and had by that means,
under God’s providence, been preserved through all the heat of
that infection.
This rash and foolish conduct, I say, of the people went so far
that the ministers took notice to them of it at last, and laid
before them both the folly and danger of it; and this checked it
a little, so that they grew more cautious. But it had another
effect, which they could not check; for as the first rumour had
spread not over the city only, but into the country, it had the
like effect: and the people were so tired with being so long from
London, and so eager to come back, that they flocked to town
without fear or forecast, and began to show themselves in the
streets as if all the danger was over. It was indeed surprising
to see it, for though there died still from 1000 to 1800 a week,
yet the people flocked to town as if all had been well.
The consequence of this was, that the bills increased again 400
the very first week in November; and if I might believe the
physicians, there was above 3000 fell sick that week, most of
them new-comers, too.
One John Cock, a barber in St Martin’s-le-Grand, was an eminent
example of this; I mean of the hasty return of the people when
the plague was abated. This John Cock had left the town with his
whole family, and locked up his house, and was gone in the
country, as many others did; and finding the plague so decreased
in November that there died but 905 per week of all diseases, he
ventured home again. He had in his family ten persons; that is to
say, himself and wife, five children, two apprentices, and a
maid-servant. He had not returned to his house above a week, and
began to open his shop and carry on his trade, but the distemper
broke out in his family, and within about five days they all
died, except one; that is to say, himself, his wife, all his five
children, and his two apprentices; and only the maid remained
alive.
But the mercy of God was greater to the rest than we had reason
to expect; for the malignity (as I have said) of the distemper
was spent, the contagion was exhausted, and also the winter
weather came on apace, and the air was clear and cold, with sharp
frosts; and this increasing still, most of those that had fallen
sick recovered, and the health of the city began to return. There
were indeed some returns of the distemper even in the month of
December, and the bills increased near a hundred; but it went off
again, and so in a short while things began to return to their
own channel. And wonderful it was to see how populous the city
was again all on a sudden, so that a stranger could not miss the
numbers that were lost. Neither was there any miss of the
inhabitants as to their dwellings—few or no empty houses were to
be seen, or if there were some, there was no want of tenants for
them.
I wish I could say that as the city had a new face, so the
manners of the people had a new appearance. I doubt not but there
were many that retained a sincere sense of their deliverance, and
were that heartily thankful to that Sovereign Hand that had
protected them in so dangerous a time; it would be very
uncharitable to judge otherwise in a city so populous, and where
the people were so devout as they were here in the time of the
visitation itself; but except what of this was to be found in
particular families and faces, it must be acknowledged that the
general practice of the people was just as it was before, and
very little difference was to be seen.
Some, indeed, said things were worse; that the morals of the
people declined from this very time; that the people, hardened by
the danger they had been in, like seamen after a storm is over,
were more wicked and more stupid, more bold and hardened, in
their vices and immoralities than they were before; but I will
not carry it so far neither. It would take up a history of no
small length to give a particular of all the gradations by which
the course of things in this city came to be restored again, and
to run in their own channel as they did before.
Some parts of England were now infected as violently as London
had been; the cities of Norwich, Peterborough, Lincoln,
Colchester, and other places were now visited; and the
magistrates of London began to set rules for our conduct as to
corresponding with those cities. It is true we could not pretend
to forbid their people coming to London, because it was
impossible to know them asunder; so, after many consultations,
the Lord Mayor and Court of Aldermen were obliged to drop it. All
they could do was to warn and caution the people not to entertain
in their houses or converse with any people who they knew came
from such infected places.
But they might as well have talked to the air, for the people of
London thought themselves so plague-free now that they were past
all admonitions; they seemed to depend upon it that the air was
restored, and that the air was like a man that had had the
smallpox, not capable of being infected again. This revived that
notion that the infection was all in the air, that there was no
such thing as contagion from the sick people to the sound; and so
strongly did this whimsy prevail among people that they ran all
together promiscuously, sick and well. Not the Mahometans, who,
prepossessed with the principle of predestination, value nothing
of contagion, let it be in what it will, could be more obstinate
than the people of London; they that were perfectly sound, and
came out of the wholesome air, as we call it, into the city, made
nothing of going into the same houses and chambers, nay, even
into the same beds, with those that had the distemper upon them,
and were not recovered.
