History of the Plague in London

I have not words to express the poor man's thankfulness; neither could he express it himself but by tears running down his face. He called his wife, and told her God had moved the heart of a stranger, upon hearing their condition, to give them all that money; and a great deal more such as that he said to her. The woman, too, made signs of the like thankfulness, as well to Heaven as to me, and joyfully picked it up; and I 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 he feared it had, but that it was only at that end of the town which lay south towards Deptford166 Bridge; that he went only to a butcher's shop and a grocer's, where he generally bought such things as they sent him for, but was very careful.

I asked him then how it came to pass that those people who had so shut themselves up in the ships had not laid in sufficient stores of all things necessary. He said some of them had; but, on the other hand, some did not come on board till they were frightened into it, and till it was too dangerous for them to go to the proper people to lay in quantities of things; and that he waited on two ships, which he showed me, that had laid in little or nothing but biscuit bread167 and ship beer, and that he had bought everything else almost for them. I asked him if there were any more ships that had separated themselves as those had done. He told me yes; all the way up from the point, right against Greenwich, to within the shores of Limehouse and Redriff, all the ships that could have room rid168 two and two in the middle of the stream, and that some of them had several families on board. I asked him if the distemper had not reached them. He said he believed it had not, except two or three ships, whose people had not been so watchful as to keep the seamen from going on shore as others had been; and he said it was a very fine sight to see how the ships lay up the Pool.169

When he said he was going over to Greenwich as soon as the tide began to 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 had told me. He told me if I would assure him, on the word of a Christian and of an honest man, that I had not the distemper, he would. I assured him that I had not; that it had pleased God to preserve me; that I lived in Whitechapel, but was too impatient of being so long within doors, and that I had ventured out so far for the refreshment of a little air, but that 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 my poor family, sure you cannot have so little pity left as to put yourself into my boat if you were not sound in health, which would be nothing less than killing me, and ruining my whole family." The poor man troubled me so much when he spoke of his family with such a sensible concern and in such an affectionate manner, that I could not satisfy myself at first to go at all. I told him I would lay aside my curiosity rather than make him uneasy, though I was sure, and very thankful for it, that I had no more distemper upon me than the freshest man in the world. Well, he would not have me put it off neither, but, to let me see how 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 to Greenwich. While he bought the things which he had in charge to buy, I walked up to the top of the hill, under which the town stands, and on the east side of the town, to get a prospect of the river; but it was a surprising sight to see the number of ships which lay in rows, two and two, and in some places two or three such lines in the breadth of the river, and this not only up to the town, between the houses which we call Ratcliff and Redriff, which they name the Pool, but even down the whole river, as far as the head of Long Reach, which is as far as the hills give us leave to see it.

I cannot guess at the number of ships, but I think there must have been several hundreds of sail; and I could not but applaud the contrivance, for ten thousand people and more who attended ship affairs were certainly sheltered here from the violence of the contagion, and lived very 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 such little sanctuaries were provided for so many families on board in a time of such desolation. I observed, also, that, as the violence of the plague had increased, so the ships which had families on board removed and went farther off, till, as I was told, some went quite away to sea, and put into such harbors and safe roads170 on the north coast as they could best come at.

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

But I believe I may venture to say, that, in those ships which were thus infected, it either happened where the people had recourse to them too late, 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 perceive it (and so the distemper did not come to them on board the ships, but they really carried it with them), or it was in these ships where the poor waterman said they had not had time to furnish themselves with provisions, but were obliged to send often on shore to buy what they had occasion for, or suffered boats to come to them from the shore; and so the distemper was brought insensibly among them.

And here I cannot but take notice that the strange temper of the people of 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 city very gradually and slowly. It was felt at first in December, then again in February, then again in April (and always but a very little at a time), then it stopped till May; and even the last week in May there were but seventeen in all that end of the town. And all this while, even so long as till there died about three thousand a week, yet had the people in Redriff and in Wapping and Ratcliff, on both sides the river, and almost all Southwark side, a mighty fancy that they should not be visited, or at least that it would not be so violent among them. Some people fancied the smell of the pitch and tar, and such other things, as oil and resin and brimstone (which is much used by all trades relating to shipping), would preserve them. Others argued it,171 because it172 was in its extremest violence in Westminster and the parish of St. Giles's and St. Andrew's, etc., and began to abate again before it came among them, which was true, indeed, in part. For example: —

