History of the Plague in London

by Daniel Defoe

acourage resting on God; and yet that he used all possible caution forhis safety.

  I turned a little away from the man while these thoughts engaged me;for, indeed, I could no more refrain from tears than he.

  At length, after some further talk, the poor woman opened the door, andcalled, "Robert, Robert!" He answered, and bid her stay a few momentsand he would come: so he ran down the common stairs to his boat, andfetched up a sack in which was the provisions he had brought from theships; and when he returned he hallooed again; then he went to the greatstone which he showed me, and emptied the sack, and laid all out,everything by themselves, and then retired; and his wife came with alittle boy to fetch them away; and he called, and said, such a captainhad sent such a thing, and such a captain such a thing, and at the endadds, "God has sent it all: give thanks to him." When the poor woman hadtaken up all, she was so weak she could not carry it at once in, thoughthe weight was not much, neither: so she left the biscuit, which was ina little bag, and left a little boy to watch it till she came again.

  "Well, but," says I to him, "did you leave her the four shillings too,which you said was your week's pay?"

  "Yes, yes," says he; "you shall hear her own it." So he called again,"Rachel, Rachel!" which it seems was her name, "did you take up themoney?"--"Yes," said she. "How much was it?" said he. "Four shillingsand a groat," said she. "Well, well," says he, "the Lord keep you all;"and so he turned to go away.

  As I could not refrain from contributing tears to this man's story, soneither could I refrain my charity for his assistance; so I called him."Hark thee, friend," said I, "come hither, for I believe thou art inhealth, that I may venture thee:" so I pulled out my hand, which was inmy pocket before. "Here," says I, "go and call thy Rachel once more, andgive her a little more comfort from me. God will never forsake a familythat trusts in him as thou dost." So I gave him four other shillings,and bid him go lay them on the stone, and call his wife.

  I have not words to express the poor man's thankfulness; neither couldhe express it himself but by tears running down his face. He called hiswife, and told her God had moved the heart of a stranger, upon hearingtheir condition, to give them all that money; and a great deal more suchas that he said to her. The woman, too, made signs of the likethankfulness, as well to Heaven as to me, and joyfully picked it up; andI parted with no money all that year that I thought better bestowed.

  I then asked the poor man if the distemper had not reached to Greenwich.He said it had not till about a fortnight before; but that then hefeared it had, but that it was only at that end of the town which laysouth towards Deptford[171] Bridge; that he went only to a butcher'sshop and a grocer's, where he generally bought such things as they senthim for, but was very careful.

  I asked him then how it came to pass that those people who had so shutthemselves up in the ships had not laid in sufficient stores of allthings necessary. He said some of them had; but, on the other hand, somedid not come on board till they were frightened into it, and till it wastoo dangerous for them to go to the proper people to lay in quantitiesof things; and that he waited on two ships, which he showed me, that hadlaid in little or nothing but biscuit bread[172] and ship beer, and thathe had bought everything else almost for them. I asked him if there wereany more ships that had separated themselves as those had done. He toldme yes; all the way up from the point, right against Greenwich, towithin the shores of Limehouse and Redriff, all the ships that couldhave room rid[173] two and two in the middle of the stream, and thatsome of them had several families on board. I asked him if the distemperhad not reached them. He said he believed it had not, except two orthree ships, whose people had not been so watchful as to keep the seamenfrom going on shore as others had been; and he said it was a very finesight to see how the ships lay up the Pool.[174]

  When he said he was going over to Greenwich as soon as the tide beganto come in, I asked if he would let me go with him, and bring me back,for that I had a great mind to see how the ships were ranged, as he hadtold me. He told me if I would assure him, on the word of a Christianand of an honest man, that I had not the distemper, he would. I assuredhim that I had not; that it had pleased God to preserve me; that I livedin Whitechapel, but was too impatient of being so long within doors, andthat I had ventured out so far for the refreshment of a little air, butthat none in my house had so much as been touched with it.

  "Well, sir," says he, "as your charity has been moved to pity me and mypoor family, sure you cannot have so little pity left as to put yourselfinto my boat if you were not sound in health, which would be nothingless than killing me, and ruining my whole family." The poor mantroubled me so much when he spoke of his family with such a sensibleconcern and in such an affectionate manner, that I could not satisfymyself at first to go at all. I told him I would lay aside my curiosityrather than make him uneasy, though I was sure, and very thankful forit, that I had no more distemper upon me than the freshest man in theworld. Well, he would not have me put it off neither, but, to let me seehow confident he was that I was just to him, he now importuned me to go:so, when the tide came up to his boat, I went in, and he carried me toGreenwich. While he bought the things which he had in charge to buy, Iwalked up to the top of the hill, under which the town stands, and onthe east side of the town, to get a prospect of the river; but it was asurprising sight to see the number of ships which lay in rows, two andtwo, and in some places two or three such lines in the breadth of theriver, and this not only up to the town, between the houses which wecall Ratcliff and Redriff, which they name the Pool, but even down thewhole river, as far as the head of Long Reach, which is as far as thehills give us leave to see it.

  I cannot guess at the number of ships, but I think there must have beenseveral hundreds of sail; and I could not but applaud the contrivance,for ten thousand people and more who attended ship affairs werecertainly sheltered here from the violence of the contagion, and livedvery safe and very easy.

  I returned to my own dwelling very well satisfied with my day's journey,and particularly with the poor man; also I rejoiced to see that suchlittle sanctuaries were provided for so many families on board in a timeof such desolation. I observed, also, that, as the violence of theplague had increased, so the ships which had families on board removedand went farther off, till, as I was told, some went quite away to sea,and put into such harbors and safe roads[175] on the north coast as theycould best come at.

  But it was also true, that all the people who thus left the land, andlived on board the ships, were not entirely safe from the infection; formany died, and were thrown overboard into the river, some in coffins,and some, as I heard, without coffins, whose bodies were seen sometimesto drive up and down with the tide in the river.

  But I believe I may venture to say, that, in those ships which were thusinfected, it either happened where the people had recourse to them toolate, and did not fly to the ship till they had staid too long on shore,and had the distemper upon them, though perhaps they might not perceiveit (and so the distemper did not come to them on board the ships, butthey really carried it with them), or it was in these ships where thepoor waterman said they had not had time to furnish themselves withprovisions, but were obliged to send often on shore to buy what they hadoccasion for, or suffered boats to come to them from the shore; and sothe distemper was brought insensibly among them.

  And here I cannot but take notice that the strange temper of the peopleof London at that time contributed extremely to their own destruction.The plague began, as I have observed, at the other end of the town(namely, in Longacre, Drury Lane, etc.), and came on towards the cityvery gradually and slowly. It was felt at first in December, then againin February, then again in April (and always but a very little at atime), then it stopped till May; and even the last week in May therewere but seventeen in all that end of the town. And all this while, evenso long as till there died about three thousand a week, yet had thepeople in Redriff and in Wapping and Ratcliff, on both sides the river,and almost all Southwark side, a mighty fancy that
they should not bevisited, or at least that it would not be so violent among them. Somepeople fancied the smell of the pitch and tar, and such other things, asoil and resin and brimstone (which is much used by all trades relatingto shipping), would preserve them. Others argued it,[176] becauseit[177] was in its extremest violence in Westminster and the parish ofSt. Giles's and St. Andrew's, etc., and began to abate again before itcame among them, which was true, indeed, in part. For example:--

  Aug. 8 to Aug. 15, St. Giles-in-the-Fields 242 " " Cripplegate 886 " " Stepney 197 " " St. Mag.[178] Bermondsey 24 " " Rotherhithe 3 Total this week