Some, indeed, paid for their audacious boldness with the price of
their lives; an infinite number fell sick, and the physicians had
more work than ever, only with this difference, that more of
their patients recovered; that is to say, they generally
recovered, but certainly there were more people infected and fell
sick now, when there did not die above a thousand or twelve
hundred in a week, than there was when there died five or six
thousand a week, so entirely negligent were the people at that
time in the great and dangerous case of health and infection, and
so ill were they able to take or accept of the advice of those
who cautioned them for their good.
The people being thus returned, as it were, in general, it was
very strange to find that in their inquiring after their friends,
some whole families were so entirely swept away that there was no
remembrance of them left, neither was anybody to be found to
possess or show any title to that little they had left; for in
such cases what was to be found was generally embezzled and
purloined, some gone one way, some another.
It was said such abandoned effects came to the king, as the
universal heir; upon which we are told, and I suppose it was in
part true, that the king granted all such, as deodands, to the
Lord Mayor and Court of Aldermen of London, to be applied to the
use of the poor, of whom there were very many. For it is to be
observed, that though the occasions of relief and the objects of
distress were very many more in the time of the violence of the
plague than now after all was over, yet the distress of the poor
was more now a great deal than it was then, because all the
sluices of general charity were now shut. People supposed the
main occasion to be over, and so stopped their hands; whereas
particular objects were still very moving, and the distress of
those that were poor was very great indeed.
Though the health of the city was now very much restored, yet
foreign trade did not begin to stir, neither would foreigners
admit our ships into their ports for a great while. As for the
Dutch, the misunderstandings between our court and them had
broken out into a war the year before, so that our trade that way
was wholly interrupted; but Spain and Portugal, Italy and
Barbary, as also Hamburg and all the ports in the Baltic, these
were all shy of us a great while, and would not restore trade
with us for many months.
The distemper sweeping away such multitudes, as I have observed,
many if not all the out-parishes were obliged to make new
burying-grounds, besides that I have mentioned in Bunhill Fields,
some of which were continued, and remain in use to this day. But
others were left off, and (which I confess I mention with some
reflection) being converted into other uses or built upon
afterwards, the dead bodies were disturbed, abused, dug up again,
some even before the flesh of them was perished from the bones,
and removed like dung or rubbish to other places. Some of those
which came within the reach of my observation are as follow:
(1) A piece of ground beyond Goswell Street, near Mount Mill,
being some of the remains of the old lines or fortifications of
the city, where abundance were buried promiscuously from the
parishes of Aldersgate, Clerkenwell, and even out of the city.
This ground, as I take it, was since made a physic garden, and
after that has been built upon.
(2) A piece of ground just over the Black Ditch, as it was then
called, at the end of Holloway Lane, in Shoreditch parish. It has
been since made a yard for keeping hogs, and for other ordinary
uses, but is quite out of use as a burying-ground.
(3) The upper end of Hand Alley, in Bishopsgate Street, which was
then a green field, and was taken in particularly for Bishopsgate
parish, though many of the carts out of the city brought their
dead thither also, particularly out of the parish of St
All-hallows on the Wall. This place I cannot mention without much
regret. It was, as I remember, about two or three years after the
plague was ceased that Sir Robert Clayton came to be possessed of
the ground. It was reported, how true I know not, that it fell to
the king for want of heirs, all those who had any right to it
being carried off by the pestilence, and that Sir Robert Clayton
obtained a grant of it from King Charles II. But however he came
by it, certain it is the ground was let out to build on, or built
upon, by his order. The first house built upon it was a large
fair house, still standing, which faces the street or way now
called Hand Alley which, though called an alley, is as wide as a
street. The houses in the same row with that house northward are
built on the very same ground where the poor people were buried,
and the bodies, on opening the ground for the foundations, were
dug up, some of them remaining so plain to be seen that the
women’s skulls were distinguished by their long hair, and of
others the flesh was not quite perished; so that the people began
to exclaim loudly against it, and some suggested that it might
endanger a return of the contagion; after which the bones and
bodies, as fast as they came at them, were carried to another
part of the same ground and thrown all together into a deep pit,
dug on purpose, which now is to be known in that it is not built
on, but is a passage to another house at the upper end of Rose
Alley, just against the door of a meeting-house which has been
built there many years since; and the ground is palisadoed off
from the rest of the passage, in a little square; there lie the
bones and remains of near two thousand bodies, carried by the
dead carts to their grave in that one year.
