by Daniel Defoe
ORDERS … 1665: the Orders of the Lord Mayor and Aldermen were reprinted in 1721 in A Collection of Very Valuable and Scarce Pieces. Defoe added the names of the Lord Mayor and the two Sheriffs. Except for slight changes, the Orders issued in 1665 were a repetition of those issued in 1646.
Examiners: these officials, sometimes called surveyors in earlier plagues, were appointed by the authorities in 1603, perhaps as early as 1578, to search out and report cases of the plague and to ensure that plague orders were observed; but see also the next note. For H.F.’s reaction to being appointed an examiner, see p. 137.
The Examiner’s Office: Walter G. Bell found no evidence of examiners appointed in 1665 to search for the plague. A few men designated by that title took over duties of parish officers, such as affording relief and assisting in burials. He maintains that Defoe’s saddler, ‘nosing out Plague in 1665 … is a figure of fiction, invented by [Defoe] out of the “Orders Conceived and published”’ (The Great Plague in London, 105–6).
Searchers: in Applebee’s Journal, 18 Nov. 1721, Defoe attributed the inaccuracy of the Bills of Mortality to both the parish clerks and the searchers. The custom of appointing ‘ancient women’ to be searchers, whose function in times of plague was to seek out the dead and report the cause of death to the parish clerks, was strongly criticized by Captain John Graunt and Defoe, among others. Defoe wrote: ‘the Searchers are a sort of old Women, Ignorant, Negligent [and] many Times the Clerks, who are not above half a Degree better Old Women than the Searchers, often supply the Searchers Office, and put the Dead down of what Disease comes next in their Heads. And in short, ’tis not one Time in many that in some Parishes any Searchers come near a dead Body’ (Lee, ii. 455).
Botch, or Purple: physicians and writers on the plague attempted to distinguish the external manifestations of the malady. The various spots, swellings, tumours were called tokens, botches, carbuncles, buboes, or blains. Kemp’s Brief Treatise describes the botch as ‘a swelling about the bignesse of a Nutmeg, Wallnut, or Hens Egge, and cometh in the Neck, or behind the Eares, if the Brain be affected; or under the Arm-pits, from the Heart; or in the Groin, from the Liver; for the cure whereof, pull off the feathers from the Rump of a Cock, Hen, or Pigeon, and rub the Tayl with Salt, and hold its Bill, and set the Tayl hard to the swelling, and it will die’ (p. 92). Tokens of the red variety ‘have often a purple Circle around them’ (Necessary Directions … by the College of Physicians, 39). Spotted fever, with its purple spots, might be mistaken for the plague, Boghurst warned (see Loimographia, 49).
Fire, and … Perfumes: the College of Physicians recommended fires and fumes: ‘Fires made in the Streets, and often with Stink-Pots, and good Fires kept in and about the Houses of such as are visited … may correct the infectious Air; as also frequent discharging of Guns’ (Necessary Directions … by the College of Physicians, 40). Cf. Kemp, A Brief Treatise … of the Pestilence: ‘Some [physicians] direct to make great Fires in the Streets, as Hyppocrates did in the Plague at Athens, and burning among them sweet Odors, Spices and Perfumes, Fragrant Ointments and Compositions, whereby he freed the City from Infection’ (p. 43). Dr Philip Rose, a member of the College of Physicians in 1721: ‘you cannot imagine what a deal of Morbifick Miasmata are destroy’d or carried away by a Fire wisely managed’ (A Theorico-Practical, Miscellaneous, and Succinct Treatise of the Plague (1721), 35). See also third note to p. 148.
Shutting … House: perhaps the most extensively discussed of all preventative measures. The sequestration of the sick and anyone who had contact with them, was common practice in England from 1518. Reflecting the intensity of the controversy over its value, Defoe treats the matter at length in Due Preparations as well as in the Journal. Even those writers on the plague who defended the practice agreed that it was often evaded. Two typical tracts of 1665 opposing the measure may be cited: (1) Anon., The Shutting up of Infected Houses as it is practised in England soberly debated; (2) J.V., Golgotha … with an Humble Witness against the Cruel … Practice of Shutting up unto Oppression. Both argue that the practice is ineffective and inhuman, an argument frequently advanced in the 1720s. Richard Bradley called it ‘plain Murder to shut Men up in an infected and destroying Air’ (The Plague at Marseilles consider’d (1721), 58). In an extended examination of many aspects of the plague, The Free-Thinker contended that more good would accrue by permitting ‘the free enjoyment of the open Air’ (no. 36, 9 June 1721), a view also defended by Sir John Colbatch, a member of the College of Physicians (see A Scheme for Proper Methods to be taken should it please God to visit us with the Plague (1721), 14). The plague tracts of Hodges, Pye, Place, and others contain similar arguments. Even Mead, whose tract was sanctioned by the Government, wrote that ‘the shutting up Houses in this Manner is only keeping so many Seminaries of Contagion’ (Short Discourse, 35).
