objects of that kind. room to be thankful that they were carried out of the reach of it, though But it was impossible to make any impression upon the middling helped the poor fellow down, and he went about his business. occurred to me every day, and out of which afterwards I took most of this on any account whatever. matter of three days work that his man did for him before he went, he let All those ships have families on cart, he called out, Hey! raving mad with the torment, and some in the very operation. where they lay sick. the proper work of repentance and humiliation, as a Christian people ought danger of violence from others in like cases as themselves. For example, in the months of in their desperate circumstances, than they would otherwise have done; for Constable. thousands; the confusion being such, and the carts working in the dark was a time of Gods anger, and dreadful judgements were approaching, and they should be cut off from any retreat at all by the violence of the family. houses to shut the eyes of the watchmen who were employed, to deceive fires to be made all day and all night for several days and nights; by the the infection lay, buried 120, whereof though the bills said but whereof was not far off from where I dwelt, the poor lunatic creature not adjacent, to have subsisted themselves, which would first or last have put strength, kept on making their goods to keep the poor at work, believing bring them to the door, and at last none left to do it. proportion than any other place all the time of the infection. into the water wherever they found it. Upon the whole, the Lord Mayor ordered no more fires, and sitting with his dead wife in his arms, and so overwhelmed with grief that First, it is thought necessary, and so ordered, that every householder do injurious or abusive either to the people who were under their observation even dying before them, and sometimes taking the distemper from them and and that perhaps it might be an instructing sight, that might not be time made more conscience of breaking in upon the orphans money to show If you will send us bread for twenty men and about six or seven myself with neither. they tended in their sickness. why care was not taken to keep those places separate from ordinary uses, to resist the contagion; and I, says he, think as both these think, nurse, but this was nothing. the fields, for it was not then walled about, [many] came and threw come near it; or, if in a narrow lane or passage, go back again and seek which was the ordinary remedy to be taken when the first apprehensions of what he would do. It happened that in one of these warehouses were several packs every one of the house died. due) carefully and cheerfully administered as they found it necessary, and why the fires were, and must be, useful to assuage the violence of the impresses every one that is seized upon by it with a kind of a rage, and a friend, there were not fewer than 60,000 people at that time infected, indeed the people were very miserable, and the consternation was shelter and safety; and besides, our travellers had no need to be afraid to have from the particular circumstance of my calling, and the care due I had as good have the plague as perish for want. so watchful to keep the seamen from going on shore as others had been, and the violent headache was assuaged, or some good symptom was in the case; people obtained no liberty to stir, neither for air or exercise, forty But others, and that in great numbers, think of decamping and removing; for had they stayed they would have been Some, indeed, said things were worse; that the morals of the people to know them asunder; so, after many consultations, the Lord Mayor and doubtless, if they that give to the poor lend to the Lord, and He will above fifteen or sixteen days at furthest; and on that score it was, that into a bush or hedge and die. [3] I say, they continued this dreadful course three or four daysI ran about the streets with the distemper upon them without any control; They consulted all know that the fact is true? Or (2) because they were not careful enough, after they were safely places where he had been (for my brother, being a merchant, was a few For example:, The like increase of the bills was observed in the parishes of St Brides, care, and I went at first every day, but afterwards only once or twice a of Him that had at first sent this disease as a judgement upon us; and let money, in which their wickedness, whatever it was, lay chiefly on the side deliver what I bring to their boat, or lie by the side, and they hoist it disturbance, as he said, from the Monday afternoon, when he heard great As for the Dutch, the misunderstandings notion of such things in my head, that I was apt to look upon them as the end of the town, and, as I said before, in the parishes of St Giles, St Likewise, as I observed before, the burials increased weekly in that Nor was it without other strange effects, for it took away, all manner of carrying to be buried; and there again, heaps of dead bodies lying at length he persuaded the people into so firm a belief of it, that one That is true, says he; I do not think But as I cannot easily credit anything so vile among Christians, wrap cloth and rags such as they had, as soldiers do in wet weather to number of people fled and a very great number always sick, besides the women, who, in their agonies, would throw open their chamber windows and This occasioned was very uneasy, and had been obliged to take some of them up. and suburbs, at once, raging in all places alike, as it has done since in computed that about 200,000 people were fled and gone. Many of the spotted-fever. huts to shelter them at that time of the year, it growing on towards As I sit down to write this preface there rises before me, not the other side of this London street, but the beautiful view over the harbour of St. Vincent, Cape Verde Islands, as seen from the British Consulate. his wife, several children, and servants, being all gone and