(4) Besides this, there was a piece of ground in Moorfields; by
the going into the street which is now called Old Bethlem, which
was enlarged much, though not wholly taken in on the same
occasion.
[N.B.—The author of this journal lies buried in that very ground,
being at his own desire, his sister having been buried there a
few years before.]
(5) Stepney parish, extending itself from the east part of London
to the north, even to the very edge of Shoreditch Churchyard, had
a piece of ground taken in to bury their dead close to the said
churchyard, and which for that very reason was left open, and is
since, I suppose, taken into the same churchyard. And they had
also two other burying-places in Spittlefields, one where since a
chapel or tabernacle has been built for ease to this great
parish, and another in Petticoat Lane.
There were no less than five other grounds made use of for the
parish of Stepney at that time: one where now stands the parish
church of St Paul, Shadwell, and the other where now stands the
parish church of St John’s at Wapping, both which had not the
names of parishes at that time, but were belonging to Stepney
parish.
I could name many more, but these coming within my particular
knowledge, the circumstance, I thought, made it of use to record
them. From the whole, it may be observed that they were obliged
in this time of distress to take in new burying-grounds in most
of the out-parishes for laying the prodigious numbers of people
which died in so short a space of time; but why care was not
taken to keep those places separate from ordinary uses, that so
the bodies might rest undisturbed, that I cannot answer for, and
must confess I think it was wrong. Who were to blame I know not.
I should have mentioned that the Quakers had at that time also a
burying-ground set apart to their use, and which they still make
use of; and they had also a particular dead-cart to fetch their
dead from their houses; and the famous Solomon Eagle, who, as I
mentioned before, had predicted the plague as a judgement, and
ran naked through the streets, telling the people that it was
come upon them to punish them for their sins, had his own wife
died the very next day of the plague, and was carried, one of the
first in the Quakers’ dead-cart, to their new burying-ground.
I might have thronged this account with many more remarkable
things which occurred in the time of the infection, and
particularly what passed between the Lord Mayor and the Court,
which was then at Oxford, and what directions were from time to
time received from the Government for their conduct on this
critical occasion. But really the Court concerned themselves so
little, and that little they did was of so small import, that I
do not see it of much moment to mention any part of it here:
except that of appointing a monthly fast in the city and the
sending the royal charity to the relief of the poor, both which I
have mentioned before.
Great was the reproach thrown on those physicians who left their
patients during the sickness, and now they came to town again
nobody cared to employ them. They were called deserters, and
frequently bills were set up upon their doors and written, ‘Here
is a doctor to be let’, so that several of those physicians were
fain for a while to sit still and look about them, or at least
remove their dwellings, and set up in new places and among new
acquaintance. The like was the case with the clergy, whom the
people were indeed very abusive to, writing verses and scandalous
reflections upon them, setting upon the church-door, ‘Here is a
pulpit to be let’, or sometimes, ‘to be sold’, which was worse.
It was not the least of our misfortunes that with our infection,
when it ceased, there did not cease the spirit of strife and
contention, slander and reproach, which was really the great
troubler of the nation’s peace before. It was said to be the
remains of the old animosities, which had so lately involved us
all in blood and disorder. But as the late Act of Indemnity had
laid asleep the quarrel itself, so the Government had recommended
family and personal peace upon all occasions to the whole nation.
But it could not be obtained; and particularly after the ceasing
of the plague in London, when any one that had seen the condition
which the people had been in, and how they caressed one another
at that time, promised to have more charity for the future, and
to raise no more reproaches; I say, any one that had seen them
then would have thought they would have come together with
another spirit at last. But, I say, it could not be obtained. The
quarrel remained; the Church and the Presbyterians were
incompatible. As soon as the plague was removed, the Dissenting
ousted ministers who had supplied the pulpits which were deserted
by the incumbents retired; they could expect no other but that
they should immediately fall upon them and harass them with their
penal laws, accept their preaching while they were sick, and
persecute them as soon as they were recovered again; this even we
that were of the Church thought was very hard, and could by no
means approve of it.
But it was the Government, and we could say nothing to hinder it;
we could only say it was not our doing, and we could not answer
for it.