Burial … before Sun-rising, or after Sun-setting: in his Diary, 12 Aug. 1665, Pepys writes: ‘The people die so, that now it seems they are fain to carry the dead to be buried by day-light, the nights not sufficing to do it in.’ In the course of that week, according to the Bills of Mortality, London suffered 4,030 deaths, of which 2,817 were of the plague.
accompany the Corps: plague orders as early as 1569 gave attention to the burial of those who died of the plague. Subsequent orders limited the number of people who might attend a funeral: for example, in 1603 only six were permitted, excluding the minister, the clerk, and the bearers.
Graves … six Foot deep: the authority of Hippocrates and Galen, as well as numberless writers throughout the ages, supported the notion that unburied carcasses corrupt the air and cause diseases. Mead, writing in 1720, says: ‘It has … been remarked in all Times, that … the Corruption of dead Carcasses lying unburied [has] occasioned infectious Diseases’ (Short Discourse, 3). Frequent complaints were made against shallow graves, and especially against ‘those Pits or Holes (called the Poor’s Holes)’ in which the poor were unceremoniously dumped. The complaint in part was against the stench of putrefying bodies, but it was also thought that the ‘Pestilential Venom’ would receive additional strength from the putrid exhalations (see Anon., Some Customs considered whether Prejudicial to the Health of this City (London, 1721), 8–9; The Free-Thinker, no. 334, 2 June 1720).
marked with a red Cross: the practice of marking infected houses dates from 1518 in England, earlier on the Continent. The use of a red cross for the purpose seems to have developed by 1593 and the inscription ‘Lord Have Mercy upon Us’, a little earlier (see F. P. Wilson, The Plague in Shakespeare’s London (1963), 61–4).
a red Rod or Wand: the earliest surviving English plague orders (1543) require that an infected person or anyone in contact with an infected person carry a white wand in his hand. In subsequent orders the wand continued to be required, sometimes white, sometimes red, the red eventually being ordered for physicians, nurses, and examiners.
Tipling in Taverns: a Lord Mayor’s proclamation, dated 4 July 1665, ordered ‘That no Vintner, Innholder, Cook, Ordinary-keeper, Seller of Strong-Waters, Ale-house-keeper, shall henceforward, during the Infection receive or entertain any person or persons … to eat or drink in their houses or shops’.
to sweat … the ordinary Remedy: ‘medicines that cause Sweat expel them from the heart to the outside of the body, and rarifie those humours into light and thin vapours, which turn into a watery sweat, as soon as they come out of the skin into the air, and thereby drive out those humours and vapours, which breed the pestilence’ (Kemp, A Brief Treatise … of the Pestilence, 54). Cf. Blackmore: ‘those physicians that prescribe Remedies at the Beginning [of the plague] to promote copious and constant Sweats, act contrary to the Laws of Reason and Observation, and do not assist Nature, but enfeeble it’ (Discourse, 92–3).
Weekly Bill … frighted: the General Bill of Mortality for 1665 lists 23 deaths under ‘Frighted’.
late Wars … Low Countries: the war against Spain in 1655 and against Holland in 1652.
long a-comin
g to our Parish: the Bills of Mortality report the first death from the plague in H.F.’s parish, Aldgate, the week of 27 June to 4 July. At that time 33 of 130 parishes were reported infected, and deaths from the plague totalled 470 during the week.
such Violence as in … Aldgate and White Chapel: the Bills of Mortality do not fully support H.F.’s statement. Whitechapel and Aldgate were two of the worst sufferers in the severe months of August, September, and October, but Stepney surpassed them in total number of deaths from the plague. The figures for Stepney for the year are 6,583, for Aldgate, 4,051, for Whitechapel, 3,855. Defoe measures the violence of the epidemic in particular parishes by the total number of reported deaths from the plague without regard to the size of the parishes. The parishes varied greatly. A populous parish might have more deaths but still be proportionately less afflicted than a parish less well populated.
two Weeks … 1114 Bodies: the Bills show 1,159 deaths from the plague in the two weekly reports from 5 to 19 September. It is not credible that all but 45 would have been relegated to the plague pits.
the Pit … near the three Nuns Inn: an excavation in 1859 near the Three Nuns Court revealed what was presumably H.F.’s ‘dreadful Gulph’ (see Notes and Queries, 2nd ser., 8 (1859), 288–9).