1. St. Margaret's.

N.B.173– That it was observed that the numbers mentioned in Stepney Parish at that time were generally all on that side where Stepney Parish joined to Shoreditch, which we now call Spittlefields, where the parish of Stepney comes up to the very wall of Shoreditch churchyard. And the plague at this time was abated at St. Giles-in-the-Fields, and raged most violently in Cripplegate, Bishopsgate, and Shoreditch Parishes, but there were not ten people a week that died of it in all that part of Stepney Parish which takes in Limehouse, Ratcliff Highway, and which are now the parishes of Shadwell and Wapping, even to St. Katherine's-by-the-Tower, till after the whole month of August was expired; but they paid for it afterwards, as I shall observe by and by.

This, I say, made the people of Redriff and Wapping, Ratcliff and Limehouse, so secure, and flatter themselves so much with the plague's going off without reaching them, that they took no care either to fly into the country or shut themselves up: nay, so far were they from stirring, that they rather received their friends and relations from the city into their houses; and several from other places really took sanctuary in that part of the town as a place of safety, and as a place which they thought God would pass over, and not visit as the rest was visited.

And this was the reason, that, when it came upon them, they were more surprised, more unprovided, and more at a loss what to do, than they were in other places; for when it came among them really and with violence, as it did indeed in September and October, there was then no stirring out into the country. Nobody would suffer a stranger to come near them, no, nor near the towns where they dwelt; and, as I have been told, several that wandered into the country on the Surrey side were found starved to death in the woods and commons; that country being more open and more woody than any other part so near London, especially about Norwood and the parishes of Camberwell, Dulwich,174 and Lusum, where it seems nobody durst175 relieve the poor distressed people for fear of the infection.

This notion having, as I said, prevailed with the people in that part of the town, was in part the occasion, as I said before, that they had recourse to ships for their retreat; and where they did this early and with prudence, furnishing themselves so with provisions so that they had no need to go on shore for supplies, or suffer boats to come on board to bring them, – I say, where they did so, they had certainly the safest retreat of any people whatsoever. But the distress was such, that people ran on board in their fright without bread to eat, and some into ships that had no men on board to remove them farther off, or to take the boat and go down the river to buy provisions, where it may be done safely; and these often suffered, and were infected on board as much as on shore.

As the richer sort got into ships, so the lower rank got into hoys,176 smacks, lighters, and fishing boats; and many, especially watermen, lay in their boats: but those made sad work of it, especially the latter; for going about for provision, and perhaps to get their subsistence, the infection got in among them, and made a fearful havoc. Many of the watermen died alone in their wherries as they rid at their roads, as well above bridge177 as below, and were not found sometimes till they were not in condition for anybody to touch or come near them.

Indeed, the distress of the people at this seafaring end of the town was very deplorable, and deserved the greatest commiseration. But, alas! this was a time when every one's private safety lay so near them that they had no room to pity the distresses of others; for every one had death, as it were, at his door, and many even in their families, and knew not what to do, or whither to fly.

This, I say, took away all compassion. Self-preservation, indeed, appeared here to be the first law: for the children ran away from their parents as they languished in the utmost distress; and in some places, though not so frequent as the other, parents did the like to their children. Nay, some dreadful examples there were, and particularly two in one week, of distressed mothers, raving and distracted, killing their own children; one whereof was not far off from where I dwelt, the poor lunatic creature not living herself long enough to be sensible of the sin of what she had done, much less to be punished for it.

It is not, indeed, to be wondered at; for the danger of immediate death to ourselves took away all bowels of love, all concern for one another. I speak in general: for there were many instances of immovable affection, pity, and duty in many, and some that came to my knowledge, that is to say, by hearsay; for I shall not take upon me to vouch the truth of the particulars.

I could tell here dismal stories of living infants being found sucking the breasts of their mothers or nurses after they have been dead of the plague; of a mother in the parish where I lived, who, having a child that was not well, sent for an apothecary to view the child, and when he came, as the relation goes, was giving the child suck at her breast, and to all appearance was herself very well; but, when the apothecary came close to her, he saw the tokens upon that breast with which she was suckling the child. He was surprised enough, to be sure; but, not willing to fright the poor woman too much, he desired she would give the child into his hand: so he takes the child, and, going to a cradle in the room, lays it in, and, opening its clothes, found the tokens upon the child too; and both died before he could get home to send a preventive medicine to the father of the child, to whom he had told their condition. Whether the child infected the nurse mother, or the mother the child, was not certain, but the last most likely.

