 section 15 from A Journal of the Plague Year. 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 sounds. These things, and a quiet, inoffensive behavior, 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 neighborhood, 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 of 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 around 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 kitchenware for ordering their food. Created 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 at 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 the 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 Britwood, 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 Higglers, 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 afterward 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 would be reasonably expected. But now these new inmates began to be disturbed more affectionately, 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 grind it. This made them eat the first two bushels 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 one hundred and twenty were said to have died of the distemper in the villages near them, which was a terrible thing to them. Of 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 poorest 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 first because they did not remove time enough. That is to say, not till by openly conversing with the other people, their neighbors, they had the distemper upon them, or as may be said, among them, and so carried it about them wither they went, or second 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 travelers began to perceive that the plague was not only in the towns, but even in the tents and huts on the forests 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 wither should they 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 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 wither 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 scrutinized 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 the 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 Hartfordshire, that is to say into Waltham, Waltham Cross, Enfield, and Weir, 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 Rumpford 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 Hanelt Forest, reaching near Rumpford, and who, having no subsistence or habitation, not only lived oddly and suffered great extremity in the woods and fields for want of relief, but were said to be made so desperate by those extremities as they had 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 has 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 Mickelmass. They found an old decayed house, which had been formerly some cottage, or little habitation, but was so out of repair as scarcely 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 direction, 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 lean-toes 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 favored 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 disc tempers, 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 this 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, 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 history 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 were not come out of London too late. But others, in that, in great numbers, built themselves little huts and retreats in the fields and woods, and lived like hermits and 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 these little huts were often found empty, and the country people, suppose 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'd buried him as well as he could. Oh, misery, we both shall die. Whoa, whoa! I have given an account to the country, 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 the wind and weather. Nor did I ever hear that the plague reached to any of the people on board these ships, except such as lay up in the pool, or as high as Depford 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 called them, and furnished with straw within for their lodging, and that they laid thus all along by the shore in the marshes, and 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 arguing 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 his goods to be unloaden and laid at the door, and sent the cart away, upon which they carried the man before a justice of the 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. A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe Section 16 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, Margaret 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 Hornsey, 58. Newington, 17. Tottenham, 42. Edmonton, 19. Barnett and Hadley, 19. St. Albin's, 121. Watford, 45. Eltham and Lussum, 85. Croydon, 61. Brentwood, 70. Rundford, 109. Barking Abbot, 200. Brentford, 432. In Uxbridge, 117. In Hartford, 90. In Ware, 160. In Hudson, 30. In Waltham, Abbey, 23. In Epping, 26. Deppford, 623. Greenwich, 231. Kingston, 122. Stain's, 82. Chertsey, 18. And in Windsor, 103. Kuhn, Alice. 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 everyone 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 anyone that comes next to 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 severity 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 harbored in time of distress, and with the plague upon them, complaining 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 know, complaining 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 colors they were described in. It is true there is something to be said for the frequent alarms which are 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 practice 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, et cetera, 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. That is, the moderation which they used in the great and difficult work of shutting up of houses. It is true, as I have mentioned, that 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 of 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 sossily 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 that 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 authorized 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 behavior, 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 that 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 past 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, physical, 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 favor 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 light 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 watchman and the poor people shut up, besides those I formerly mentioned about escaping. Sometimes the watchman were absent, sometimes drunk, sometimes asleep when the people wanted them, and such never failed to be punished severely, as indeed they desired 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 authorized 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 Whitechapel was shut up for the sake of one infected maid who had only spots not the tokens come 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 much with anger and grief and, as before, straightened 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 distemperer, one of another, chiefly, scurred beauty 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 distemperer 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, at 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 the Potsoken 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 endeavored 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, and that which was against my judgment, and which I did not verily believe would 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 favor, 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 Alder's Gate 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 frightened, 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 frightened enough before, being also a young 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. Blank, where are you going? Going, says he, I have got the sickness, and shall die tomorrow night. It is 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 frightened 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 frightened 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 around. I, says he, with all this seeming calmness imaginable. Is it so with you all? Are you all disturbed at me? Why then I'll even 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 sulfur, 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 shutting up of the 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 everyone 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, frightened 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, and 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 that 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. The pain 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 suddened 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 had 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 