History of the Plague in London

by Daniel Defoe

are capable of carrying the effluvia orinfectious steams of bodies infected, even in their furs and hair? Andtherefore it was, that, in the beginning of the infection, an order waspublished by the lord mayor and by the magistrates, according to theadvice of the physicians, that all the dogs and cats should beimmediately killed; and an officer was appointed for the execution.

  It is incredible, if their account is to be depended upon, what aprodigious number of those creatures were destroyed. I think they talkedof forty thousand dogs and five times as many cats; few houses beingwithout a cat, some having several, sometimes five or six in a house.All possible endeavors were used also to destroy the mice and rats,especially the latter, by laying rats-bane and other poisons for them;and a prodigious multitude of them were also destroyed.

  I often reflected upon the unprovided condition that the whole body ofthe people were in at the first coming of this calamity upon them; andhow it was for want of timely entering into measures and managements, aswell public as private, that all the confusions that followed werebrought upon us, and that such a prodigious number of people sunk inthat disaster which, if proper steps had been taken, might, Providenceconcurring, have been avoided, and which, if posterity think fit, theymay take a caution and warning from. But I shall come to this partagain.

  I come back to my three men. Their story has a moral in every part ofit; and their whole conduct, and that of some whom they joined with, isa pattern for all poor men to follow, or women either, if ever such atime comes again: and if there was no other end in recording it, I thinkthis a very just one, whether my account be exactly according to fact orno.

  Two of them were said to be brothers, the one an old soldier, but now abiscuit baker; the other a lame sailor, but now a sailmaker; the third ajoiner. Says John the biscuit baker, one day, to Thomas, his brother,the sailmaker, "Brother Tom, what will become of us? The plague growshot in the city, and increases this way. What shall we do?"

  "Truly," says Thomas, "I am at a great loss what to do; for I find if itcomes down into Wapping I shall be turned out of my lodging." And thusthey began to talk of it beforehand.

  _John._ Turned out of your lodging, Tom? If you are, I don't know who will take you in; for people are so afraid of one another now, there is no getting a lodging anywhere.

  _Tho._ Why, the people where I lodge are good civil people, and have kindness for me too; but they say I go abroad every day to my work, and it will be dangerous; and they talk of locking themselves up, and letting nobody come near them.

  _John._ Why, they are in the right, to be sure, if they resolve to venture staying in town.

  _Tho._ Nay, I might even resolve to stay within doors too; for, except a suit of sails that my master has in hand, and which I am just finishing, I am like to get no more work a great while. There's no trade stirs now, workmen and servants are turned off everywhere; so that I might be glad to be locked up too. But I do not see that they will be willing to consent to that any more than to the other.

  _John._ Why, what will you do then, brother? And what shall I do? for I am almost as bad as you. The people where I lodge are all gone into the country but a maid, and she is to go next week, and to shut the house quite up; so that I shall be turned adrift to the wide world before you: and I am resolved to go away too, if I knew but where to go.

  _Tho._ We were both distracted we did not go away at first, when we might ha' traveled anywhere: there is no stirring now. We shall be starved if we pretend to go out of town. They won't let us have victuals, no, not for our money, nor let us come into the towns, much less into their houses.

  _John._ And, that which is almost as bad, I have but little money to help myself with, neither.

  _Tho._ As to that, we might make shift. I have a little, though not much; but I tell you there is no stirring on the road. I know a couple of poor honest men in our street have attempted to travel; and at Barnet,[186] or Whetstone, or thereabout, the people offered to fire at them if they pretended to go forward: so they are come back again quite discouraged.

  _John._ I would have ventured their fire, if I had been there. If I had been denied food for my money, they should have seen me take it before their faces; and, if I had tendered money for it, they could not have taken any course with me by the law.

  _Tho._ You talk your old soldier's language, as if you were in the Low Countries[187] now; but this is a serious thing. The people have good reason to keep anybody off that they are not satisfied are sound at such a time as this, and we must not plunder them.

  _John._ No, brother, you mistake the case, and mistake me too: I would plunder nobody. But for any town upon the road to deny me leave to pass through the town in the open highway, and deny me provisions for my money, is to say the town has a right to starve me to death; which cannot be true.

  _Tho._ But they do not deny you liberty to go back again from whence you came, and therefore they do not starve you.

  _John._ But the next town behind me will, by the same rule, deny me leave to go back; and so they do starve me between them. Besides, there is no law to prohibit my traveling wherever I will on the road.

  _Tho._ But there will be so much difficulty in disputing with them at every town on the road, that it is not for poor men to do it, or undertake it, at such a time as this is especially.

  _John._ Why, brother, our condition, at this rate, is worse than anybody's else; for we can neither go away nor stay here. I am of the same mind with the lepers of Samaria.[188] If we stay here, we are sure to die. I mean especially as you and I are situated, without a dwelling house of our own, and without lodging in anybody's else. There is no lying in the street at such a time as this; we had as good[189] go into the dead cart at once. Therefore, I say, if we stay here, we are sure to die; and if we go away, we can but die. I am resolved to be gone.

  _Tho._ You will go away. Whither will you go, and what can you do? I would as willingly go away as you, if I knew whither; but we have no acquaintance, no friends. Here we were born, and here we must die.

  _John._ Look you, Tom, the whole kingdom is my native country as well as this town. You may as well say I must not go out of my house if it is on fire, as that I must not go out of the town I was born in when it is infected with the plague. I was born in England, and have a right to live in it if I can.

  _Tho._ But you know every vagrant person may, by the laws of England, be taken up, and passed back to their last legal settlement.

  _John._ But how shall they make me vagrant? I desire only to travel on upon my lawful occasions.

  _Tho._ What lawful occasions can we pretend to travel, or rather wander, upon? They will not be put off with words.

  _John._ Is not flying to save our lives a lawful occasion? And do they not all know that the fact is true? We cannot be said to dissemble.

  _Tho._ But, suppose they let us pass, whither shall we go?

  _John._ Anywhere to save our lives: it is time enough to consider that when we are got out of this town. If I am once out of this dreadful place, I care not where I go.

  _Tho._ We shall be driven to great extremities. I know not what to think of it.

  _John._ Well, Tom, consider of it a little.

  This was about the beginning of July; and though the plague was comeforward in the west and north parts of the town, yet all Wapping, as Ihave observed before, and Redriff and Ratcliff, and Limehouse andPoplar, in short, Deptford and Greenwich, both sides of the river fromthe Hermitage, and from over against it, quite down to Blackwall, wasentirely free. There had not one person died of the plague in allStepney Parish, and not one on the south side of Whitechapel Road, no,not in any parish; and yet the weekly bi
ll was that very week risen upto 1,006.

  It was a fortnight after this before the two brothers met again, andthen the case was a little altered, and the plague was exceedinglyadvanced, and the number greatly increased. The bill was up at 2,785,and prodigiously increasing; though still both sides of the river, asbelow, kept pretty well. But some began to die in Redriff, and aboutfive or six in Ratcliff Highway, when the sailmaker came to his brotherJohn, express,[190] and in some fright; for he was absolutely warned outof his lodging, and had only a week to provide himself. His brother Johnwas in as bad a case, for he was quite out, and had only[191] beggedleave of his master, the biscuit baker, to lodge in an outhousebelonging to his workhouse, where he only lay upon straw, with somebiscuit sacks, or "bread sacks," as they called them, laid upon it, andsome of the same sacks to cover him.

  Here they resolved, seeing all employment being at an end, and no workor wages to be had, they would make the best of their way to get out ofthe reach of the dreadful infection, and,