Chapter IX: Part 9

It was indeed one admirable piece of conduct in the said
magistrates that the streets were kept constantly clear and free
from all manner of frightful objects, dead bodies, or any such
things as were indecent or unpleasant—unless where anybody fell
down suddenly or died in the streets, as I have said above; and
these were generally covered with some cloth or blanket, or
removed into the next churchyard till night. All the needful
works that carried terror with them, that were both dismal and
dangerous, were done in the night; if any diseased bodies were
removed, or dead bodies buried, or infected clothes burnt, it was
done in the night; and all the bodies which were thrown into the
great pits in the several churchyards or burying-grounds, as has
been observed, were so removed in the night, and everything was
covered and closed before day. So that in the daytime there was
not the least signal of the calamity to be seen or heard of,
except what was to be observed from the emptiness of the streets,
and sometimes from the passionate outcries and lamentations of
the people, out at their windows, and from the numbers of houses
and shops shut up.

Nor was the silence and emptiness of the streets so much in the
city as in the out-parts, except just at one particular time
when, as I have mentioned, the plague came east and spread over
all the city. It was indeed a merciful disposition of God, that
as the plague began at one end of the town first (as has been
observed at large) so it proceeded progressively to other parts,
and did not come on this way, or eastward, till it had spent its
fury in the West part of the town; and so, as it came on one way,
it abated another. For example, it began at St Giles’s and the
Westminster end of the town, and it was in its height in all that
part by about the middle of July, viz., in St
Giles-in-the-Fields, St Andrew’s, Holborn, St Clement Danes, St
Martin-in-the-Fields, and in Westminster. The latter end of July
it decreased in those parishes; and coming east, it increased
prodigiously in Cripplegate, St Sepulcher’s, St James’s,
Clarkenwell, and St Bride’s and Aldersgate. While it was in all
these parishes, the city and all the parishes of the Southwark
side of the water and all Stepney, Whitechappel, Aldgate,
Wapping, and Ratcliff, were very little touched; so that people
went about their business unconcerned, carried on their trades,
kept open their shops, and conversed freely with one another in
all the city, the east and north-east suburbs, and in Southwark,
almost as if the plague had not been among us.

Even when the north and north-west suburbs were fully infected,
viz., Cripplegate, Clarkenwell, Bishopsgate, and Shoreditch, yet
still all the rest were tolerably well. For example from 25th
July to 1st August the bill stood thus of all diseases:—

St Giles, Cripplegate 554
St Sepulchers 250
Clarkenwell 103
Bishopsgate 116
Shoreditch 110
Stepney parish 127
Aldgate 92
Whitechappel 104
All the ninety-seven parishes within the walls 228
All the parishes in Southwark 205
- ——-
- Total 1889

So that, in short, there died more that week in the two parishes
of Cripplegate and St Sepulcher by forty-eight than in all the
city, all the east suburbs, and all the Southwark parishes put
together. This caused the reputation of the city’s health to
continue all over England—and especially in the counties and
markets adjacent, from whence our supply of provisions chiefly
came even much longer than that health itself continued; for when
the people came into the streets from the country by Shoreditch
and Bishopsgate, or by Old Street and Smithfield, they would see
the out-streets empty and the houses and shops shut, and the few
people that were stirring there walk in the middle of the
streets. But when they came within the city, there things looked
better, and the markets and shops were open, and the people
walking about the streets as usual, though not quite so many; and
this continued till the latter end of August and the beginning of
September.

But then the case altered quite; the distemper abated in the west
and north-west parishes, and the weight of the infection lay on
the city and the eastern suburbs, and the Southwark side, and
this in a frightful manner. Then, indeed, the city began to look
dismal, shops to be shut, and the streets desolate. In the High
Street, indeed, necessity made people stir abroad on many
occasions; and there would be in the middle of the day a pretty
many people, but in the mornings and evenings scarce any to be
seen, even there, no, not in Cornhill and Cheapside.

These observations of mine were abundantly confirmed by the
weekly bills of mortality for those weeks, an abstract of which,
as they respect the parishes which I have mentioned and as they
make the calculations I speak of very evident, take as follows.