of 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 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 ought 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 rafing 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 through themselves out of windows, when they found out 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 call Wehr 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 White Cross 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, in 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 accepting 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 the 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 was 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 frequently been 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, 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 and 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 stoned 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 in any way touched. This may be sufficient to convince any reasonable person that 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 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 confirm myself that there 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 neighbors, 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 poverty, 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 neighbors 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 where 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 excused 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 the bullet that killed with the stroke, but that they really had the infection in their blood long before, only that as it prayed secretly on the vitals, it appeared not till it seized the heart with the 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 comment 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 Paddycote Lane two houses together were infected, and several people sick, but the distemper was so well concealed, the examiner, who was my neighbor, 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 neighborhood they appeared generally at a time, and answered, that is, lied for one another, or got some of the neighborhood 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 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 light manner at another house and 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 diluted 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 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 I 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 neighbors 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 lightheaded, 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 the 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 such 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 endeavors to extinguish it, so in the plague it came at last to such a 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, I shall take notice of it 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 excesses 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, and come out of Harrow Alley, a populous conjunction, or collection of alleys, courts, and passages in the Butcher Row in White Chapel? I say, what could be more affecting than to see this poor man come out into the open street, condancing and singing, and making a thousand antique 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 in treating 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 superrate, 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 dead. No wonder the aspect of the city itself was frightful. The usual concourse of people in the streets, in 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 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 imminent 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 cavalled very much with one another. Some were for the 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 affluvia of turpentine. Others were for coal, and not wood, because of the sulfur, and bi-cumin, 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 defined all means, and rather seemed to increase than decrease upon any application to check and debate 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 frightened 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 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 first three 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 three thousand 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, that is, between the hours of one and three in the morning, and of section 17, section 18 of A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe. This Lieber Vox recording is in the public domain. Read by Dennis Sayers. Section 18. 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 neighborhood. One family without the bars 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 one 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 behind 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 barriers, 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. I am 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 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 an 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 a miss 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 are 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 of 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 is evident. Death will reconcile us all. On the other side the grave we shall all be 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 defection. 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 with indoors, 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 heroin alley, of the poor outrageous creature which danced and sung in his agony, and many others there were. Scarce a day or a 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, crying 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 at this 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 streets 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, that is that all the predictors, astrologers, fortune tellers, and what they call 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 forty thousand from the twenty-second of August to the twenty-sixth of September, being but five weeks. The particulars of the bills are as follows. That is, from August the twenty-second to the twenty-ninth, seven thousand four hundred ninety-six. From August the twenty-ninth to the fifth of September eight thousand two hundred and fifty-two. From September the fifth through the twelfth seven thousand six hundred and ninety. From September the twelfth through the nineteenth eight thousand two hundred ninety-seven. From September the nineteenth through the twenty-sixth six thousand four hundred and sixty for a total of thirty-eight thousand one hundred and ninety-five. This was a prodigious number of itself, but I should add the reasons which I had to believe that the 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 same 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 dead when they had been carrying the bodies even at the pitside, 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 Shortitch was forsaken of the drivers, or being left to one man to drive, he died in the street, and the horses going on over through 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 anyone 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 has 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. One, provisions were always to be had in full plenty, and the price not much raised neither hardly were speaking. Two, 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 first three weeks in September. This last article 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 been employed a little in the direction of that part in the parish in which I lived, and whereas 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 barriers 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, Ali, 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. The price of bread, in particular, was not much raised, for in the beginning of the year, that is, 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. Second, 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, that is, that their maid servants going to the bake houses 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, that is, 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 many thousands of poor and 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 thither introducing or upon thither 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 of 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 of 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 this 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 person's being sick, would have been such that the distemper would sometimes have seized a whole family before any visitors or examiners could have known 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, wagons, 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.