History of the Plague in London

by Daniel Defoe

been left empty during the time of the plague.Abundance of perfumes and preparations were prescribed by physicians,some of one kind, some of another, in which the people who listened tothem put themselves to a great, and indeed in my opinion to anunnecessary, expense; and the poorer people, who only set open theirwindows night and day, burnt brimstone, pitch, and gunpowder, and suchthings, in their rooms, did as well as the best; nay, the eager peoplewho, as I said above, came home in haste and at all hazards, foundlittle or no inconvenience in their houses, nor in their goods, and didlittle or nothing to them.

  However, in general, prudent, cautious people did enter into somemeasures for airing and sweetening their houses, and burnt perfumes,incense, benjamin,[346] resin, and sulphur in their rooms, close shutup, and then let the air carry it all out with a blast of gunpowder;others caused large fires to be made all day and all night for severaldays and nights. By the same token that[347] two or three were pleasedto set their houses on fire, and so effectually sweetened them byburning them down to the ground (as particularly one at Ratcliff, one inHolborn, and one at Westminster, besides two or three that were set onfire; but the fire was happily got out again before it went far enoughto burn down the houses); and one citizen's servant, I think it was inThames Street, carried so much gunpowder into his master's house, forclearing it of the infection, and managed it so foolishly, that he blewup part of the roof of the house. But the time was not fully come thatthe city was to be purged with fire, nor was it far off; for within ninemonths more I saw it all lying in ashes, when, as some of our quakingphilosophers pretend, the seeds of the plague were entirely destroyed,and not before,--a notion too ridiculous to speak of here, since, hadthe seeds of the plague remained in the houses, not to be destroyed butby fire, how has it been that they have not since broken out, seeing allthose buildings in the suburbs and liberties, all in the great parishesof Stepney, Whitechapel, Aldgate, Bishopsgate, Shoreditch, Cripplegate,and St. Giles's, where the fire never came, and where the plague racedwith the greatest violence, remain still in the same condition they werein before?

  But to leave these things just as I found them, it was certain thatthose people who were more than ordinarily cautious of their health didtake particular directions for what they called seasoning of theirhouses; and abundance of costly things were consumed on that account,which I cannot but say not only seasoned those houses as they desired,but filled the air with very grateful and wholesome smells, which othershad the share of the benefit of, as well as those who were at theexpenses of them.

  Though the poor came to town very precipitantly, as I have said, yet, Imust say, the rich made no such haste. The men of business, indeed, cameup, but many of them did not bring their families to town till thespring came on, and that they saw reason to depend upon it that theplague would not return.

  The court, indeed, came up soon after Christmas; but the nobility andgentry, except such as depended upon and had employment under theadministration, did not come so soon.

  I should have taken notice here, that notwithstanding the violence ofthe plague in London and other places, yet it was very observable thatit was never on board the fleet; and yet for some time there was astrange press[348] in the river, and even in the streets, for seamen toman the fleet. But it was in the beginning of the year, when the plaguewas scarce begun, and not at all come down to that part of the citywhere they usually press for seamen; and though a war with the Dutch wasnot at all grateful to the people at that time, and the seamen went witha kind of reluctancy into the service, and many complained of beingdragged into it by force, yet it proved, in the event, a happy violenceto several of them, who had probably perished in the general calamity,and who, after the summer service was over, though they had cause tolament the desolation of their families (who, when they came back, weremany of them in their graves), yet they had room to be thankful thatthey were carried out of the reach of it, though so much against theirwills. We, indeed, had a hot war with the Dutch that year, and one verygreat engagement[349] at sea, in which the Dutch were worsted; but welost a great many men and some ships. But, as I observed, the plague wasnot in the fleet; and when they came to lay up the ships in the river,the violent part of it began to abate.