The weekly bill, which makes out this decrease of the burials in
the west and north side of the city, stands thus—

From the 12th of September to the 19th—
- St Giles, Cripplegate 456
- St Giles-in-the-Fields 140
- Clarkenwell 77
- St Sepulcher 214
- St Leonard, Shoreditch 183
- Stepney parish 716
- Aldgate 623
- Whitechappel 532
- In the ninety-seven parishes within the walls 1493
- In the eight parishes on Southwark side 1636
- ————
- Total 6060

Here is a strange change of things indeed, and a sad change it
was; and had it held for two months more than it did, very few
people would have been left alive. But then such, I say, was the
merciful disposition of God that, when it was thus, the west and
north part which had been so dreadfully visited at first, grew,
as you see, much better; and as the people disappeared here, they
began to look abroad again there; and the next week or two
altered it still more; that is, more to the encouragement of the
other part of the town. For example:—

From the 19th of September to the 26th—
- St Giles, Cripplegate 277
- St Giles-in-the-Fields 119
- Clarkenwell 76
- St Sepulchers 193
- St Leonard, Shoreditch 146
- Stepney parish 616
- Aldgate 496
- Whitechappel 346
- In the ninety-seven parishes within the walls 1268
- In the eight parishes on Southwark side 1390
- ————
- Total 4927

From the 26th of September to the 3rd of October—
- St Giles, Cripplegate 196
- St Giles-in-the-Fields 95
- Clarkenwell 48
- St Sepulchers 137
- St Leonard, Shoreditch 128
- Stepney parish 674
- Aldgate 372
- Whitechappel 328
- In the ninety-seven parishes within the walls 1149
- In the eight parishes on Southwark side 1201
- ————
- Total 4382

And now the misery of the city and of the said east and south
parts was complete indeed; for, as you see, the weight of the
distemper lay upon those parts, that is to say, the city, the
eight parishes over the river, with the parishes of Aldgate,
Whitechappel, and Stepney; and this was the time that the bills
came up to such a monstrous height as that I mentioned before,
and that eight or nine, and, as I believe, ten or twelve thousand
a week, died; for it is my settled opinion that they never could
come at any just account of the numbers, for the reasons which I
have given already.

Nay, one of the most eminent physicians, who has since published
in Latin an account of those times, and of his observations says
that in one week there died twelve thousand people, and that
particularly there died four thousand in one night; though I do
not remember that there ever was any such particular night so
remarkably fatal as that such a number died in it. However, all
this confirms what I have said above of the uncertainty of the
bills of mortality, &c., of which I shall say more hereafter.

And here let me take leave to enter again, though it may seem a
repetition of circumstances, into a description of the miserable
condition of the city itself, and of those parts where I lived at
this particular time. The city and those other parts,
notwithstanding the great numbers of people that were gone into
the country, was vastly full of people; and perhaps the fuller
because people had for a long time a strong belief that the
plague would not come into the city, nor into Southwark, no, nor
into Wapping or Ratcliff at all; nay, such was the assurance of
the people on that head that many removed from the suburbs on the
west and north sides, into those eastern and south sides as for
safety; and, as I verily believe, carried the plague amongst them
there perhaps sooner than they would otherwise have had it.

Here also I ought to leave a further remark for the use of
posterity, concerning the manner of people’s infecting one
another; namely, that it was not the sick people only from whom
the plague was immediately received by others that were sound,
but the well. To explain myself: by the sick people I mean those
who were known to be sick, had taken their beds, had been under
cure, or had swellings and tumours upon them, and the like; these
everybody could beware of; they were either in their beds or in
such condition as could not be concealed.

By the well I mean such as had received the contagion, and had it
really upon them, and in their blood, yet did not show the
consequences of it in their countenances: nay, even were not
sensible of it themselves, as many were not for several days.
These breathed death in every place, and upon everybody who came
near them; nay, their very clothes retained the infection, their
hands would infect the things they touched, especially if they
were warm and sweaty, and they were generally apt to sweat too.

Now it was impossible to know these people, nor did they
sometimes, as I have said, know themselves to be infected. These
were the people that so often dropped down and fainted in the
streets; for oftentimes they would go about the streets to the
last, till on a sudden they would sweat, grow faint, sit down at
a door and die. It is true, finding themselves thus, they would
struggle hard to get home to their own doors, or at other times
would be just able to go into their houses and die instantly;
other times they would go about till they had the very tokens
come out upon them, and yet not know it, and would die in an hour
or two after they came home, but be well as long as they were
abroad. These were the dangerous people; these were the people of
whom the well people ought to have been afraid; but then, on the
other side, it was impossible to know them.

And this is the reason why it is impossible in a visitation to
prevent the spreading of the plague by the utmost human
vigilance: viz., that it is impossible to know the infected
people from the sound, or that the infected people should
perfectly know themselves. I knew a man who conversed freely in
London all the season of the plague in 1665, and kept about him
an antidote or cordial on purpose to take when he thought himself
in any danger, and he had such a rule to know or have warning of
the danger by as indeed I never met with before or since. How far
it may be depended on I know not. He had a wound in his leg, and
whenever he came among any people that were not sound, and the
infection began to affect him, he said he could know it by that
signal, viz., that his wound in his leg would smart, and look
pale and white; so as soon as ever he felt it smart it was time
for him to withdraw, or to take care of himself, taking his
drink, which he always carried about him for that purpose. Now it
seems he found his wound would smart many times when he was in
company with such who thought themselves to be sound, and who
appeared so to one another; but he would presently rise up and
say publicly, ‘Friends, here is somebody in the room that has the
plague’, and so would immediately break up the company. This was
indeed a faithful monitor to all people that the plague is not to
be avoided by those that converse promiscuously in a town
infected, and people have it when they know it not, and that they
likewise give it to others when they know not that they have it
themselves; and in this case shutting up the well or removing the
sick will not do it, unless they can go back and shut up all
those that the sick had conversed with, even before they knew
themselves to be sick, and none knows how far to carry that back,
or where to stop; for none knows when or where or how they may
have received the infection, or from whom.