Links … Bell-man: links were torches used to light people along the streets. The ringing of a bell announced the approach of a dead-cart. A visitor to London in July wrote: ‘there dye so many that the bell would hardly ever leave ringing and so they ring not at all’ (quoted by Bell, The Great Plague in London, 80).
Coffins … not to be had: an exaggeration: Vincent, Pepys, and Evelyn report seeing coffins. In his Diary on 7 September, in the worst period of the plague and just three days before H.F. visits the plague pit, John Evelyn wrote: ‘I went all along the city and suburbs from Kent Street to St. James’s, a dismal passage, and dangerous to see so many coffins exposed in the streets.’ Doubtless coffins were scarce and expensive. Bell reports that Cripplegate purchased four and that these were used to take the dead to the grave and then returned to be used again (The Great Plague in London, 148).
enthusiastick: a pejorative word connoting the irrationality and fanaticism associated with Nonconformists.
about 200000 People were fled: any estimate must be the merest surmise. Sydenham, referring to the autumn, wrote that at this time ‘two thirds of the citizens had retired into the country’ (Works (1848), i. 98). In Due Preparations for the Plague, Defoe asserts that ‘according to the most moderate guess’ at least 300,000 had fled (Aitken edn., p. 73). In the same work he wrote that 7,000 houses were empty in the City (p. 24). In the Journal this figure became 10,000 in the City and Suburbs.
conveyed the fatal Breath: Defoe’s contagionist view of plague is stated here in brief. Cf. Kemp: ‘One Cause of the Sickness, is the Corruption and Infection of the Air; for when the Plague begins to raign in any Place … the Sick continually not only breathe out of their Mouths, but send out of their Bodies steams and vapours, which being disperst and scattered in the Air, are soon after drawn in by the breath of others; and thence whole Families are extinguisht, and the Plague not only creeps, but runs from one House to another: and hence it is that the Plague destroyes more in Cities than in Countries, and more in narrow Streets and Lanes of those Cities, than in open places, because usually there are narrow and little rooms, which are soonest fill’d with infectious vapours … for though the Air be never so corrupt, you must draw it in with your breath continually’ (A Brief Treatise … of the Pestilence, 35).
Steams, or Fumes … Effluvia: Blackmore describes the spread of ‘Pestilential Putrefaction’: ‘When the Effluvia or invisible malignant Reeks flow from an infected Body greatly corrupted, the poisonous Particles … are endow’d with such Velocity, Activity, and Penetration, that they flie with Ease thro’ the Air, maintain their fatal Influence in despight of all Opposition, and convey the Infection from House to House, and from Town to Town, and depopulate great Cities. This high Venom advances with resistless Fury … and is so far from being enfeebled while it is ventilated by the Winds … that it acquires more Strength by converting into its own Nature the Exhalations and Vapours it meets with in its Way’ (Discourse, 37–8).
immediate Stroke from Heaven: the wrath of God theory was a venerable one. See Ovid, Metamorphoses, 7.532 ff.; references in Numbers 16; Deuteronomy 28; 2 Samuel 24; 1 Kings 8; and Psalms 89, 91, and 106; Procopius of Caesaria, History of the Wars, ii, chs. 22–3; Boccaccio, introduction to Decameron. The theory was still popular in Defoe’s day; see Nathaniel Hodges, Vindiciae Medicinae & Medicorum (1666), 34, and Loimologia, 30–1; Blackmore, Discourse, 28–9; William Hendley, Loimologia Sacra (1721), 6, 41. The view that divine anger works through natural means is set out in Isbrand de Diemerbroek’s Tractatus de Pesle, translated in 1722 by Thomas Stanton as A Treatise concerning the Pestilence. Defoe seems to have possessed a copy.