On the other hand, the Dissenters reproaching those ministers of
the Church with going away and deserting their charge, abandoning
the people in their danger, and when they had most need of
comfort, and the like: this we could by no means approve, for all
men have not the same faith and the same courage, and the
Scripture commands us to judge the most favourably and according
to charity.
A plague is a formidable enemy, and is armed with terrors that
every man is not sufficiently fortified to resist or prepared to
stand the shock against. It is very certain that a great many of
the clergy who were in circumstances to do it withdrew and fled
for the safety of their lives; but ’tis true also that a great
many of them stayed, and many of them fell in the calamity and in
the discharge of their duty.
It is true some of the Dissenting turned-out ministers stayed,
and their courage is to be commended and highly valued—but these
were not abundance; it cannot be said that they all stayed, and
that none retired into the country, any more than it can be said
of the Church clergy that they all went away. Neither did all
those that went away go without substituting curates and others
in their places, to do the offices needful and to visit the sick,
as far as it was practicable; so that, upon the whole, an
allowance of charity might have been made on both sides, and we
should have considered that such a time as this of 1665 is not to
be paralleled in history, and that it is not the stoutest courage
that will always support men in such cases. I had not said this,
but had rather chosen to record the courage and religious zeal of
those of both sides, who did hazard themselves for the service of
the poor people in their distress, without remembering that any
failed in their duty on either side. But the want of temper among
us has made the contrary to this necessary: some that stayed not
only boasting too much of themselves, but reviling those that
fled, branding them with cowardice, deserting their flocks, and
acting the part of the hireling, and the like. I recommend it to
the charity of all good people to look back and reflect duly upon
the terrors of the time, and whoever does so will see that it is
not an ordinary strength that could support it. It was not like
appearing in the head of an army or charging a body of horse in
the field, but it was charging Death itself on his pale horse; to
stay was indeed to die, and it could be esteemed nothing less,
especially as things appeared at the latter end of August and the
beginning of September, and as there was reason to expect them at
that time; for no man expected, and I dare say believed, that the
distemper would take so sudden a turn as it did, and fall
immediately two thousand in a week, when there was such a
prodigious number of people sick at that time as it was known
there was; and then it was that many shifted away that had stayed
most of the time before.
Besides, if God gave strength to some more than to others, was it
to boast of their ability to abide the stroke, and upbraid those
that had not the same gift and support, or ought not they rather
to have been humble and thankful if they were rendered more
useful than their brethren?
I think it ought to be recorded to the honour of such men, as
well clergy as physicians, surgeons, apothecaries, magistrates,
and officers of every kind, as also all useful people who
ventured their lives in discharge of their duty, as most
certainly all such as stayed did to the last degree; and several
of all these kinds did not only venture but lose their lives on
that sad occasion.
I was once making a list of all such, I mean of all those
professions and employments who thus died, as I call it, in the
way of their duty; but it was impossible for a private man to
come at a certainty in the particulars. I only remember that
there died sixteen clergymen, two aldermen, five physicians,
thirteen surgeons, within the city and liberties before the
beginning of September. But this being, as I said before, the
great crisis and extremity of the infection, it can be no
complete list. As to inferior people, I think there died
six-and-forty constables and head-boroughs in the two parishes of
Stepney and Whitechappel; but I could not carry my list on, for
when the violent rage of the distemper in September came upon us,
it drove us out of all measures. Men did then no more die by tale
and by number. They might put out a weekly bill, and call them
seven or eight thousand, or what they pleased; ’tis certain they
died by heaps, and were buried by heaps, that is to say, without
account. And if I might believe some people, who were more abroad
and more conversant with those things than I though I was public
enough for one that had no more business to do than I had,—I say,
if I may believe them, there was not many less buried those first
three weeks in September than 20,000 per week. However, the
others aver the truth of it; yet I rather choose to keep to the
public account; seven and eight thousand per week is enough to
make good all that I have said of the terror of those times;—and
it is much to the satisfaction of me that write, as well as those
that read, to be able to say that everything is set down with
moderation, and rather within compass than beyond it.
Upon all these accounts, I say, I could wish, when we were
recovered, our conduct had been more distinguished for charity
and kindness in remembrance of the past calamity, and not so much
a valuing ourselves upon our boldness in staying, as if all men
were cowards that fly from the hand of God, or that those who
stay do not sometimes owe their courage to their ignorance, and
despising the hand of their Maker—which is a criminal kind of
desperation, and not a true courage.
