 Section 23 of A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe. 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 manufacturers 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 have been 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 whitechapel bars, was sold at four pound per load. But that affected not, 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 flexes, gripping of the guts, surfates, 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 manufacturers 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 already said, into their port. This put a stop to the manufacturers that were for exportation in most parts of England, except in some outports, 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 manufacturers, especially those which usually circulated through the Londoners' hands, was stopped at once, the trade of the city being stopped. All kinds of handicrafts in the city, etc., tradesmen and mechanics, were, as I have said before, out of employ, and this occasion 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 avirred that nobody perished for want, at least that the magistrates had any notice given them of. The 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 this, 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 two 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 to work, and were little enough for several years to supply the market and answer the demands. All foreign markets also went 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 sorts 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 judgment. The third 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 8,297 of all diseases, I upgraded him with it and asked him what he had made his judgment 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 20,000 dead the last week instead of 8,000, if the inveterate moral 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 and five recovered, whereas I have observed that now not above two and five miscarry, and observe it from me, the next bill will decrease, and you will see many more people recovered 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 now began 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 2,000. It is true the plague was still at a frightful height, and the next bill was no less than 6,460, and the next to that 5,720, 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 been 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 1,843, so that the number dead of the plague was 2,665, and the next week it decreased 1,413 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, that is, that the distemper was not so catching as formally, 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 tumors 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 loathesomeness 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 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 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 the people's heads were possessed with it, even as soon as the first great decrease in the bills appeared, we found that the next two 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 practice, depending that the sickness would not reach them, or that if it did they should not die. The physicians opposed this thoughtless humor of the people with all their might, and gave out printed directions, spreading them all over the city in 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. It 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 rumor had spread not over the city only, but into the country, it had the like effect, and the people were so tired from 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 one thousand to eighteen hundred a week, yet the people flocked to town as if all had been well. The consequence of this was that the bills increased again four hundred the very first week in November, and, if I might believe the physicians, there was above three thousand fell sick that week, most of them newcomers, too. John Cock, a barber in St. Martin's Le Grand, was an imminent 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 nine hundred and five 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 was 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, and the contagion was exhausted, and also the winter weather came on a pace, 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, and 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 semen 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 Alderman 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 Mohammedans, who pre-possessed 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, then 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 perloined. Some gone one way, some another. It was said such abandoned effects came to the king as the universal error upon which we are told, and I suppose it was in part true, that the king granted all such as deodans to the Lord Mayor and 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 now more a great deal than it was then, because all the sweases 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. End of Section 23. Section 24 of A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Read by Dennis Sayers. Section 24. 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 for 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 outperishes were obliged to make new bearing 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 mentioned 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 follows. One. A piece of ground beyond Gaswell Street near Mount Hill, being some of the remains of the old lines or fortifications of the city, where abundance were buried promiscuously from the perishes 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. Two. A piece of ground just over the black ditch, as it was then called, at the end of Holloway Lane in Shortwich 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. Three. The upper end of Hand Alley in Bishopsgate Street, which was then a green field, and was taken in particularly for Bishopgate Parish, though many of the carts out of the city brought their dead thither also, particularly out of the parish of St. All Hollows 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 the Second. 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 the 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 foundation, were dug up, some of them remaining so plain to be seen that the woman'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 polysidode 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, four. Besides this, there was a piece of ground in more fields by the going into the street, which is now called Old Bethlehem, which was enlarged bunch, though not wholly taken in of the same occasion, footnote. Note Bene, 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. End of footnote. 