This I take to be the reason which makes so many people talk of
the air being corrupted and infected, and that they need not be
cautious of whom they converse with, for that the contagion was
in the air. I have seen them in strange agitations and surprises
on this account. ‘I have never come near any infected body’, says
the disturbed person; ‘I have conversed with none but sound,
healthy people, and yet I have gotten the distemper!’ ‘I am sure
I am struck from Heaven’, says another, and he falls to the
serious part. Again, the first goes on exclaiming, ‘I have come
near no infection or any infected person; I am sure it is the
air. We draw in death when we breathe, and therefore ’tis the
hand of God; there is no withstanding it.’ And this at last made
many people, being hardened to the danger, grow less concerned at
it; and less cautious towards the latter end of the time, and
when it was come to its height, than they were at first. Then,
with a kind of a Turkish predestinarianism, they would say, if it
pleased God to strike them, it was all one whether they went
abroad or stayed at home; they could not escape it, and therefore
they went boldly about, even into infected houses and infected
company; visited sick people; and, in short, lay in the beds with
their wives or relations when they were infected. And what was
the consequence, but the same that is the consequence in Turkey,
and in those countries where they do those things—namely, that
they were infected too, and died by hundreds and thousands?

I would be far from lessening the awe of the judgements of God
and the reverence to His providence which ought always to be on
our minds on such occasions as these. Doubtless the visitation
itself is a stroke from Heaven upon a city, or country, or nation
where it falls; a messenger of His vengeance, and a loud call to
that nation or country or city to humiliation and repentance,
according to that of the prophet Jeremiah (xviii. 7, 8): ‘At what
instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a
kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it; if
that nation against whom I have pronounced turn from their evil,
I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them.’ Now to
prompt due impressions of the awe of God on the minds of men on
such occasions, and not to lessen them, it is that I have left
those minutes upon record.

I say, therefore, I reflect upon no man for putting the reason of
those things upon the immediate hand of God, and the appointment
and direction of His providence; nay, on the contrary, there were
many wonderful deliverances of persons from infection, and
deliverances of persons when infected, which intimate singular
and remarkable providence in the particular instances to which
they refer; and I esteem my own deliverance to be one next to
miraculous, and do record it with thankfulness.

But when I am speaking of the plague as a distemper arising from
natural causes, we must consider it as it was really propagated
by natural means; nor is it at all the less a judgement for its
being under the conduct of human causes and effects; for, as the
Divine Power has formed the whole scheme of nature and maintains
nature in its course, so the same Power thinks fit to let His own
actings with men, whether of mercy or judgement, to go on in the
ordinary course of natural causes; and He is pleased to act by
those natural causes as the ordinary means, excepting and
reserving to Himself nevertheless a power to act in a
supernatural way when He sees occasion. Now ’tis evident that in
the case of an infection there is no apparent extraordinary
occasion for supernatural operation, but the ordinary course of
things appears sufficiently armed, and made capable of all the
effects that Heaven usually directs by a contagion. Among these
causes and effects, this of the secret conveyance of infection,
imperceptible and unavoidable, is more than sufficient to execute
the fierceness of Divine vengeance, without putting it upon
supernaturals and miracle.

The acute penetrating nature of the disease itself was such, and
the infection was received so imperceptibly, that the most exact
caution could not secure us while in the place. But I must be
allowed to believe—and I have so many examples fresh in my memory
to convince me of it, that I think none can resist their
evidence—I say, I must be allowed to believe that no one in this
whole nation ever received the sickness or infection but who
received it in the ordinary way of infection from somebody, or
the clothes or touch or stench of somebody that was infected
before.