infection … by … Insects, and invisible Creatures: H.F. here reflects and rejects the theory of infection set forth by Athanasius Kircher and his disciples on the Continent. Kircher’s famous work, Scrutinium Physicomedicum … Pestis (1658), was often referred to in English plague tracts. His theory, based upon concepts of fermentation, generation, and putrefaction, held that organisms of minute size acted as the vehicle of contagion. The chief proponent of this theory of ‘vermicular’ infection in England was Richard Bradley, whose The Plague at Marseilles consider’d (1721) was well known when Defoe was working on the Journal. Bradley wrote that ‘all Pestilential Distempers, whether in Animals or Plants, are occasion’d by poisonous Insects convey’d from Place to Place by the Air, and that by uncleanly Living and poor Diet, Human, and other Bodies are disposed to receive such Insects into the Stomach and most noble Parts’ (p. 57). The rejection of this view, by Mead and Hodges, Defoe probably knew. Hodges refers to the famous Kircher’s opinion ‘about animated Worms’, a view he believed to be ‘disconsonant to Reason’ (Loimologia, 64); and Mead calls it ‘a supposition grounded upon no manner of Observation’ (Short Discourse, 16). Blackmore, who considered the views of Kircher and Bradley in his Discourse, maintained that ‘Worms are by no means the Cause, but the Effect of Pestilential Putrefaction’ (p. 36). See also for a vigorous attack on the theory of ‘vermicular infection’, Philip Rose, A Theorico-Practical, Miscellaneous and Succinct Treatise of the Plague (1721), 43 ff.
Supine Negligence: the failure of people to prepare for the plague even though long warned of its approach is extensively treated in Defoe’s Due Preparations.
Meditations upon Divine Subjects: Defoe himself composed some meditations upon divine subjects in his youth. See The Meditations of Daniel Defoe, ed. George Harris Healey (1946).
a Physician … Heath: Brayley and others identify him as Dr Nathaniel Hodges. See the first note to p. 29.
Plague … violent … where I liv’d: the Bills of Mortality reported 81 deaths from the Plague in H.F.’s parish of Aldgate in the first week of August, 173 in the following week.
Rozen and Pitch, Brimstone: such fumes were among the various recommendations of Necessary Directions … by the College of Physicians. Resin and pitch were ‘to be put upon Coals, and consumed with the least Flame that may be’, and brimstone, ‘though ill to be endured for the present’, should be ‘burned plentifully’—all for the purpose of correcting the air (p. 40).
Butchers of White-Chapel: Defoe came naturally to an interest in butchers: his father was a member of the Butchers’ Company and Defoe himself, by virtue of this fact, was admitted to freedom of the Company on 12 January 1688. Pepys wrote to Lady Carteret, 4 Sept. 1665: ‘The butchers are everywhere visited.’ Butcher’s Row and the Minories, the location of many butchers, were within a stone’s throw of Defoe’s parish church, St Botolph, Aldgate.
Vinegar: according to Thomas Phaer, A Treatise of the Plague, written about two hundred years ago. Republished with a Preface by a Physician of London (1722), ‘Vinegar is a noble thing in tyme of pestilenc
e’ (p. 6). It was widely recommended as a prophylactic and a fumigant as early as the fifteenth century. In 1665 the College of Physicians commended it: ‘Vapours from Vinegar exhaled in any Room, may [correct the infectious air], especially after it hath been impregnated, by infusing or steeping it in any one or more of these Ingredients; Wormwood, Angelica, Master-wort, Bay-Leaves, Rosemary, Rue, Sage, Scordium, or Water-Germander, Valerium, or Setwall-Root, Zedoary, Camphire’ (Necessary Directions … by the College of Physicians, 40). But see Richard Boulton’s An Essay on the Plague (1721): vinegar ‘can only be serviceable, as it cools the Blood and may prevent a Ferment and Agitation by Heat; but if notwithstanding this Distemper should appear, it would but increase the Evil, by rendering the Blood more liable to Stagnation and Coagulation; yet it may be a good service to sprinkle the Rooms with it’ (p. 41). Defoe’s tradesman in Due Preparations (p. 61) purifies his letters by smoking them with brimstone and gunpowder, then sprinkling them with vinegar. Coins, too, were purified by immersion in vinegar. Kemp sings the praises of anti-pestilential vinegar and asserts that he wrote his Brief Treatise … of the Plague to demonstrate ‘the Vertue of Vinegar’ (p. 86).