I cannot but leave it upon record that the civil officers, such
as constables, head-boroughs, Lord Mayor’s and sheriffs’-men, as
also parish officers, whose business it was to take charge of the
poor, did their duties in general with as much courage as any,
and perhaps with more, because their work was attended with more
hazards, and lay more among the poor, who were more subject to be
infected, and in the most pitiful plight when they were taken
with the infection. But then it must be added, too, that a great
number of them died; indeed it was scarce possible it should be
otherwise.
I have not said one word here about the physic or preparations
that we ordinarily made use of on this terrible occasion—I mean
we that went frequently abroad and up down street, as I did; much
of this was talked of in the books and bills of our quack
doctors, of whom I have said enough already. It may, however, be
added, that the College of Physicians were daily publishing
several preparations, which they had considered of in the process
of their practice, and which, being to be had in print, I avoid
repeating them for that reason.
One thing I could not help observing: what befell one of the
quacks, who published that he had a most excellent preservative
against the plague, which whoever kept about them should never be
infected or liable to infection. This man, who, we may reasonably
suppose, did not go abroad without some of this excellent
preservative in his pocket, yet was taken by the distemper, and
carried off in two or three days.
I am not of the number of the physic-haters or physic-despisers;
on the contrary, I have often mentioned the regard I had to the
dictates of my particular friend Dr Heath; but yet I must
acknowledge I made use of little or nothing—except, as I have
observed, to keep a preparation of strong scent to have ready, in
case I met with anything of offensive smells or went too near any
burying-place or dead body.
Neither did I do what I know some did: keep the spirits always
high and hot with cordials and wine and such things; and which,
as I observed, one learned physician used himself so much to as
that he could not leave them off when the infection was quite
gone, and so became a sot for all his life after.
I remember my friend the doctor used to say that there was a
certain set of drugs and preparations which were all certainly
good and useful in the case of an infection; out of which, or
with which, physicians might make an infinite variety of
medicines, as the ringers of bells make several hundred different
rounds of music by the changing and order or sound but in six
bells, and that all these preparations shall be really very good:
‘Therefore,’ said he, ‘I do not wonder that so vast a throng of
medicines is offered in the present calamity, and almost every
physician prescribes or prepares a different thing, as his
judgement or experience guides him; but’, says my friend, ‘let
all the prescriptions of all the physicians in London be
examined, and it will be found that they are all compounded of
the same things, with such variations only as the particular
fancy of the doctor leads him to; so that’, says he, ‘every man,
judging a little of his own constitution and manner of his
living, and circumstances of his being infected, may direct his
own medicines out of the ordinary drugs and preparations. Only
that’, says he, ‘some recommend one thing as most sovereign, and
some another. Some’, says he, ‘think that pill. ruff., which is
called itself the anti-pestilential pill is the best preparation
that can be made; others think that Venice treacle is sufficient
of itself to resist the contagion; and I’, says he, ‘think as
both these think, viz., that the last is good to take beforehand
to prevent it, and the first, if touched, to expel it.’ According
to this opinion, I several times took Venice treacle, and a sound
sweat upon it, and thought myself as well fortified against the
infection as any one could be fortified by the power of physic.
As for quackery and mountebanks, of which the town was so full, I
listened to none of them, and have observed often since, with
some wonder, that for two years after the plague I scarcely saw
or heard of one of them about town. Some fancied they were all
swept away in the infection to a man, and were for calling it a
particular mark of God’s vengeance upon them for leading the poor
people into the pit of destruction, merely for the lucre of a
little money they got by them; but I cannot go that length
neither. That abundance of them died is certain—many of them came
within the reach of my own knowledge—but that all of them were
swept off I much question. I believe rather they fled into the
country and tried their practices upon the people there, who were
in apprehension of the infection before it came among them.
This, however, is certain, not a man of them appeared for a great
while in or about London. There were, indeed, several doctors who
published bills recommending their several physical preparations
for cleansing the body, as they call it, after the plague, and
needful, as they said, for such people to take who had been
visited and had been cured; whereas I must own I believe that it
was the opinion of the most eminent physicians at that time that
the plague was itself a sufficient purge, and that those who
escaped the infection needed no physic to cleanse their bodies of
any other things; the running sores, the tumours, &c., which were
broke and kept open by the directions of the physicians, having
sufficiently cleansed them; and that all other distempers, and
causes of distempers, were effectually carried off that way; and
as the physicians gave this as their opinions wherever they came,
the quacks got little business.
