A Journal of the Plague Year (Oxford World's Classics)

by Defoe, Daniel

  dropt … Dead … knew nothing of it: Boghurst took exception to reports of sudden deaths: ‘none dyed suddenly as stricken with Lightning or an Apoplexy, as Authors write in severall countryes, and Dimerbrooke seems to believe it’ (Loimographia, 26). Diemerbroeck, in Several Choice Histories … of the Plague (1666) reports the instances of a man ‘taken with Feavor’ but who had ‘no outward Figure of the Plague, so that those of his house did not think he died of the Plague, but within twelve hours after he was put in the Coffin, they saw many black spots … in him, certain figures of the Plague’. He adds: ‘Sometimes the poison is so deadly, that they die before Nature can send forth any thing … neither Carbuncles nor Blaines, but after they are dead there appeareth black spots’ (p. 9). This appears to be an instance of septicaemic plague in which the blood-stream is heavily infected.

  People … raving and distracted: cf. Vincent, God’s Terrible Voice in the City (1667): ‘some in their frenzy, rising out of their beds, and leaping about their rooms; others crying and roaring at their windows; some coming forth almost naked, and running into the streets; strange things have others spoken … one … burnt himself in his bed’ (1722 edn., 44).

  tortured … Creatures: cf. Boghurst: ‘Many people by Launcing, Corrosives, actuall Cauteries, Scarifications, and many intollerable applications, put their patients to more paine than the disease did’ (Loimographia, 29).

  Swellings … break and run: contemporary medicine stressed the necessity of drawing out the pestilential venom concentrated in the swellings symptomatic of bubonic plague. It was contended that this would relieve the pain and perhaps save the patient. Plague tracts, medical and lay, abounded in prescriptions to be taken internally or applied externally. Necessary Directions … by the College of Physicians declared that ‘the Swelling under the Ears, Armpits, or in the Groins … must be always drawn forth and ripened, and broke with all speed’. An expert chirurgeon was recommended, but for those not using a physician more than a dozen prescriptions were set down, including some remedies for ‘those that are delighted with Chymical Medicines only’ (pp. 54 ff.).

  frightful Stories … of Nurses: from Dekker early in the seventeenth century to Hodges in 1665 and Mead in 1720, the brutality and wickedness of the nurse-keepers is a constant theme in plague tracts. Dekker’s description of them as ‘shee wolves’ is echoed by Hodges: ‘These Wretches, out of Greediness to plunder the Dead, would strangle their Patients … others would secretly convey the pestilential Taint from Sores of the infected to those who were well; and nothing indeed deterred these abandoned Miscreants from prosecuting their avaritious Purposes by all the Methods their Wickedness could invent’ (Loimologia, 8).

  John Hayward: mentioned as sexton in 1673 in the Vestry Minutes of St Stephen Coleman Street (fo. 352). His death is recorded in the Register General of the same church on 5 October 1684 (fo. 188). Note that H.F.’s brother lived in Coleman Street parish.

  Alleys, and Thorough-fares: in London Survey’d (1677), John Ogilby and William Morgan list Coleman Street as having eight courts and six alleys.

  Garlick and Rue: in addition to these, other herbs, spices, roots, barks, flowers, and seeds were recommended: aloes, amber, ambergris, angelica, balm, bay leaves, benjamin, campana roots, camphor, cinnamon, citrine sanders, cloves, emula, frankincense, gentian, hyssop, juniper, lavender, mace, marjoram, mint, musk, myrrh, nutmeg, origanum, penny royal, rosemary, saffron, sage, sassafras, storax, tansy, thyme, wormwood. All of these may be found scattered through plague tracts as well as in the London Pharmacopoeia. The use of aromatics was supported by the tradition that Hippocrates had conquered the plague of Athens by burning aromatic spices in the streets. An occasional note of scepticism was voiced: J.V., in Golgotha (1665), wrote that ‘sweet-scented Pomanders were exploded … long since, as a costly mischief’. He attacks the excessive claims of the ‘Pomandermen’; nevertheless he commends the fumes from ‘Rhue, Wormwood, Hartshorn, Amber, Thime or Origany, Rosemary’ and a few others. Of all fumes he affirms ‘Tobacco to be the best’ (p. 24).

