by Daniel Defoe
then cried, "O death, death, death!" in a most inimitabletone, and which[135] struck me with horror, and[136] a chillness in myvery blood. There was nobody to be seen in the whole street, neither didany other window open, for people had no curiosity now in any case, norcould anybody help one another: so I went on to pass into Bell Alley.
Just in Bell Alley, on the right hand of the passage, there was a moreterrible cry than that, though it was not so directed out at the window.But the whole family was in a terrible fright, and I could hear womenand children run screaming about the rooms like distracted, when agarret window opened, and somebody from a window on the other side thealley called, and asked, "What is the matter?" Upon which from the firstwindow it was answered, "O Lord, my old master has hanged himself!" Theother asked again, "Is he quite dead?" and the first answered, "Ay, ay,quite dead; quite dead and cold!" This person was a merchant and adeputy alderman, and very rich. I care not to mention his name, though Iknew his name too; but that would be a hardship to the family, which isnow flourishing again.[137]
But this is but one. It is scarce credible what dreadful cases happenedin particular families every day,--people, in the rage of the distemper,or in the torment of their swellings, which was indeed intolerable,running out of their own government,[138] raving and distracted, andoftentimes laying violent hands upon themselves, throwing themselves outat their windows, shooting themselves, etc.; mothers murdering their ownchildren in their lunacy; some dying of mere grief as a passion, some ofmere fright and surprise without any infection at all; others frightedinto idiotism[139] and foolish distractions, some into despair andlunacy, others into melancholy madness.
The pain of the swelling was in particular very violent, and to someintolerable. The physicians and surgeons may be said to have torturedmany poor creatures even to death. The swellings in some grew hard, andthey applied violent drawing plasters, or poultices, to break them; and,if these did not do, they cut and scarified them in a terrible manner.In some, those swellings were made hard, partly by the force of thedistemper, and partly by their being too violently drawn, and were sohard that no instrument could cut them; and then they burned them withcaustics, so that many died raving mad with the torment, and some in thevery operation. In these distresses, some, for want of help to hold themdown in their beds or to look to them, laid hands upon themselves asabove; some broke out into the streets, perhaps naked, and would rundirectly down to the river, if they were not stopped by the watchmen orother officers, and plunge themselves into the water wherever they foundit.
It often pierced my very soul to hear the groans and cries of those whowere thus tormented. But of the two, this was counted the most promisingparticular in the whole infection: for if these swellings could bebrought to a head, and to break and run, or, as the surgeons call it, to"digest," the patient generally recovered; whereas those who, like thegentlewoman's daughter, were struck with death at the beginning, and hadthe tokens come out upon them, often went about indifferently easy tilla little before they died, and some till the moment they dropped down,as in apoplexies and epilepsies is often the case. Such would be takensuddenly very sick, and would run to a bench or bulk, or any convenientplace that offered itself, or to their own houses, if possible, as Imentioned before, and there sit down, grow faint, and die. This kind ofdying was much the same as it was with those who die of commonmortifications,[140] who die swooning, and, as it were, go away in adream. Such as died thus had very little notice of their being infectedat all till the gangrene was spread through their whole body; nor couldphysicians themselves know certainly how it was with them till theyopened their breasts, or other parts of their body, and saw the tokens.
We had at this time a great many frightful stories told us of nurses andwatchmen who looked after the dying people (that is to say, hirednurses, who attended infected people), using them barbarously, starvingthem, smothering them, or by other wicked means hastening their end,that is to say, murdering of them. And watchmen being set to guardhouses that were shut up, when there has been but one person left, andperhaps that one lying sick, that[141] they have broke in and murderedthat body, and immediately thrown them out into the dead cart; and sothey have gone scarce cold to the grave.