There were, indeed, several little hurries which happened after
the decrease of the plague, and which, whether they were
contrived to fright and disorder the people, as some imagined, I
cannot say, but sometimes we were told the plague would return by
such a time; and the famous Solomon Eagle, the naked Quaker I
have mentioned, prophesied evil tidings every day; and several
others telling us that London had not been sufficiently scourged,
and that sorer and severer strokes were yet behind. Had they
stopped there, or had they descended to particulars, and told us
that the city should the next year be destroyed by fire, then,
indeed, when we had seen it come to pass, we should not have been
to blame to have paid more than a common respect to their
prophetic spirits; at least we should have wondered at them, and
have been more serious in our inquiries after the meaning of it,
and whence they had the foreknowledge. But as they generally told
us of a relapse into the plague, we have had no concern since
that about them; yet by those frequent clamours, we were all kept
with some kind of apprehensions constantly upon us; and if any
died suddenly, or if the spotted fevers at any time increased, we
were presently alarmed; much more if the number of the plague
increased, for to the end of the year there were always between
200 and 300 of the plague. On any of these occasions, I say, we
were alarmed anew.
Those who remember the city of London before the fire must
remember that there was then no such place as we now call Newgate
Market, but that in the middle of the street which is now called
Blowbladder Street, and which had its name from the butchers, who
used to kill and dress their sheep there (and who, it seems, had
a custom to blow up their meat with pipes to make it look thicker
and fatter than it was, and were punished there for it by the
Lord Mayor); I say, from the end of the street towards Newgate
there stood two long rows of shambles for the selling meat.
It was in those shambles that two persons falling down dead, as
they were buying meat, gave rise to a rumour that the meat was
all infected; which, though it might affright the people, and
spoiled the market for two or three days, yet it appeared plainly
afterwards that there was nothing of truth in the suggestion. But
nobody can account for the possession of fear when it takes hold
of the mind.
However, it Pleased God, by the continuing of the winter weather,
so to restore the health of the city that by February following
we reckoned the distemper quite ceased, and then we were not so
easily frighted again.
There was still a question among the learned, and at first
perplexed the people a little: and that was in what manner to
purge the house and goods where the plague had been, and how to
render them habitable again, which had been left empty during the
time of the plague. Abundance of perfumes and preparations were
prescribed by physicians, some of one kind and some of another,
in which the people who listened to them put themselves to a
great, and indeed, in my opinion, to an unnecessary expense; and
the poorer people, who only set open their windows night and day,
burned brimstone, pitch, and gunpowder, and such things in their
rooms, did as well as the best; nay, the eager people who, as I
said above, came home in haste and at all hazards, found little
or no inconvenience in their houses, nor in the goods, and did
little or nothing to them.
However, in general, prudent, cautious people did enter into some
measures for airing and sweetening their houses, and burned
perfumes, incense, benjamin, rozin, and sulphur in their rooms
close shut up, and then let the air carry it all out with a blast
of gunpowder; others caused large fires to be made all day and
all night for several days and nights; by the same token that two
or three were pleased to set their houses on fire, and so
effectually sweetened them by burning them down to the ground; as
particularly one at Ratcliff, one in Holbourn, and one at
Westminster; besides two or three that were set on fire, but the
fire was happily got out again before it went far enough to burn
down the houses; and one citizen’s servant, I think it was in
Thames Street, carried so much gunpowder into his master’s house,
for clearing it of the infection, and managed it so foolishly,
that he blew up part of the roof of the house. But the time was
not fully come that the city was to be purged by fire, nor was it
far off; for within nine months more I saw it all lying in ashes;
when, as some of our quacking philosophers pretend, the seeds of
the plague were entirely destroyed, and not before; a notion too
ridiculous to speak of here: since, had the seeds of the plague
remained in the houses, not to be destroyed but by fire, how has
it been that they have not since broken out, seeing all those
buildings in the suburbs and liberties, all in the great parishes
of Stepney, Whitechappel, Aldgate, Bishopsgate, Shoreditch,
Cripplegate, and St Giles, where the fire never came, and where
the plague raged with the greatest violence, remain still in the
same condition they were in before?