  smoaking Tobacco: widely recommended as a preventative and fumigant. Kemp’s A Brief Treatise … of the Pestilence (1665) describes it as ‘a good Fume against pestilential and infected air’. He commends it for ‘All Ages, all Sexes, all Constitutions, Young and Old, Men and Women, the Sanguine, the Cholerick, the Melancholy, the Phlegmatick … either by chewing in the leaf, or smoaking in the Pipe’ (pp. 46–7). It was believed that no tobacconist had died in the plague of 1665. Richard Bradley wrote: ‘it is to be remarked, that in the time of the last Plague in London that Distemper did not reach those who smoak’d Tobacco every Day’ (The Plague at Marseilles consider’d, 48–9). Among the physicians who maintained that tobacco had kept them immune were Hodges and Diemerbroeck. Pepys records (Diary, 7 June) with apprehension his first sight of an infected house, in Drury Lane: ‘It put me into an ill conception of myself and my smell, so that I was forced to buy some roll-tobacco to smell and to chaw, which took away my apprehension.’

  Plague … chiefly among the Poor: ‘it is incredible to think how the Plague raged amongst the common People, insomuch that it came by some to be called the Poors Plague’ (Hodges, Loimologia, 15). The relationship between poverty (with its undernourishment and lack of sanitation) and disease was recognized: ‘the contagious Maladies most commonly … rage amongst a crouded and penn’d up Herd of Creatures, who by Poverty do wallow in their Dirt and Hastiness; and this being accompany’d with bad Air and Nourishment, if it has not … the full Effect to occasion and to breed a contagious Malady of it self, yet … such poor miserable People will be much more liable, and their Bodies more dispos’d to receive, harbour, and nourish the malign Atoms of a contagious Malady’ (P. Kennedy, MD, A Discourse on Pestilence (1721), 19).

  Story of the Piper: the story of a drunken man interred prematurely was in circulation in one form or another as early as 1603 (in Dekker’s The Wonderfull Yeare); and versions of it in the seventeenth century are found in the anonymous The Meeting of Gallants at an Ordinarie (1604) (possibly by Dekker or Thomas Middleton), in Sir John Reresby’s Memoirs, 1634–1689, and in William Austin’s The Anatomy of Pestilence, 1666). See Wilhelm von Fuger, ‘Der betrunkene Piper’, Archiv f. n. Sprachen, 202. (1965), 28–36.

  London … exceeding rich: ‘Contrary to all outside appearances, the City was on the verge of bankruptcy. Its liabilities were far in excess of its immediate assets, and its expenditure was constantly in excess of its income’ (T. F. Reddaway, The Rebuilding of London after the Great Fire (repr. 1951), 171; see ch. 7 of this study for the tangled financial affairs of the City and for the cost of rebuilding some of the places mentioned by Defoe). The rebuilding of public edifices to which Defoe refers was spread over eight years.

  breaking in upon the Orphan’s Money: accumulated funds for the care of orphans of London citizens were controlled by the Mayor and the Corporation. This money, loaned to Charles II, was thought to be endangered, and moves were made in Parliament and elsewhere in the 1670s and later to protect it.

  Welfare of those … left behind: Defoe’s account of large sums spent on relief of the poor may be optimistic. The picture is confused by the fact that charity was dispensed by various agencies: the livery companies, parishes, the city, private persons. Parliament itself took no action, and the tradition that Charles II ‘ordered a thousand Pounds a Week to be distributed’ seems to be unsubstantiated. Note that H.F. himself says that he can speak of it only ‘as a Report’. Funds coming in from the poor rate and the pest rate, from fast-day collections, from private persons, and from the livery companies (required by a Lord Mayor’s Proclamation, 28 July, to devote a third of the money saved from their prohibited dinners and entertainments) cannot be accurately estimated. See Bell, The Great Plague in London, 130 and 195–9, who discounts Defoe’s figures. He does, however, quote from a letter written by Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey who, after indicting some of the courtiers, nobility, and gentry for forgetting ‘th
eir charity’, says, ‘I believe they [i.e., the poor] were never so well relieved in any Plague time whatsoever’ (p. 197).