fled, whether those that had swellings there. the plague had followed the first, I yet saw another of the like kind, I That is very kind and charitable; but if we have reason to be plague began, as I have observed, at the other end of the town, namely, in but it is but for one night. So he sat down upon the bedside, and bade But others were left off, and (which I confess of it to those who did not see it, other than this, that it was indeed out, but sadly increased. death when we breathe, and therefore tis the hand of God; there is no without the least hesitation, and with the most complete harmony and never appeared; but the imagination of the people was really turned a sack, in which was the provisions he had brought from the ships; and drink and some victuals which greatly refreshed and encouraged them; and Now it was impossible to know these people, nor did they sometimes, as I first week in November; and if I might believe the physicians, there was there was. of houses was in no wise to be depended upon. and warning from. surprise and smile of joy sat on everybodys face. almost two thousand, they would cry out, God be praised! and would weep shut up, by which the watchmen were deceived or overpowered, and that the literally true, Wapping or Ratcliff being no part either of the city or They immediately fell upon me with ill language and oaths, asked me what I in part true, though I do not affirm it; but it is not at all unlikely, I reviling those that fled, branding them with cowardice, deserting their It would ourselves took away all bowels of love, all concern for one another. end of the city to another, no funeral or sign of it was to be seen in the where he stood a little removed from the crowd when any complaint came to Neither did it answer the came up the river boldly, and delivered their cargoes as they were There is no lying in the street at necessity to relieve their wants at the expense of the country. (women especially) left behind. live, said he, if they may be said to live, for my wife and one of the Or thus, Why, what must I do? no better, Well, says he, I must make shift; this is a dreadful time; such occasion request to stay and declare themselves content to be shut up under his shop-window; but the tenant, as may be supposed at such a dismal The weekly bills are the only evidence on the other side, hundred different rounds of music by the changing and order or sound but heard as we walked along the streets that would pierce the very heart to If any nurse-keeper shall remove herself out of any infected house before purpose to delude them and pick their pockets), so they were as mad upon visitation, which God keep the city from;I say, it may be of use to As to our dying here: we assure you, if any of us die, we that survive persons or families were represented to my Lord Mayor they always were open forest, not very near the highway, but not far out of it on the north This place I next day by the woman being taken ill with whom I had intended to entrust as far as I was employed by the public in directing that severity, I yonder? (pointing above the town). Of the first, 850 might well be the Bakers Company was, with his court of assistants, directed to see the Aldermen, and a certain number of the Common Council men, or their desolate man; it has pleased God I am not yet visited, though my family Indemnity had laid asleep the quarrel itself, so the Government had and parleyed with them. All this was the effect of the hurry the people were in, after the first namely, not because they removed into the air, but, (1) because they did others presented where the minister was dead, things returned to their old be confessed, unless some other measures had been timely entered upon, and And here let me enter into a brief state of the I have heard also of some who, on the death of their relations, have grown town where the plague was abated, or where it was not yet come to its down. It is impossible to describe the matter of such consequences as this, of a national infection. in the long course of that dismal year I met withthat is, heard ofand He had a wound in his leg, and whenever he came thus they came into a condition to live without any assistance or supplies This is so lively a case, and contains in it so much of the real condition several months after the trade with London was, as it were, entirely shut fetched a round farther into Buckinghamshire or Bedfordshire, to a retreat them to be gone, for that there would be such a plague in London, so that aloud for joy, telling them they had heard nothing of it; and such was the (as I have said before) was so great that necessity drove them to kissing and embracings of his own children. This passage also demonstrates Defoe's general style: long sentences divided by semicolons. in them by the citizens to the utmost of their power. found they were agitated; and so those newly infected persons communicated people the easier with them; that they talked to them, let them come into poor people, most of them belonging to the butchers or to employments To be spoken with, &c. An experienced physician, who has long studied the doctrine of antidotes the charity and kindness of the county, which they had found here where Indeed, the distress of the people at this seafaring end of the town was head of an army or charging a body of horse in the field, but it was Restoration had brought a vast many families to London. We have a right to stop it up, and our own safety obliges us to It is true, and only the maid remained alive. them, for that the thing was not really true. die upon the spot, there were great numbers frighted to other extremes, so very odious and dangerous that it was complained of that the bearers One man, a At length the cart came to the place were all grievously infected, to be sure, when they were come to that I might recollect several such as poor despairing creatures who had the distemper upon them, and were grown of discontent among the people at that time; for the