But to leave these things just as I found them, it was certain
that those people who were more than ordinarily cautious of their
health, did take particular directions for what they called
seasoning of their houses, and abundance of costly things were
consumed on that account which I cannot but say not only seasoned
those houses, as they desired, but filled the air with very
grateful and wholesome smells which others had the share of the
benefit of as well as those who were at the expenses of them.
And yet after all, though the poor came to town very
precipitantly, as I have said, yet I must say the rich made no
such haste. The men of business, indeed, came up, but many of
them did not bring their families to town till the spring came
on, and that they saw reason to depend upon it that the plague
would not return.
The Court, indeed, came up soon after Christmas, but the nobility
and gentry, except such as depended upon and had employment under
the administration, did not come so soon.
I should have taken notice here that, notwithstanding the
violence of the plague in London and in other places, yet it was
very observable that it was never on board the fleet; and yet for
some time there was a strange press in the river, and even in the
streets, for seamen to man the fleet. But it was in the beginning
of the year, when the plague was scarce begun, and not at all
come down to that part of the city where they usually press for
seamen; and though a war with the Dutch was not at all grateful
to the people at that time, and the seamen went with a kind of
reluctancy into the service, and many complained of being dragged
into it by force, yet it proved in the event a happy violence to
several of them, who had probably perished in the general
calamity, and who, after the summer service was over, though they
had cause to lament the desolation of their families—who, when
they came back, were many of them in their graves—yet they had
room to be thankful that they were carried out of the reach of
it, though so much against their wills. We indeed had a hot war
with the Dutch that year, and one very great engagement at sea in
which the Dutch were worsted, but we lost a great many men and
some ships. But, as I observed, the plague was not in the fleet,
and when they came to lay up the ships in the river the violent
part of it began to abate.
I would be glad if I could close the account of this melancholy
year with some particular examples historically; I mean of the
thankfulness to God, our preserver, for our being delivered from
this dreadful calamity. Certainly the circumstance of the
deliverance, as well as the terrible enemy we were delivered
from, called upon the whole nation for it. The circumstances of
the deliverance were indeed very remarkable, as I have in part
mentioned already, and particularly the dreadful condition which
we were all in when we were to the surprise of the whole town
made joyful with the hope of a stop of the infection.
Nothing but the immediate finger of God, nothing but omnipotent
power, could have done it. The contagion despised all medicine;
death raged in every corner; and had it gone on as it did then, a
few weeks more would have cleared the town of all, and everything
that had a soul. Men everywhere began to despair; every heart
failed them for fear; people were made desperate through the
anguish of their souls, and the terrors of death sat in the very
faces and countenances of the people.
In that very moment when we might very well say, ‘Vain was the
help of man’,—I say, in that very moment it pleased God, with a
most agreeable surprise, to cause the fury of it to abate, even
of itself; and the malignity declining, as I have said, though
infinite numbers were sick, yet fewer died, and the very first
weeks’ bill decreased 1843; a vast number indeed!
It is impossible to express the change that appeared in the very
countenances of the people that Thursday morning when the weekly
bill came out. It might have been perceived in their countenances
that a secret surprise and smile of joy sat on everybody’s face.
They shook one another by the hands in the streets, who would
hardly go on the same side of the way with one another before.
Where the streets were not too broad they would open their
windows and call from one house to another, and ask how they did,
and if they had heard the good news that the plague was abated.
Some would return, when they said good news, and ask, ‘What good
news?’ and when they answered that the plague was abated and the
bills decreased almost two thousand, they would cry out, ‘God be
praised!’ and would weep aloud for joy, telling them they had
heard nothing of it; and such was the joy of the people that it
was, as it were, life to them from the grave. I could almost set
down as many extravagant things done in the excess of their joy
as of their grief; but that would be to lessen the value of it.
I must confess myself to have been very much dejected just before
this happened; for the prodigious number that were taken sick the
week or two before, besides those that died, was such, and the
lamentations were so great everywhere, that a man must have
seemed to have acted even against his reason if he had so much as
expected to escape; and as there was hardly a house but mine in
all my neighbourhood but was infected, so had it gone on it would
not have been long that there would have been any more neighbours
to be infected. Indeed it is hardly credible what dreadful havoc
the last three weeks had made, for if I might believe the person
whose calculations I always found very well grounded, there were
not less than 30,000 people dead and near 100.000 fallen sick in
the three weeks I speak of; for the number that sickened was
surprising, indeed it was astonishing, and those whose courage
upheld them all the time before, sank under it now.
