A Journal of the Plague Year

by Daniel Defoe

  not only no Benefit, but injurious: Defoe reflects the controversy over the value of fires. In the epidemics of 1563, 1603, and 1625 fires were lit in the streets of London, and the authorities followed suit in 1665. Hodges argued against the practice in 1665, as did Mead and Blackmore in 1721; but the Hippocratic tradition was strong and the legend that Hippocrates had freed Athens of the plague by fires appealed to many. See Philip Rose, A Theruo-Practical, Miscellaneous, and Succinct Treatise of the Plague: ‘We have an Account of him, that he did free Greece from the Plague; for which Service the Athenians decreed and paid him the same Honours as to Hercules. We are informed, that he did set several Forests on fire, to purify the Air; which in my Judgment, was [a] ready way to destroy and carry off the Pestilential Effluviums in a great Measure’ (pp. 26–7). To Hodges, fires were ‘showy and expensive … and of no effect’ (Loimologia, 19).

  Fires … Wood … Coal: Boghurst writes that ‘Wood fires are accounted best’, and he names twenty-eight kinds of wood suitable. He adds: ‘Yet I know noe reason why Sea coale fires also should be discontinued’ (Loimographia, 61–2).

  Dog-days … Dog-Star: a period of about five weeks commonly said to begin on 3 July with the heliacal rising of Sirius in the Constellation of the Greater Dog, long noted for being a hot and unwholesome period and a time in which malignant influences prevailed.

  The Act of Uniformity: received royal assent 19 May 1662. Its provisions and required oaths led to the ejection of many, perhaps a fifth, of the Anglican beneficed clergy, one of whom was Dr Samuel Annesley, family pastor of the Foes, then living in St Giles, Cripplegate. The family and Defoe (aged 2) followed Annesley out of the Established Church into Nonconformity. For a brief general statement of Defoe’s attitude toward this Act, the Test Act, and the practice known as occasional conformity, see The Review, 22 Nov. 1705.

  almost 40,000: Defoe here uses the number of deaths from all causes as reported in the Bills of Mortality. The number of deaths attributed to the plague for the five weeks was 32,332.

  no Funeral … in the Day-time: Pepys reports: ‘Thence by water to the Duke of Albemarle’s … and strange to see in broad daylight two or three burials upon the Bankeside, one at the very heels of another: doubtless all of the plague; and yet at least forty or fifty people going along with every one of them’ (Diary, 6 Sept. 1665).

  Price of Bread … not much raised: the assize of bread by order of the Lord Mayor and the Court of Aldermen was reported weekly in the Bills of Mortality. H.F.’s facts are accurate. To conserve fuel during the plague and to adjust to the demands of a decreased population, the Bakers’ Company ruled in 1665 that ‘wives’ bread, that is, bread baked from the customer’s own dough, would be limited to three days. See Sylvia Thrupp, A Short History of the Worshipful Company of Bakers of London (1933), 114.

  two Pest-houses: see second note to p. 33. The Westminster pest-house was in Tothill Fields.

  Bakers Company: see second note to p. 155. The government and discipline of the Worshipful Company of Bakers of London were in the hands of the Master and Wardens and the Court of Assistants, the Court consisting of ex-wardens and others chosen from the livery.

  publish’d in Latin: a reference to Dr Nathaniel Hodges, a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, whose Loimologia was translated by John Quincy and published in 1720. For Hodges, see first note to p. 29.

  four Thousand in one Night: the figure is from Hodges, Loimologia, 24–5, where he laments the ill-advised action of the authorities in ordering fires in the streets for three days. Hodges suggests that the damp weather and the ‘suffocative effluvia of the coals’ had dire consequences the night of 9 September. H.F.’s scepticism is justified. With 6,088 deaths reported for the entire week it is not likely that 4,000 died in a single night.

  Air … corrupted and infected: here and in the following pages Defoe views the plague from the vantage of a contagionist rather than a miasmatist. The miasmatic conception, to which H.F. takes exception, was well stated by Boghurst in Loimographia: ‘The Plague is the perfection of putrefaction, or if you like it better in more words, thus: The Plague or Pestilence is a most subtle, peculiar, insinuating, venomous, deleterious Exhalation of the Foeces of the Earth extracted into the Aire by the heat of the sun, and difflated from place to place by the winds, and most tymes gradually but sometymes immediately agressing apt bodyes’ (p. 19).

  Turkish Predestinarianism: see note to p. 12.

  natural Causes: in his ‘Observations on the Bills of Mortality’, appended to London’s Remembrancer (1665) (a work Defoe may have used), John Bell quotes ‘our famous English Oratour, Bishop Andrews’: ‘The Plague (saith he) is caused by Gods wrath against Sin.… So that if there be a Plague, God is angry; and if there be a great Plague, God is very angry, & c. Ask the Physician the cause of it, and he will tell you the cause is in the air; the air is infected, the humours corrupted, the Contagion of the sick, coming to and conversing with the sound, and they be all true causes. But as we acknowledge these to be true, That in all Diseases, and even in this also there is a natural cause, so we say there is somewhat more, some what Divine and above Nature; as somewhat for the Physician, so some work for the Priest, and more too (it may be) for whosoever doth not acknowledge the ringer of God in this sickness, over and above all causes Natural, looketh not deeply enough into the cause thereof’ (sig. D2). See also second note to p. 65.