I cannot say but that some such murders were committed, and I think twowere sent to prison for it, but died before they could be tried; and Ihave heard that three others, at several times, were executed formurders of that kind. But I must say I believe nothing of its being socommon a crime as some have since been pleased to say; nor did it seemto be so rational, where the people were brought so low as not to beable to help themselves; for such seldom recovered, and there was notemptation to commit a murder, at least not equal to the fact, wherethey were sure persons would die in so short a time, and could not live.
That there were a great many robberies and wicked practices committedeven in this dreadful time, I do not deny. The power of avarice was sostrong in some, that they would run any hazard to steal and to plunder;and, particularly in houses where all the families or inhabitants havebeen dead and carried out, they would break in at all hazards, and,without regard to the danger of infection, take even the clothes off thedead bodies, and the bedclothes from others where they lay dead.
This, I suppose, must be the case of a family in Houndsditch, where aman and his daughter (the rest of the family being, as I suppose,carried away before by the dead cart) were found stark naked, one in onechamber and one in another, lying dead on the floor, and the clothes ofthe beds (from whence it is supposed they were rolled off by thieves)stolen, and carried quite away.
It is indeed to be observed that the women were, in all this calamity,the most rash, fearless, and desperate creatures. And, as there werevast numbers that went about as nurses to tend those that were sick,they committed a great many petty thieveries in the houses where theywere employed; and some of them were publicly whipped for it, whenperhaps they ought rather to have been hanged for examples,[142] fornumbers of houses were robbed on these occasions; till at length theparish officers were sent to recommend nurses to the sick, and alwaystook an account who it was they sent, so as that they might call them toaccount if the house had been abused where they were placed.
But these robberies extended chiefly to wearing-clothes, linen, and whatrings or money they could come at, when the person died who was undertheir care, but not to a general plunder of the houses. And I could giveyou an account of one of these nurses, who several years after, being onher deathbed, confessed with the utmost horror the robberies she hadcommitted at the time of her being a nurse, and by which she hadenriched herself to a great degree. But as for murders, I do not findthat there was ever any proofs of the fact in the manner as it has beenreported, except as above.
They did tell me, indeed, of a nurse in one place that laid a wet clothupon the face of a dying patient whom she tended, and so put an end tohis life, who was just expiring before; and another that smothered ayoung woman she was looking to, when she was in a fainting fit, andwould have come to herself; some that killed them by giving them onething, some another, and some starved them by giving them nothing atall. But these stories had two marks of suspicion that always attendedthem, which caused me always to slight them, and to look on them as merestories that people continually frighted one another with: (1) Thatwherever it was that we heard it, they always placed the scene at thefarther end of the town, opposite or most remote from where you were tohear it. If you heard it in Whitechapel, it had happened at St.Giles's, or at Westminster, or Holborn, or that end of the town; if youheard it at that end of the town, then it was done in Whitechapel, orthe Minories, or about Cripplegate Parish; if you heard of it in thecity, why, then, it happened in Southwark; and, if you heard of it inSouthwark, then it was done in the city; and the like.
In the next place, of whatsoever part you heard the story, theparticulars were always the same, especially that of laying a wet doubleclout[143] on a dying man's face, and that of smothering a younggentlewoman: so that it was appa
rent, at least to my judgment, thatthere was more of tale than of truth in those things.
A neighbor and acquaintance of mine, having some money owing to him froma shopkeeper in Whitecross Street or thereabouts, sent his apprentice, ayouth about eighteen years of age, to endeavor to get the money. He cameto the door, and, finding it shut, knocked pretty hard, and, as hethought, heard somebody answer within, but was not sure: so he waited,and after some stay knocked again, and then a third time, when he heardsomebody coming downstairs.
At length the man of the house came to the door. He had on his breeches,or drawers, and a yellow flannel waistcoat, no stockings, a pair of slipshoes, a white cap on his head, and, as the young man said, death in hisface.
When he opened the door, says he, "What do you disturb me thus for?" Theboy, though a little surprised, replied, "I come from such a one; and mymaster sent me for the money, which