The manner of its coming first to London proves this also, viz.,
by goods brought over from Holland, and brought thither from the
Levant; the first breaking of it out in a house in Long Acre
where those goods were carried and first opened; its spreading
from that house to other houses by the visible unwary conversing
with those who were sick; and the infecting the parish officers
who were employed about the persons dead, and the like. These are
known authorities for this great foundation point—that it went on
and proceeded from person to person and from house to house, and
no otherwise. In the first house that was infected there died
four persons. A neighbour, hearing the mistress of the first
house was sick, went to visit her, and went home and gave the
distemper to her family, and died, and all her household. A
minister, called to pray with the first sick person in the second
house, was said to sicken immediately and die with several more
in his house. Then the physicians began to consider, for they did
not at first dream of a general contagion. But the physicians
being sent to inspect the bodies, they assured the people that it
was neither more or less than the plague, with all its terrifying
particulars, and that it threatened an universal infection, so
many people having already conversed with the sick or
distempered, and having, as might be supposed, received infection
from them, that it would be impossible to put a stop to it.

Here the opinion of the physicians agreed with my observation
afterwards, namely, that the danger was spreading insensibly, for
the sick could infect none but those that came within reach of
the sick person; but that one man who may have really received
the infection and knows it not, but goes abroad and about as a
sound person, may give the plague to a thousand people, and they
to greater numbers in proportion, and neither the person giving
the infection or the persons receiving it know anything of it,
and perhaps not feel the effects of it for several days after.

For example, many persons in the time of this visitation never
perceived that they were infected till they found to their
unspeakable surprise, the tokens come out upon them; after which
they seldom lived six hours; for those spots they called the
tokens were really gangrene spots, or mortified flesh in small
knobs as broad as a little silver penny, and hard as a piece of
callus or horn; so that, when the disease was come up to that
length, there was nothing could follow but certain death; and
yet, as I said, they knew nothing of their being infected, nor
found themselves so much as out of order, till those mortal marks
were upon them. But everybody must allow that they were infected
in a high degree before, and must have been so some time, and
consequently their breath, their sweat, their very clothes, were
contagious for many days before. This occasioned a vast variety
of cases which physicians would have much more opportunity to
remember than I; but some came within the compass of my
observation or hearing, of which I shall name a few.

A certain citizen who had lived safe and untouched till the month
of September, when the weight of the distemper lay more in the
city than it had done before, was mighty cheerful, and something
too bold (as I think it was) in his talk of how secure he was,
how cautious he had been, and how he had never come near any sick
body. Says another citizen, a neighbour of his, to him one day,
‘Do not be too confident, Mr ——; it is hard to say who is sick and
who is well, for we see men alive and well to outward appearance
one hour, and dead the next.’ ‘That is true’, says the first man,
for he was not a man presumptuously secure, but had escaped a
long while—and men, as I said above, especially in the city began
to be over-easy upon that score. ‘That is true,’ says he; ‘I do
not think myself secure, but I hope I have not been in company
with any person that there has been any danger in.’ ‘No?’ says
his neighbour. ‘Was not you at the Bull Head Tavern in
Gracechurch Street with Mr —— the night before last?’ ‘Yes,’ says
the first, ‘I was; but there was nobody there that we had any
reason to think dangerous.’ Upon which his neighbour said no
more, being unwilling to surprise him; but this made him more
inquisitive, and as his neighbour appeared backward, he was the
more impatient, and in a kind of warmth says he aloud, ‘Why, he
is not dead, is he?’ Upon which his neighbour still was silent,
but cast up his eyes and said something to himself; at which the
first citizen turned pale, and said no more but this, ‘Then I am
a dead man too’, and went home immediately and sent for a
neighbouring apothecary to give him something preventive, for he
had not yet found himself ill; but the apothecary, opening his
breast, fetched a sigh, and said no more but this, ‘Look up to
God’; and the man died in a few hours.

Now let any man judge from a case like this if it is possible for
the regulations of magistrates, either by shutting up the sick or
removing them, to stop an infection which spreads itself from man
to man even while they are perfectly well and insensible of its
approach, and may be so for many days.

It may be proper to ask here how long it may be supposed men
might have the seeds of the contagion in them before it
discovered itself in this fatal manner, and how long they might
go about seemingly whole, and yet be contagious to all those that
came near them. I believe the most experienced physicians cannot
answer this question directly any more than I can; and something
an ordinary observer may take notice of, which may pass their
observations. The opinion of physicians abroad seems to be that
it may lie dormant in the spirits or in the blood-vessels a very
considerable time. Why else do they exact a quarantine of those
who came into their harbours and ports from suspected places?
Forty days is, one would think, too long for nature to struggle
with such an enemy as this, and not conquer it or yield to it.
But I could not think, by my own observation, that they can be
infected so as to be contagious to others above fifteen or
sixteen days at furthest; and on that score it was, that when a
house was shut up in the city and any one had died of the plague,
but nobody appeared to be ill in the family for sixteen or
eighteen days after, they were not so strict but that they would
connive at their going privately abroad; nor would people be much
afraid of them afterward, but rather think they were fortified
the better, having not been vulnerable when the enemy was in
their own house; but we sometimes found it had lain much longer
concealed.