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 Spiddlesfields, 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 the 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 can 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, in which they still make use of, and that 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 judgment, 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 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 feigned 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 anyone 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, anyone 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 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, except 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 and their danger, and when they had most need of comfort and the like, this we could by no means approve of. For all men have not the same faith and the same courage, and the Scripture commands us to judge the most favorably 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 flew 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 curits 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 well 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 daresay 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, and was it to boast of their ability to abide the stroke, and up-braid 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 honor of such men as well clergy, as physicians, surgeons, apothecaries, men who were 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 were 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 inferring your people. I think there died six and forty constables and head boroughs in the two parishes of Stepney and Whitechapel, but I could not carry my list oil, for when the violent rage of the distemper in September came upon us, it drove us out of all measures. Men did then know more die by tail and by number. They might put out a weekly bill, and call them seven or eight thousand, or what they pleased, to 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 twenty thousand 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 right, as well as those that read, to be able to say that everything is set down with moderation and rather with encompass than beyond it. Upon all these account, 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 the record that the civil officers, such as constables, head boroughs, lord mayors, and sheriff's 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 physical 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 one of the number of the physical haters or physical 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 to near any bearing 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 sought 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 judgment 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 prescriptions. Only that, says he, some recommend one thing as most sovereign, and some another. Some, says he, think that pill, rough, which is called itself the anti-pestilential pill, is the best preparation that can be made. Others think that venestrical is sufficient of itself to resist the contagion, and I, says he, think as both these think, fizz, that the last is good to take beforehand to prevent it, and first, if touched, to expel it. According to his opinion, I several times took venestrical and the sound sweat upon it, and thought myself as well fortified against the infection as any one could be fortified by the power of physics. As for quackery and mount-a-banks, 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 by much question. I believe, rather, they fled into the country, and tried their practices upon the people there, who were an 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 commending their several physical preparations for cleansing the body, as they called 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 imminent physicians at that time, that the plague was itself a sufficient purge, and that those who escaped the infection needed no physics to cleanse their bodies of any other things, the running sores, the tumors, etc., which were broke and kept open by the direction 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. 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 scorched, and that sore 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 plain, to have paid more than a common respect to their prophetic spirit, at least we should have wondered at them, and have been more serious in our inquiries after the meeting 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 plague increased for to the end of the year there were always between two hundred and three hundred of the plague. On any of these occasions I say we were alarm anew. Those who remember the city of London before the fire must remember that there was then no such place as we now called Nugget 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 accustomed 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 Nugget 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 fright 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 pleases 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 in 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 of them. However, in general, prudent, cautious people did enter into some measures for airing and sweetening their houses, and burned perfumes, incense, Benjamin, Rosin, and Sulfur in their rooms close shut up, and then let the air carry it all out with the 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 particular one at Ratcliffe, one in Halpern, 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, Whitechapel, Aldgate, Bishopsgate, Shoreditch, Cripplegate, and St. Giles, where the fires never came, and where the plague raged with the greatest violence remained still in the same condition they were in before. But to leave these things just as I found them, it was certain that these 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, and 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 caused 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 in 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 the 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 week's bill decreased one thousand eight hundred and forty-three. 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. Such was the joy of the people, that it was, as it were, life to them from the grave. I could almost sit 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, and if he had so much as expected to escape. And as there was hardly a house, but mine, and all the neighborhood, but was infected, so had it gone on, it would not have been long that there would have been any more neighbors 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 thirty thousand people dead, and near one hundred thousand 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 imminent hand, to disarm the enemy. The poison was taken out of the sting. It was wonderful. Even the physicians that themselves were surprised at it. Wherever they visited they found their patients better. Either they had sweated kindly, or the tumors were broke, or the carbuncles went down, and the inflammations around them changed color, 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 judgment 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 innervated, and its malignity spent, and let it proceed from whence so ever it will let the philosopher search for reasons in nature to account for it by, and labor as much as they will to lessen the debt they owe to their maker. Those physicians that who had the least share of religion in them were obliged to acknowledge that it was all super-new natural, 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 canteen 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 leopards 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 pretty many people being passing and repassing, there comes a man out of the end of the menorys, 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 and hardly anybody was to be seen. Another man, I heard him, adds to this words, tis all wonderful, tis all a dream. Blessed be God, says a third man, 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 behavior, 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 doth wrapped around his neck, or with his leg limping, occasioned by these sores in his groin, all of 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 they are being delivered, from the host of Pharaoh, when they passed the Red Sea, and looked back and saw the Egyptians overwhelmed in the water, that is, that they sang his praise, but they soon forgot his works. I can go no farther here. I should be counted sensorious, 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 eyewitness of myself. I shall conclude the account of this calamitous year, therefore, with a course 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, hf end of section twenty-five, and end of a journal of the plague year, by Daniel Defoe.