  legal Settlements: i.e. having a legal residence in a particular parish by virtue of residing in the parish for a certain length of time or paying taxes or serving in an annual office. A legal settlement entitled one to claim against the poor rates. See also the second note to p. 107.

  thirty or forty Thousand: if Defoe’s estimate of the number of poor who died from the plague in the nine weeks, 8 August to 10 October, is correct, we can understand why the epidemic was called ‘the poor’s plague’. He repeats accurately the figures of total deaths and deaths from the plague as they were reported in the Bills of Mortality, but his estimate that roughly 60 to 80 per cent of the deaths were of the poor can only be a guess, if not his own then from an unidentified source. Such figures were not available.

  Grass growing: Pepys commented on the desolation in London streets in September: ‘But, Lord! what a sad time it is to see no boats upon the River; and grass grows all up and down White Hall court, and nobody but poor wretches in the streets!’ (Diary, 20 Sept. 1665). Cf. Thomas Vincent: ‘Now there is a dismal solitude in London streets.… Now shops are shut in, people rare, and very few that walk about, insomuch that the grass begins to spring up in some places … no rattling coaches, no prancing Horses’ (God’s Terrible Voice in the City, 42). Cf. Defoe, The Review, no. 8, 26 Aug. 1712: ‘Grass grew in the Streets, in the Markets, and on the Exchange; and nothing but death was to be seen in every place.’

  Coaches … dangerous things: H.F.’s remark that coaches were scarce and dangerous is supported by entries in Pepys’s Diary, 25 July 1665: ‘Thence to my office awhile, full of business, and thence by coach to the Duke of Albermarle’s, not meeting one coach going nor coming from my house thither and back again, which is very strange.’ On 27 November Pepys took a hackney coach: ‘the first I have durst to go in many a day, and with great pain now for fear’.

  Solomon Eagle an Enthusiast: see the fourth note to p. 20. ‘Enthusiast’ in the sense of a fanatical dissenter. The fumes of the burning charcoal were intended to purify the pestilential air.

  People … Danger … Worship of God: the Bishop of London to Lord Arlington, 19 August 1665: ‘Many of those who never attended divine service are now present’ (Calendar State Papers Domestic, Car. II, 1664–1665, 524).

  Dissenters … in the very Churches: the government grew alarmed over the appearance of the ejected clergy in the parish churches. In July, Lord Arlington, Secretary of State, wrote to the Bishop of London: ‘The King is informed that many ministers and lecturers having been absent from their posts during this time of contagion, nonconformists have thrust themselves into their pulpits, to preach sedition, and doctrines contrary to the Church; His Majesty wishes to prevent such mischiefs to Church and State’ (Calendar State Papers Domestic, Car. II, 1664–1665, 497). On 19 August the Bishop of London replied that ‘the sober clergy remain’ and that he ‘cannot learn that any nonconformists have invaded the pulpit’ (ibid. 524).

  ten thousand … sheltered here: very unlikely. Pepys does not mention this massing of ships in the Thames and there are no other contemporary references to such a scene.

  Wo … Child … Day: Matthew 24: 19. Cf. Boghurst, Loimographia: ‘Teeming women fared miserably in the disease … scarce one in forty lived, for the disease and sweating forced them to miscarry, and the miscarriage drew in the disease again.… Hippocrates saith to this purpose that women with child fare ill in occult and epidemicall diseases’ (p. 25). Kephale’s Medela Pestilentiae maintained that women are more susceptible to the plague than men and that pregnant women are the most susceptible, ‘for their bodies are full of excrementious humours, and much heat withal, which is as oyle and flame put together’ (pp. 55–6). But virgins fare little better according to Kephale: ‘Virgins, that are ripe for marriage, are apt to receive infection; and being stricken, seldom or never escape without great means.… Their blood being hot, and their seed retain’d for want of copulation, the one will soon be inflam’d, the other corrupted; from thence infection.’ Those least likely to be infected are old people, ‘confident spirits’, milch-nurses, those who have the gout, or issues or ulcers or haemorrhoids, or women who ‘have their courses abundantly’ (pp. 56 ff.).

  kill all the Dogs and Cats: the plague orders regularly called for the destruction of domestic animals. In 1543 all dogs, except hounds, spaniels, or mastiffs, were ordered killed or removed from London. The task of killing stray animals was entrusted to a parish official or to one appointed for the purpose. Defoe’s figures—40,000 dogs and five times as many cats—are suspect.