Upon the foot of all these observations I must say that though
Providence seemed to direct my conduct to be otherwise, yet it is
my opinion, and I must leave it as a prescription, viz., that the
best physic against the plague is to run away from it. I know
people encourage themselves by saying God is able to keep us in
the midst of danger, and able to overtake us when we think
ourselves out of danger; and this kept thousands in the town
whose carcases went into the great pits by cartloads, and who, if
they had fled from the danger, had, I believe, been safe from the
disaster; at least ’tis probable they had been safe.

And were this very fundamental only duly considered by the people
on any future occasion of this or the like nature, I am persuaded
it would put them upon quite different measures for managing the
people from those that they took in 1665, or than any that have
been taken abroad that I have heard of. In a word, they would
consider of separating the people into smaller bodies, and
removing them in time farther from one another—and not let such a
contagion as this, which is indeed chiefly dangerous to collected
bodies of people, find a million of people in a body together, as
was very near the case before, and would certainly be the case if
it should ever appear again.

The plague, like a great fire, if a few houses only are
contiguous where it happens, can only burn a few houses; or if it
begins in a single, or, as we call it, a lone house, can only
burn that lone house where it begins. But if it begins in a
close-built town or city and gets a head, there its fury
increases: it rages over the whole place, and consumes all it can
reach.

I could propose many schemes on the foot of which the government
of this city, if ever they should be under the apprehensions of
such another enemy (God forbid they should), might ease
themselves of the greatest part of the dangerous people that
belong to them; I mean such as the begging, starving, labouring
poor, and among them chiefly those who, in case of a siege, are
called the useless mouths; who being then prudently and to their
own advantage disposed of, and the wealthy inhabitants disposing
of themselves and of their servants and children, the city and
its adjacent parts would be so effectually evacuated that there
would not be above a tenth part of its people left together for
the disease to take hold upon. But suppose them to be a fifth
part, and that two hundred and fifty thousand people were left:
and if it did seize upon them, they would, by their living so
much at large, be much better prepared to defend themselves
against the infection, and be less liable to the effects of it
than if the same number of people lived close together in one
smaller city such as Dublin or Amsterdam or the like.

It is true hundreds, yea, thousands of families fled away at this
last plague, but then of them, many fled too late, and not only
died in their flight, but carried the distemper with them into
the countries where they went and infected those whom they went
among for safety; which confounded the thing, and made that be a
propagation of the distemper which was the best means to prevent
it; and this too is an evidence of it, and brings me back to what
I only hinted at before, but must speak more fully to here,
namely, that men went about apparently well many days after they
had the taint of the disease in their vitals, and after their
spirits were so seized as that they could never escape it, and
that all the while they did so they were dangerous to others; I
say, this proves that so it was; for such people infected the
very towns they went through, as well as the families they went
among; and it was by that means that almost all the great towns
in England had the distemper among them, more or less, and always
they would tell you such a Londoner or such a Londoner brought it
down.

It must not be omitted that when I speak of those people who were
really thus dangerous, I suppose them to be utterly ignorant of
their own conditions; for if they really knew their circumstances
to be such as indeed they were, they must have been a kind of
wilful murtherers if they would have gone abroad among healthy
people—and it would have verified indeed the suggestion which I
mentioned above, and which I thought seemed untrue: viz., that
the infected people were utterly careless as to giving the
infection to others, and rather forward to do it than not; and I
believe it was partly from this very thing that they raised that
suggestion, which I hope was not really true in fact.

I confess no particular case is sufficient to prove a general,
but I could name several people within the knowledge of some of
their neighbours and families yet living who showed the contrary
to an extreme. One man, a master of a family in my neighbourhood,
having had the distemper, he thought he had it given him by a
poor workman whom he employed, and whom he went to his house to
see, or went for some work that he wanted to have finished; and
he had some apprehensions even while he was at the poor workman’s
door, but did not discover it fully; but the next day it
discovered itself, and he was taken very in, upon which he
immediately caused himself to be carried into an outbuilding
which he had in his yard, and where there was a chamber over a
workhouse (the man being a brazier). Here he lay, and here he
died, and would be tended by none of his neighbours, but by a
nurse from abroad; and would not suffer his wife, nor children,
nor servants to come up into the room, lest they should be
infected—but sent them his blessing and prayers for them by the
nurse, who spoke it to them at a distance, and all this for fear
of giving them the distemper; and without which he knew, as they
were kept up, they could not have it.