  I would be glad if I could close the account of this melancholy yearwith some particular examples historically, I mean of the thankfulnessto God, our Preserver, for our being delivered from this dreadfulcalamity. Certainly the circumstances of the deliverance, as well as theterrible enemy we were delivered from, called upon the whole nation forit. The circumstances of the deliverance were indeed very remarkable, asI have in part mentioned already; and particularly the dreadfulcondition which we were all in, when we were, to the surprise of thewhole town, made joyful with the hope of a stop to the infection.

  Nothing but the immediate finger of God, nothing but omnipotent power,could have done it. The contagion despised all medicine, death raged inevery corner; and, had it gone on as it did then, a few weeks more wouldhave cleared the town of all and everything that had a soul. Meneverywhere began to despair; every heart failed them for fear; peoplewere made desperate through the anguish of their souls; and the terrorsof death sat in the very faces and countenances of the people.

  In that very moment, when we might very well say, "Vain was the help ofman,"[350]--I say, in that very moment it pleased God, with a mostagreeable surprise, to cause the fury of it to abate, even of itself;and the malignity declining, as I have said, though infinite numberswere sick, yet fewer died; and the very first week's bill decreased1,843, a vast number indeed.

  It is impossible to express the change that appeared in the verycountenances of the people that Thursday morning when the weekly billcame out. It might have been perceived in their countenances that asecret surprise and smile of joy sat on everybody's face. They shook oneanother by the hands in the streets, who would hardly go on the sameside of the way with one another before. Where the streets were not toobroad, they would open their windows and call from one house to another,and asked how they did, and if they had heard the good news that theplague was abated. Some would return, when they said good news, and ask,"What good news?" And when they answered that the plague was abated, andthe bills decreased almost two thousand, they would cry out, "God bepraised!" and would weep aloud for joy, telling them they had heardnothing of it; and such was the joy of the people, that it was, as itwere, life to them from the grave. I could almost set down as manyextravagant things done in the excess of their joy as of their grief;but that would be to lessen the value of it.

  I must confess myself to have been very much dejected just before thishappened; for the prodigious numbers that were taken sick the week ortwo before, besides those that died, was[351] such, and the lamentationswere so great everywhere, that a man must have seemed to have acted evenagainst his reason if he had so much as expected to escape; and as therewas hardly a house but mine in all my neighborhood but what wasinfected, so, had it gone on, it would not have been long that therewould have been any more neighbors to be infected. Indeed, it is hardlycredible what dreadful havoc the last three weeks had made: for, if Imight believe the person whose calculations I always found very wellgrounded, there were not less than thirty thousand people dead, and nearone hundred thousand fallen sick, in the three weeks I speak of; for thenumber that sickened was surprising, indeed it was astonishing, andthose whose courage upheld them all the time before, sunk under it now.

  In the middle of their distress, when the condition of the city ofLondon was so truly calamitous, just then it pleased God, as it were, byhis immediate hand, to disarm this enemy: the poison was taken out ofthe sting. It was wonderful. Even the physicians themselves weresurprised at it. Wherever they visited, they found their patientsbetter,--either they had sweated kindly, or the tumors were broke, orthe carbuncles went down and the inflammations round them changed color,or the fever was gone, or the violent headache was assuaged, or somegood symptom was in the case,--so that in a few days everybody wasrecovering. Whole fa
milies that were infected and down, that hadministers praying with them, and expected death every hour, were revivedand healed, and none died at all out of them.

  Nor was this by any new medicine found out, or new method of curediscovered, or by any experience in the operation which the physiciansor surgeons attained to; but it was evidently from the secret invisiblehand of Him that had at first sent this disease as a judgment upon us.And let the atheistic part of mankind call my saying what they please,it is no enthusiasm: it was acknowledged at that time by all mankind.The disease was enervated, and its malignity spent; and let it proceedfrom whencesoever it will, let the philosophers search for reasons innature to account for it by, and labor as much as they will to lessenthe debt they owe to their Maker, those physicians who had the leastshare of religion in them were obliged to acknowledge that it was allsupernatural, that it was extraordinary, and that no account could begiven