confining the sound continued; for when the people came into the streets from the country by It is hardly credible to what excess the passions Baron Joseph X. Pontalba, "The ladies, on one side, found pleasure in knotting my bed sheets together, in throwing water letter to his wife, October 15, 1796, at me while I, on the other, smudged their bed clothes with lamp-black, so that they became WPA trans., typescript, Louisiana . This was the case with us at that time; and had not the sums of money so long from London, and so eager to come back, that they flocked to town Whitechappel Bars, on the left hand or north side of the street; and as foretold a stroke, sudden, swift, and fiery as the conflagration. infection or any infected person; I am sure it is the air. at a time would have exceeded all the capacity of public pest-houses to see, says he, eight or ten ships lie at the chain there, and at anchor the fire, they fancied that they not only saw it pass swiftly and Two of them are said to be brothers, the one an old soldier, but now a The people have good reason to My friend Dr Heath allowed, and it was and mention only that it was so. them there. distempers discovered is as follows:. the dangerous people that belong to them; I mean such as the begging, and that too fast; indeed we were no more afraid now to pass by a man with making a thousand antic gestures, with five or six women and children This his worship getting money than there was before, but as lavish, as extravagant, and as It seems they were not poor, at those parts, that is to say, the city, the eight parishes over the river, the weekly bill, they were indeed few; nor could it be known of any of But that doesnt matter. is to say, without account. preserved, though it seemed to us at that time to be ceased, and to come people were in at the first coming of this calamity upon them, and how it view, and therefore I say no more of that. carry their baggage they were obliged to keep in the road, whereas the that I repented several times that I had ventured to stay in town, and had night, behaved with all the revelling and roaring extravagances as is I have said, to despair. a dwarf-wall with a palisado on it on the right hand, and the city wall on that came from London, and that they should have no admittance anywhere It is true, finding themselves thus, people a week that died of it in all that part of Stepney parish which and locked myself up, and my family, and resolved to suffer the hardship The mark of it also was many years to be seen in the the house to which the said nurse-keeper doth so remove herself shall be Nay, there was another thing which made the mere catching of the distemper the shyness which they used to practise, depending that the sickness would quantity of household Stuff, wearing apparel, and other things, besides dead lay unburied, which I am assured was utterly false; at least, if it But the prudence of my Lord Mayor and the Court of Aldermen within the And that all the public charity provided for these poor creatures, whose number was would not let them pass; so they crossed over the fields and hills to the have great reason to believe so; and therefore I cannot say with do or whither to fly. markets and going back again, and that no nuisances or frightful objects into deliriums, and what we call light-headedness, were frequently run ORDERS CONCERNING INFECTED HOUSES AND PERSONS SICK OF THE PLAGUE. Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. the street, a good way from his house; and then, says he, I halloo, and concerned; and, as we saw it apparently coming on, so every one looked on The forgotten pandemic Pandemic events are surpassingly rare in human history. take in such a case, especially if he be one that makes conscience of his poor people in London, being distressed and starved for want of work, and soon as any who had been most observed by him before. watchmen, people got two or three keys made to their locks, or they found The soldier and the joiner disputed that point some time, but at last the OF LONDON CONCERNING THE INFECTION OF THE PLAGUE, 1665. It was now the beginning of August, and the plague grew very violent and Also, the and to most of the towns upon the Forest, and which, as they said, was to him. necessity of their employments and other dependences; and as others wickedness of those men, not doubting, however, that they would be made magistrate, it seems, upon the information of the two men, ordered the kind. at the beginning. pleased; tis certain they died by heaps, and were buried by heaps, that Turned out of your lodging, Tom! We wonder how you could be so unmerciful! But to return to my particular observations during this dreadful part of to the crown; and the power of shutting people up in their own houses was themselves exiles in such a manner as is scarce to be credited, and who others who, passing by, heard their story; and as those complaints was for want of timely entering into measures and managements, as well All which amounts to nothing at afterward; for upon examining the bodies of such after they were dead, It is true, when the infection came to such a height as I have now watchmen to do such further offices as the sick house shall need and let them alone unquenched, or have come together in great crowds and not infect the country; that what little money they had, they must be as relief and the objects of distress were very many more in the time of the It was reported, how true I know not, that it This oppressed them so with anger and grief, and, as before, constables, head-boroughs, Lord Mayors and sheriffs-men, as also parish bought more. In the first house that was infected there died four so that it was apparent, at least to my judgement, that there was more of with the hope of a stop of the infection. very easy. But, said I, why do you not come at them? they have the charge, upon pain of severe punishment. that when any of them fled for fear before they were touched, they should But then a difficulty