And here I must observe also that the plague, as I suppose all
distempers do, operated in a different manner on differing
constitutions; some were immediately overwhelmed with it, and it
came to violent fevers, vomitings, insufferable headaches, pains
in the back, and so up to ravings and ragings with those pains;
others with swellings and tumours in the neck or groin, or
armpits, which till they could be broke put them into
insufferable agonies and torment; while others, as I have
observed, were silently infected, the fever preying upon their
spirits insensibly, and they seeing little of it till they fell
into swooning, and faintings, and death without pain. I am not
physician enough to enter into the particular reasons and manner
of these differing effects of one and the same distemper, and of
its differing operation in several bodies; nor is it my business
here to record the observations which I really made, because the
doctors themselves have done that part much more effectually than
I can do, and because my opinion may in some things differ from
theirs. I am only relating what I know, or have heard, or believe
of the particular cases, and what fell within the compass of my
view, and the different nature of the infection as it appeared in
the particular cases which I have related; but this may be added
too: that though the former sort of those cases, namely, those
openly visited, were the worst for themselves as to pain—I mean
those that had such fevers, vomitings, headaches, pains, and
swellings, because they died in such a dreadful manner—yet the
latter had the worst state of the disease; for in the former they
frequently recovered, especially if the swellings broke; but the
latter was inevitable death; no cure, no help, could be possible,
nothing could follow but death. And it was worse also to others,
because, as above, it secretly and unperceived by others or by
themselves, communicated death to those they conversed with, the
penetrating poison insinuating itself into their blood in a
manner which it is impossible to describe, or indeed conceive.

This infecting and being infected without so much as its being
known to either person is evident from two sorts of cases which
frequently happened at that time; and there is hardly anybody
living who was in London during the infection but must have known
several of the cases of both sorts.

(1) Fathers and mothers have gone about as if they had been well,
and have believed themselves to be so, till they have insensibly
infected and been the destruction of their whole families, which
they would have been far from doing if they had the least
apprehensions of their being unsound and dangerous themselves. A
family, whose story I have heard, was thus infected by the
father; and the distemper began to appear upon some of them even
before he found it upon himself. But searching more narrowly, it
appeared he had been affected some time; and as soon as he found
that his family had been poisoned by himself he went distracted,
and would have laid violent hands upon himself, but was kept from
that by those who looked to him, and in a few days died.

(2) The other particular is, that many people having been well to
the best of their own judgement, or by the best observation which
they could make of themselves for several days, and only finding
a decay of appetite, or a light sickness upon their stomachs;
nay, some whose appetite has been strong, and even craving, and
only a light pain in their heads, have sent for physicians to
know what ailed them, and have been found, to their great
surprise, at the brink of death: the tokens upon them, or the
plague grown up to an incurable height.

It was very sad to reflect how such a person as this last
mentioned above had been a walking destroyer perhaps for a week
or a fortnight before that; how he had ruined those that he would
have hazarded his life to save, and had been breathing death upon
them, even perhaps in his tender kissing and embracings of his
own children. Yet thus certainly it was, and often has been, and
I could give many particular cases where it has been so. If then
the blow is thus insensibly striking—if the arrow flies thus
unseen, and cannot be discovered—to what purpose are all the
schemes for shutting up or removing the sick people? Those
schemes cannot take place but upon those that appear to be sick,
or to be infected; whereas there are among them at the same time
thousands of people who seem to be well, but are all that while
carrying death with them into all companies which they come into.

This frequently puzzled our physicians, and especially the
apothecaries and surgeons, who knew not how to discover the sick
from the sound; they all allowed that it was really so, that many
people had the plague in their very blood, and preying upon their
spirits, and were in themselves but walking putrefied carcases
whose breath was infectious and their sweat poison, and yet were
as well to look on as other people, and even knew it not
themselves; I say, they all allowed that it was really true in
fact, but they knew not how to propose a discovery.

My friend Dr Heath was of opinion that it might be known by the
smell of their breath; but then, as he said, who durst smell to
that breath for his information? since, to know it, he must draw
the stench of the plague up into his own brain, in order to
distinguish the smell! I have heard it was the opinion of others
that it might be distinguished by the party’s breathing upon a
piece of glass, where, the breath condensing, there might living
creatures be seen by a microscope, of strange, monstrous, and
frightful shapes, such as dragons, snakes, serpents, and devils,
horrible to behold. But this I very much question the truth of,
and we had no microscopes at that time, as I remember, to make
the experiment with.

It was the opinion also of another learned man, that the breath
of such a person would poison and instantly kill a bird; not only
a small bird, but even a cock or hen, and that, if it did not
immediately kill the latter, it would cause them to be roupy, as
they call it; particularly that if they had laid any eggs at any
time, they would be all rotten. But those are opinions which I
never found supported by any experiments, or heard of others that
had seen it; so I leave them as I find them; only with this
remark, namely, that I think the probabilities are very strong
for them.

Some have proposed that such persons should breathe hard upon
warm water, and that they would leave an unusual scum upon it, or
upon several other things, especially such as are of a glutinous
substance and are apt to receive a scum and support it.

But from the whole I found that the nature of this contagion was
such that it was impossible to discover it at all, or to prevent
its spreading from one to another by any human skill.