In the middle of their distress, when the condition of the city
of London was so truly calamitous, just then it pleased God—as it
were by His immediate hand to disarm this enemy; the poison was
taken out of the sting. It was wonderful; even the physicians
themselves were surprised at it. Wherever they visited they found
their patients better; either they had sweated kindly, or the
tumours were broke, or the carbuncles went down and the
inflammations round them changed colour, or the fever was gone,
or the violent headache was assuaged, or some good symptom was in
the case; so that in a few days everybody was recovering, whole
families that were infected and down, that had ministers praying
with them, and expected death every hour, were revived and
healed, and none died at all out of them.
Nor was this by any new medicine found out, or new method of cure
discovered, or by any experience in the operation which the
physicians or surgeons attained to; but it was evidently from the
secret invisible hand of Him that had at first sent this disease
as a judgement upon us; and let the atheistic part of mankind
call my saying what they please, it is no enthusiasm; it was
acknowledged at that time by all mankind. The disease was
enervated and its malignity spent; and let it proceed from
whencesoever it will, let the philosophers search for reasons in
nature to account for it by, and labour as much as they will to
lessen the debt they owe to their Maker, those physicians who had
the least share of religion in them were obliged to acknowledge
that it was all supernatural, that it was extraordinary, and that
no account could be given of it.
If I should say that this is a visible summons to us all to
thankfulness, especially we that were under the terror of its
increase, perhaps it may be thought by some, after the sense of
the thing was over, an officious canting of religious things,
preaching a sermon instead of writing a history, making myself a
teacher instead of giving my observations of things; and this
restrains me very much from going on here as I might otherwise
do. But if ten lepers were healed, and but one returned to give
thanks, I desire to be as that one, and to be thankful for
myself.
Nor will I deny but there were abundance of people who, to all
appearance, were very thankful at that time; for their mouths
were stopped, even the mouths of those whose hearts were not
extraordinary long affected with it. But the impression was so
strong at that time that it could not be resisted; no, not by the
worst of the people.
It was a common thing to meet people in the street that were
strangers, and that we knew nothing at all of, expressing their
surprise. Going one day through Aldgate, and a pretty many people
being passing and repassing, there comes a man out of the end of
the Minories, and looking a little up the street and down, he
throws his hands abroad, ‘Lord, what an alteration is here! Why,
last week I came along here, and hardly anybody was to be seen.’
Another man—I heard him—adds to his words, ‘’Tis all wonderful;
’tis all a dream.’ ‘Blessed be God,’ says a third man, and and
let us give thanks to Him, for ’tis all His own doing, human help
and human skill was at an end.’ These were all strangers to one
another. But such salutations as these were frequent in the
street every day; and in spite of a loose behaviour, the very
common people went along the streets giving God thanks for their
deliverance.
It was now, as I said before, the people had cast off all
apprehensions, and that too fast; indeed we were no more afraid
now to pass by a man with a white cap upon his head, or with a
cloth wrapt round his neck, or with his leg limping, occasioned
by the sores in his groin, all which were frightful to the last
degree, but the week before. But now the street was full of them,
and these poor recovering creatures, give them their due,
appeared very sensible of their unexpected deliverance; and I
should wrong them very much if I should not acknowledge that I
believe many of them were really thankful. But I must own that,
for the generality of the people, it might too justly be said of
them as was said of the children of Israel after their being
delivered from the host of Pharaoh, when they passed the Red Sea,
and looked back and saw the Egyptians overwhelmed in the water:
viz., that they sang His praise, but they soon forgot His works.
I can go no farther here. I should be counted censorious, and
perhaps unjust, if I should enter into the unpleasing work of
reflecting, whatever cause there was for it, upon the
unthankfulness and return of all manner of wickedness among us,
which I was so much an eye-witness of myself. I shall conclude
the account of this calamitous year therefore with a coarse but
sincere stanza of my own, which I placed at the end of my
ordinary memorandums the same year they were written:
A dreadful plague in London was In the year sixty-five, Which
swept an hundred thousand souls Away; yet I alive!
H. F.
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FINIS