  Lepers of Samaria: 2 Kings 7: 3–4; Luke 17: 12.

  last legal Settlement: the brief ‘legal’ quibble in this passage refers to the laws of vagrancy. Elizabethan legislation concerning the poor was amplified by Acts in 1662 and 1667 (14 Car. II, cap. xii; 18–19 Car. II, cap. ix). The remark by Thomas concerns the power of a justice to remove from a parish any newcomer who might become an object of parochial charity. A vagrant’s last legal settlement, that is, his established residence, was that parish where he was last domiciled as servant, apprentice, householder, or sojourner for a period of forty days. In the early months of 1707 Defoe, writing in The Review, was critical of a Bill pending in Parliament designed to modify the Act of Settlement.

  Beginning of July: Defoe’s account of the slow spread of the plague follows contemporary accounts. Cf. Boghurst: ‘it gradually insinuated, and crept down Holborne and the Strand [from the western parishes], and then into the City, and at last to the East end of the Suburbs; soe that it was half a yeare at the West end of the City before the East end and Stepney was infected, which was about the middle of July’ (Loimographia, 28). H.F.’s statement that no one had died of the plague in Stepney parish is not borne out by the Bills of Mortality. They record three deaths by 4 July.

  died … 5361 People: this is the total number of deaths in the five parishes mentioned from all causes during the first three weeks in August. The number dying of the plague alone was 3,570.

  the Boarded-River: the ‘river’ made by Sir Hugh Middleton, 1608–13, to supply London with water. It was so called because of the wooden arches built to support the troughs carrying the water.

  King’s Highway: an ancient and intricate legal concept dating perhaps from the eighth or ninth century, at which time it applied to the four great through roads. It later came to apply to all highways. The concept is related to the concept of the King’s Peace and implied the King’s protection for his subjects travelling on the King’s Highway. ‘To the citizen of the twelfth, the fifteenth, or even the eighteenth century, the King’s Highway was a more abstract conception. It was not a strip of land, or any corporeal thing, but a legal and customary right—as the lawyers said, “a perpetual right of passage in the sovereign, for himself and his subjects, over another’s land” … What existed, in fact, was not a road, but what we might almost term an easement—a right of way, enjoyed by the public at large from village to village, along a certain customary course, which, if much frequented, became a beaten track.’ See Sidney and Beatrice Webb, English Local Government: The Story of the King’s Highway (1913), 5, 10, n. 2.

  Higlers: i.e. hucksters, mercenary people.

  parched Corn … Bread of it: Joshua 5: 11.

  Tilts and Bales: awnings and bales of merchandise.

  Violence … Town: In H.F.’s parish of St Botolph, Aldgate, 65 died of the plague in the last week of July. The figures for the four weeks in August are 81, 173, 212, 46. Deaths from all causes, which rarely rose above 20 before August, are reported in the Bills as 103, 207, 238, 374. These figures support H.F.’s contention that the Bills did not accurately reflect the number of deaths from the plague.

  Exchange … not kept shut: on 18 July Pepys went ‘to the ’Change, where a little business and a very thin Exchange’. At the end of July the Exchange was closed for a period of a
pproximately two months.

  Fires … lost: the Lord Mayor’s Proclamation of 2 September 1665 ordered fires to be kept burning continuously for three days and nights, beginning 5 September, in all streets, courts, lanes, and alleys of the City and Suburbs. Pepys, going by river to see the Duke of Albemarle, reports ‘all the way fires on each side of the Thames’ (Diary, 6 Sept.). On the ninth he records ‘a most cursed rainy afternoon’; this is the rain which extinguished the plague-fires and, as Pepys says, ‘almost spoiled my silke breeches’.