Here was indeed one difficulty which I could never thoroughly get
over to this time, and which there is but one way of answering
that I know of, and it is this, viz., the first person that died
of the plague was on December 20, or thereabouts, 1664, and in or
about long Acre; whence the first person had the infection was
generally said to be from a parcel of silks imported from
Holland, and first opened in that house.

But after this we heard no more of any person dying of the
plague, or of the distemper being in that place, till the 9th of
February, which was about seven weeks after, and then one more
was buried out of the same house. Then it was hushed, and we were
perfectly easy as to the public for a great while; for there were
no more entered in the weekly bill to be dead of the plague till
the 22nd of April, when there was two more buried, not out of the
same house, but out of the same street; and, as near as I can
remember, it was out of the next house to the first. This was
nine weeks asunder, and after this we had no more till a
fortnight, and then it broke out in several streets and spread
every way. Now the question seems to lie thus: Where lay the
seeds of the infection all this while? How came it to stop so
long, and not stop any longer? Either the distemper did not come
immediately by contagion from body to body, or, if it did, then a
body may be capable to continue infected without the disease
discovering itself many days, nay, weeks together; even not a
quarantine of days only, but soixantine; not only forty days, but
sixty days or longer.

It is true there was, as I observed at first, and is well known
to many yet living, a very cold winter and a long frost which
continued three months; and this, the doctors say, might check
the infection; but then the learned must allow me to say that if,
according to their notion, the disease was (as I may say) only
frozen up, it would like a frozen river have returned to its
usual force and current when it thawed—whereas the principal
recess of this infection, which was from February to April, was
after the frost was broken and the weather mild and warm.

But there is another way of solving all this difficulty, which I
think my own remembrance of the thing will supply; and that is,
the fact is not granted—namely, that there died none in those
long intervals, viz., from the 20th of December to the 9th of
February, and from thence to the 22nd of April. The weekly bills
are the only evidence on the other side, and those bills were not
of credit enough, at least with me, to support an hypothesis or
determine a question of such importance as this; for it was our
received opinion at that time, and I believe upon very good
grounds, that the fraud lay in the parish officers, searchers,
and persons appointed to give account of the dead, and what
diseases they died of; and as people were very loth at first to
have the neighbours believe their houses were infected, so they
gave money to procure, or otherwise procured, the dead persons to
be returned as dying of other distempers; and this I know was
practised afterwards in many places, I believe I might say in all
places where the distemper came, as will be seen by the vast
increase of the numbers placed in the weekly bills under other
articles of diseases during the time of the infection. For
example, in the months of July and August, when the plague was
coming on to its highest pitch, it was very ordinary to have from
a thousand to twelve hundred, nay, to almost fifteen hundred a
week of other distempers. Not that the numbers of those
distempers were really increased to such a degree, but the great
number of families and houses where really the infection was,
obtained the favour to have their dead be returned of other
distempers, to prevent the shutting up their houses. For
example:—

Dead of other diseases beside the plague—
From the 18th July to the 25th 942
” 25th July ” 1st August 1004
” 1st August ” 8th 1213
” 8th ” 15th 1439
” 15th ” 22nd 1331
” 22nd ” 29th 1394
” 29th ” 5th September 1264
” 5th September to the 12th 1056
” 12th ” 19th 1132
” 19th ” 26th 927

Now it was not doubted but the greatest part of these, or a great
part of them, were dead of the plague, but the officers were
prevailed with to return them as above, and the numbers of some
particular articles of distempers discovered is as follows:—

Aug. Aug. Aug. Aug. Aug. Sept. Sept. Sept.
1 8 15 22 29 5 12 19
to 8 to 15 to 22 to 29 to Sept.5 to 12 to 19 to 26

Fever 314 353 348 383 364 332 309 268
Spotted 174 190 166 165 157 97 101 65
Fever
Surfeit 85 87 74 99 68 45 49 36
Teeth 90 113 111 133 138 128 121 112
—— —— —— —— —— —— —— ——
663 743 699 780 727 602 580 481

There were several other articles which bore a proportion to
these, and which, it is easy to perceive, were increased on the
same account, as aged, consumptions, vomitings, imposthumes,
gripes, and the like, many of which were not doubted to be
infected people; but as it was of the utmost consequence to
families not to be known to be infected, if it was possible to
avoid it, so they took all the measures they could to have it not
believed, and if any died in their houses, to get them returned
to the examiners, and by the searchers, as having died of other
distempers.

This, I say, will account for the long interval which, as I have
said, was between the dying of the first persons that were
returned in the bill to be dead of the plague and the time when
the distemper spread openly and could not be concealed.