  Swellings broke: see first note to p. 71.

  Breath … infectious: H.F. reflects the confusion and uncertainty in plague literature over whether the breath of an infected person can transmit the disease. The belief of Hodges that this might be possible was rejected by Dr George Pye, in A Discourse of the Plague (1721), who asserted that the plague was not contagious in the sense that it can be communicated from one person to another: ‘it is not caused, nor propagated in that manner’ (p. 3). Cf. Thomas Phaer’s A Treatise of the Plague: ‘for the venimous aire it self, is not half so vehement to infect, as is the conversation or breth of them that are already infected’ (p. 12). The bubonic plague in its pneumonic stage is infectious.

  no Microscopes: in fact simple microscopes existed as early as the 1590s.

  cold Winter … long Frost: cf. Thomas Sydenham: ‘After an extremely cold winter, and after a dry frost that lasted without intermission until spring … peripneumonies, pleurisies, quinsies, and all such inflammatory diseases, suddenly caused a great mortality’ (Works (1848), i. 97).

  lend to the Lord … repay them: Proverbs 19: 17.

  Cripplegate … 17800 Pounds: an unlikely sum. See note to p. 81.

  twenty thousand a Day … Naples: Defoe’s source was probably An Account of the Plague at Naples, in 1656, of which there died in one Day 20,000 Persons, reprinted in A Collection of Very Valuable and Scarce Pieces. In Due Preparations for the Plague Defoe repeats this figure with a denial.

  woolen Manufactures … retentive … Bodies: it was widely believed that certain goods had an affinity with the ‘venomous particles’ which caused the plague. ‘even Packs and Bails of Goods carry the poisonous Miasmata about with them … nothing is more likely to preserve it than animal Substances, as Hair, Wool, Leather, Skins, &c. because the very Manner of its Production, and Nature of its Origin, seems to give it a greater Affinity with such Substances than any other, and to dispose it to rest therein until by Warmth, Ventilation, or any other Means of Dislodgement, it is put into Motion, and raised again into the ambient Air’ (John Quincy, An Essay on … Pestilential Diseases (3rd edn., 1720), 52–3). Mead’s list contained, in addition, cotton, hemp, flax, paper or books, silk of all kinds, linen, feathers. He recommended that all such goods should be kept in quarantine and exposed to fresh air for forty days (Short Discourse, 24–5). In Applebee’s Journal, 29 July 1721, Defoe refers to ‘the poor unhappy city of Toulon, who had the Distemper brought among them in a Bale of Silk from Marseilles’. For a denial of this view, see J. Pringle, MD, Rational Enquiry into the Nature of the Plague (1722), 7
ff., and Joseph Browne, MD, A Practical Treatise of the Plague (1720), 24–5.

  Islands of the Arches: the Grecian Archipelago.

  Scanderoon: i.e. Iskanderun, or Alexandretto, a seaport of Asiatic Turkey.

  1st of July … died … seven … City: the Bills of Mortality show 100 deaths from plague to 27 June in the City and Liberties of Westminster and five deaths in the three parishes mentioned.

  Manufactures … infected: since certain goods were thought to retain the ‘poisonous effluvia’, importations were considered dangerous and the effectiveness of a quarantine was a serious matter. Therefore Defoe supported the rigorous Quarantine Act of 1722. A Bill for prohibiting commerce with infected countries received royal assent on 12 February 1722 (8 Geo. I, c. 10). Defoe wrote: ‘The Damage of obliging Ships to Quarantine, is … very considerable to the Merchants; it spoils their Goods, and many sorts of Goods are perishable, and subject to decay in others. The Profit of the whole Voyage depends upon the Season of coming into Market.… [Delay] stagnates Trade … encreases the Risk, and every way harasses the Merchant in his Business. Yet all this we cheerfully submit to for the Reason of it; ’tis allow’d to be just, to be necessary.… But if one Villain can pass the Barriers set,—if one Man can escape out of these Ships, with a Parcel of any sort of Goods, dangerous to Health, he may lodge the Plague among us … and we are all undone’ (Applebee’s Journal, 29 July 1721).

  clandestine Trade: in his Short Discourse Mead warned: ‘But above all it is necessary, that the Clandestine Importing of Goods be punished with the utmost Rigour’ (6th edn. (1720), 30). In Due Preparations for the Plague, Defoe wrote: ‘We have a set of men among us so bent upon their gain, by that we call clandestine trade, that they would even venture to import the plague itself … not valuing the horrid injustice that they do to other people’ (Aitken edn., p. 11). He approved the bill sponsored by the government ‘to prevent the clandestine Running of Goods’ (8 Geo. I, c. 18), which received royal assent 7 Mar. 1722, despite opposition from City Merchants.