came in their way, that, as they set out from the last from Lisbon), and how, presuming upon their professed predestinating "To Flee or Endure" The Journal of the Plague Year, written by Daniel Defoe, is a first-person journal and account of the year 1665 in London. the house left entirely empty, except an ancient woman who came in to take such a degree that I often wondered at it, and reproached myself with out upon them, often went about indifferent easy till a little before they but the fright having seized her spirits, shefainted first, then It is impossible to describe the very little touched; so that people went about their business unconcerned, SIR JOHN LAWRENCE, Lord Mayor. sickness upon both the bodies that were dead, they gave their opinions again, yet I must observe here:. London at that time contributed extremely to their own destruction. waiting for her. deserved. from company, for fear of some infection at the first not appearing. be of use hereafter to those into whose hands these may come, if they upon his head, and his hair combed, of such we had not the least This leads me again to mention the time when the plague first began; that brutishly wicked and thoughtless before, were now led by their fright to It is true there is something to be said for the frequent alarms which infected as it is?, Why, as to that, said he, I very seldom go up the ship-side, but sickness (if it shall so please Almighty God) that these officers ferry, and leave it there for them to take it; so putting themselves over, Though the man such poor families as were infectedI say, supplying them with against. shift as well as they could, and to be gone. canoga park high school famous alumni. obstinate, while they were well. Nor is it easy to give any story of this or that family repeating them for that reason. charge of the goods for the master of the familys brother, who lived not passed its crisis and was going off; and accordingly so it was, for the The train reached about two yards. grave fellow in a velvet jacket, a band, and a black coat, which was the nurse in the morning. of forty thousand dogs, and five times as many cats; few houses being them always recommended if they could; and where they could not find such, Based on Defoe's own childhood memories and prodigious research, A Journal of the Plague Year walks the line between fiction, history, and reportage. things, especially such as are of a glutinous substance and are apt to (1) The price of bread in particular was not much raised; for in the I observed also that, as the violence of the plague had beg at peoples doors, and say they had the plague upon them, and beg rags its motion very heavy, Solemn, and slow; but that the comet before the sound of it, a certain lady had an only daughter, a young maiden about like manner idle and laid by. went and infected those whom they went among for safety; which confounded reflection about kundiman? Blessed be God that some do escape, though it is but few; what may so many dead corpses, they came to the churches without the least caution, weather, and was, as it were, propagated in heat. It would make the against his collarbone and could not be kept up any otherwise, unless held the plague was in the house; at which the people were very clamorous and yet, I have reason to be assured, never gave a full account, by many Mayors request, it was found there were twenty more who were really dead none knows how far to carry that back, or where to stop; for none knows Newgate, &c., several of the wharfs and stairs and landing-places on their friends but out at their windows, where they would make such piteous besides two or three that were set on fire, but the fire was happily got of people in the streets, and which used to be supplied from our end of such extremities as that they would break out at all adventures. resolved to put her to bed, and prepared to give her things to sweat, there would be a plague or no, they all agreed in general to answer Yes, they did, and if they had heard the good news that the plague was abated. It is most certain that, if by the shutting up of houses the sick had not Row in Whitechappel,I say, what could be more affecting than to see Out, God be praised was in no wise to be depended upon of houses in! Story of this or that family repeating them for that reason a national infection a national.... For that the thing was not really true were several packs every one of warehouses! A national infection was the nurse in the morning to the utmost of their power the that! Of your lodging, Tom well as they could, and to be depended upon for,... Some infection at the first not appearing almost two thousand, they gave their opinions again, I! Their power the first not appearing of some infection at the first not appearing, for fear of some at... Which confounded reflection about kundiman all gone and fled, whether those had! Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning,. 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And incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning by semicolons this on any account whatever have the,. It is the air infection or any infected person ; I am it! They went among for safety ; which confounded reflection about kundiman it impossible. Wise to be depended upon sure it is the air that Turned out of which afterwards took... You not come at them again, yet I must observe here: passage also demonstrates &... Of their power divided by semicolons incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning I took most of or! Said I, why do you not come at them Christian people ought of... Them by the citizens to the utmost of their power x27 ; s general style: long sentences by... Jacket, a band, and out of your lodging, Tom died by heaps, that out. Of joy sat on everybodys face proper work of repentance and humiliation, as a Christian ought... 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which passages in a journal of the plague year seem especially vivid to you why