Besides, the weekly bills themselves at that time evidently
discover the truth; for, while there was no mention of the
plague, and no increase after it had been mentioned, yet it was
apparent that there was an increase of those distempers which
bordered nearest upon it; for example, there were eight, twelve,
seventeen of the spotted fever in a week, when there were none,
or but very few, of the plague; whereas before, one, three, or
four were the ordinary weekly numbers of that distemper.
Likewise, as I observed before, the burials increased weekly in
that particular parish and the parishes adjacent more than in any
other parish, although there were none set down of the plague;
all which tells us, that the infection was handed on, and the
succession of the distemper really preserved, though it seemed to
us at that time to be ceased, and to come again in a manner
surprising.

It might be, also, that the infection might remain in other parts
of the same parcel of goods which at first it came in, and which
might not be perhaps opened, or at least not fully, or in the
clothes of the first infected person; for I cannot think that
anybody could be seized with the contagion in a fatal and mortal
degree for nine weeks together, and support his state of health
so well as even not to discover it to themselves; yet if it were
so, the argument is the stronger in favour of what I am saying:
namely, that the infection is retained in bodies apparently well,
and conveyed from them to those they converse with, while it is
known to neither the one nor the other.

Great were the confusions at that time upon this very account,
and when people began to be convinced that the infection was
received in this surprising manner from persons apparently well,
they began to be exceeding shy and jealous of every one that came
near them. Once, on a public day, whether a Sabbath-day or not I
do not remember, in Aldgate Church, in a pew full of people, on a
sudden one fancied she smelt an ill smell. Immediately she
fancies the plague was in the pew, whispers her notion or
suspicion to the next, then rises and goes out of the pew. It
immediately took with the next, and so to them all; and every one
of them, and of the two or three adjoining pews, got up and went
out of the church, nobody knowing what it was offended them, or
from whom.

This immediately filled everybody’s mouths with one preparation
or other, such as the old woman directed, and some perhaps as
physicians directed, in order to prevent infection by the breath
of others; insomuch that if we came to go into a church when it
was anything full of people, there would be such a mixture of
smells at the entrance that it was much more strong, though
perhaps not so wholesome, than if you were going into an
apothecary’s or druggist’s shop. In a word, the whole church was
like a smelling-bottle; in one corner it was all perfumes; in
another, aromatics, balsamics, and variety of drugs and herbs; in
another, salts and spirits, as every one was furnished for their
own preservation. Yet I observed that after people were
possessed, as I have said, with the belief, or rather assurance,
of the infection being thus carried on by persons apparently in
health, the churches and meeting-houses were much thinner of
people than at other times before that they used to be. For this
is to be said of the people of London, that during the whole time
of the pestilence the churches or meetings were never wholly shut
up, nor did the people decline coming out to the public worship
of God, except only in some parishes when the violence of the
distemper was more particularly in that parish at that time, and
even then no longer than it continued to be so.

Indeed nothing was more strange than to see with what courage the
people went to the public service of God, even at that time when
they were afraid to stir out of their own houses upon any other
occasion; this, I mean, before the time of desperation, which I
have mentioned already. This was a proof of the exceeding
populousness of the city at the time of the infection,
notwithstanding the great numbers that were gone into the country
at the first alarm, and that fled out into the forests and woods
when they were further terrified with the extraordinary increase
of it. For when we came to see the crowds and throngs of people
which appeared on the Sabbath-days at the churches, and
especially in those parts of the town where the plague was
abated, or where it was not yet come to its height, it was
amazing. But of this I shall speak again presently. I return in
the meantime to the article of infecting one another at first,
before people came to right notions of the infection, and of
infecting one another. People were only shy of those that were
really sick, a man with a cap upon his head, or with clothes
round his neck, which was the case of those that had swellings
there. Such was indeed frightful; but when we saw a gentleman
dressed, with his band on and his gloves in his hand, his hat
upon his head, and his hair combed, of such we had not the least
apprehensions, and people conversed a great while freely,
especially with their neighbours and such as they knew. But when
the physicians assured us that the danger was as well from the
sound (that is, the seemingly sound) as the sick, and that those
people who thought themselves entirely free were oftentimes the
most fatal, and that it came to be generally understood that
people were sensible of it, and of the reason of it; then, I say,
they began to be jealous of everybody, and a vast number of
people locked themselves up, so as not to come abroad into any
company at all, nor suffer any that had been abroad in
promiscuous company to come into their houses, or near them—at
least not so near them as to be within the reach of their breath
or of any smell from them; and when they were obliged to converse
at a distance with strangers, they would always have
preservatives in their mouths and about their clothes to repel
and keep off the infection.

It must be acknowledged that when people began to use these
cautions they were less exposed to danger, and the infection did
not break into such houses so furiously as it did into others
before; and thousands of families were preserved (speaking with
due reserve to the direction of Divine Providence) by that means.