Likewise of a child brought home to the parents from a nurse that had died of the plague; yet the tender mother would not refuse to take in her child, and laid it in her bosom, by which she was infected and died, with the child in her arms dead also.

It would make the hardest heart move at the instances that were frequently found of tender mothers tending and watching with their dear children, and even dying before them, and sometimes taking the distemper from them, and dying, when the child for whom the affectionate heart had been sacrificed has got over it and escaped.

I have heard also of some who, on the death of their relations, have grown stupid with the insupportable sorrow; and of one in particular, who was so absolutely overcome with the pressure upon his spirits, that by degrees his head sunk into his body so between his shoulders, that the crown of his head was very little seen above the bone of his shoulders; and by degrees, losing both voice and sense, his face, looking forward, lay against his collar bone, and could not be kept up any otherwise, unless held up by the hands of other people. And the poor man never came to himself again, but languished near a year in that condition, and died. Nor was he ever once seen to lift up his eyes, or to look upon any particular object.178

I cannot undertake to give any other than a summary of such passages as these, because it was not possible to come at the particulars where sometimes the whole families where such things happened were carried off by the distemper; but there were innumerable cases of this kind which presented179 to the eye and the ear, even in passing along the streets, as I have hinted above. Nor is it easy to give any story of this or that family, which there was not divers parallel stories to be met with of the same kind.

But as I am now talking of the time when the plague raged at the easternmost parts of the town; how for a long time the people of those parts had flattered themselves that they should escape, and how they were surprised when it came upon them as it did (for indeed it came upon them like an armed man when it did come), – I say this brings me back to the three poor men who wandered from Wapping, not knowing whither to go or what to do, and whom I mentioned before, – one a biscuit baker, one a sailmaker, and the other a joiner, all of Wapping or thereabouts.

The sleepiness and security of that part, as I have observed, was such, that they not only did not shift for themselves as others did, but they boasted of being safe, and of safety being with them. And many people fled out of the city, and out of the infected suburbs, to Wapping, Ratcliff, Limehouse, Poplar, and such places, as to places of security. And it is not at all unlikely that their doing this helped to bring the plague that way faster than it might otherwise have come: for though I am much for people's flying away, and emptying such a town as this upon the first appearance of a like visitation, and that all people who have any possible retreat should make use of it in time, and begone, yet I must say, when all that will fly are gone, those that are left, and must stand it, should stand stock-still where they are, and not shift from one end of the town or one part of the town to the other; for that is the bane and mischief of the whole, and they carry the plague from house to house in their very clothes.

Wherefore were we ordered to kill all the dogs and cats, but because, as they were domestic animals, and are apt to run from house to house and from street to street, so they are capable of carrying the effluvia or infectious steams of bodies infected, even in their furs and hair? And therefore it was, that, in the beginning of the infection, an order was published by the lord mayor and by the magistrates, according to the advice of the physicians, that all the dogs and cats should be immediately killed; and an officer was appointed for the execution.

It is incredible, if their account is to be depended upon, what a prodigious number of those creatures were destroyed. I think they talked of forty thousand dogs and five times as many cats; few houses being without 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 of the people were in at the first coming of this calamity upon them; and how it was for want of timely entering into measures and managements, as well public as private, that all the confusions that followed were brought upon us, and that such a prodigious number of people sunk in that disaster which, if proper steps had been taken, might, Providence concurring, have been avoided, and which, if posterity think fit, they may take a caution and warning from. But I shall come to this part again.

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

Two of them were said to be brothers, the one an old soldier, but now a biscuit baker; the other a lame sailor, but now a sailmaker; the third a joiner. Says John the biscuit baker, one day, to Thomas, his brother, the sailmaker, "Brother Tom, what will become of us? The plague grows hot 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 it comes down into Wapping I shall be turned out of my lodging." And thus they 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,180 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 Countries181 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.182 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 good183 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 come forward in the west and north parts of the town, yet all Wapping, as I have observed before, and Redriff and Ratcliff, and Limehouse and Poplar, in short, Deptford and Greenwich, both sides of the river from the Hermitage, and from over against it, quite down to Blackwall, was entirely free. There had not one person died of the plague in all Stepney Parish, and not one on the south side of Whitechapel Road, no, not in any parish; and yet the weekly bill was that very week risen up to 1,006.