  Trade … at a full stop: the impact of quarantine on trade was much discussed in 1721. Dr George Pye argued, in opposition to Mead, that ‘the Plague may possibly destroy a hundred thousand lives, but the Loss of Trade may starve and destroy ten times a hundred thousand’ (A Discourse of the Plague, 51).

  coasting Trade for Corn … Coals: in A Tour thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724–6) Defoe describes the two corn markets in London, Bear Key and Queenhithe, as ‘Monsters for Magnitude, and not to be matched in the World’. To Bear Key ‘comes all the vast Quantity of Corn that is brought into the City by Sea’. The other market was chiefly for malt. The coal market at Billingsgate was supplied mainly from New castle and the northern regions. ‘The Quantity of Coals, which it is supposed are, Communibus Annis, burnt and consumed in and about this City, is supposed to be about Five hundred thousand Chalder, every Chalder containing Thirty-six Bushels’ (Tour, i. 347–8). A chalder of coal: a dry measure, varying in amount from 32 to 40 bushels.

  heat … opens the Pores: cf. Kemp, A Brief Treatise … of the Pestilence: ‘To guard your self from the corrupted air, you may do well … to be within doors at noon and the heat of the day, when the pores being more open are apter to receive Infection’ (47).

  War with the Dutch: England declared war on the Dutch on 22 Feb. 1665. The ‘Capers’ were privateers.

  Price of Coals … dear: an attempt to control the price of coal during the Plague is evident in an act of the Common Council, 1 June 1665. ‘For the benefit and relief of the Poor’ the City Companies were required to purchase and store coal between Lady-day and Michaelmas, to be sold ‘in dear times, at such prices as the Lord Mayor and Aldermen should direct’. See also note to p. 187.

  publick Fires: see second and third notes to p. 148.

  but not of Hay or Grass: cf. Boghurst, Loimographia: ‘… the spring being continuall dry … which caused a pitifull crop of Hay’ (p. 29).

  excessive Plenty … Fruit: cf. Hodges, Loimologia, 20. ‘The Year was luxuriant in most Fruits, especially Cherries and Grapes … at so low a Price, that the common People surfeited with them.’

  Mechanicks: manual labourers or men of mean occupations.

  Poor … pinch’d … London only: if London manufacturing and trading activity declined, all of England suffered, a fixed idea in Defoe’s economic thinking. Cf. The Review, no. 4, 18 Feb. 1706: ‘London is the great Center of this Circulation … hither all the Manufactures in the Nation from the several and remotest Countries are convey’d in gross, as to the vast Center of Trade; and here they pass from the Wholesaler to the Merchant, from the Ware-house to the Shop, and from thence, by a happy Counter-changing again, are transmitted to all the several Parts of the Kingdom again; and upon this Circulation … more Families depend, and are maintain’d, than upon the first Working of the whole Manufacture of the Nation.’

  Calamity … enrich’d the Country: the economic utility of natural calamities. This is the principle Defoe reflects at this point in his assertion that the Fire of London (1666), by virtue of its destructiveness, created a great demand for goods and services; an idea much discussed in both an economic and a religious context in Defoe’s day and earlier. Defoe’s contemporary, Bernard Mandeville, in The Fable of the Bees (2nd edn., 1723), has a passage reminiscent of Defoe: ‘The Fire of London was a great Calamity, but if the Carpenters, Bricklayers, Smiths, and all, not only that are employed in Building but likewise those that made and dealt in the same Manufactures and other Merchandizes that were burnt, and other Trades again that got by them when they were in full Employ, were to Vote against those who lost by the Fire; the rejoicings would equal if not exceed the Complaints. In recruiting what is lost and destroy’d by Fire, Storms, Sea-fights, Sieges, Battles, a considerable pan of Trade consists’ (The Fable of the Bees: Or, Private Vices, Public Benefits, ed. F. B. Kaye (1924), i. 359).

  People … flock’d to Town: ‘And a delightfull thing it is to see the towne full of people again as now it is; and shops begin to open, though in many places seven or eight together, and more, all shut; but yet the towne is full, compared with what it used to be’ (Pepys, Diary, 5 Jan. 1665–6). H.F.’s remark that the plague increased by 400 is nearly accurate. The Bills of Mortality report 1,031 deaths from plague in the last week of October and 1,414 in the first week of November. The number of parishes infected increased from 97 to 110.

  now infected … Norwich … Colchester: of the provincial towns and cities mentioned by Defoe, Colchester and Norwich were most affected. Colchester particularly suffered from a continuous plague from the summer of 1665 to December of 1666. Creighton calls this ‘the greatest of all provincial plagues since the Black Death’, with one possible exception (A History of Epidemics in England (2nd edn., 1965), i. 688).

  Deodands: from deodandum, a thing to be given to God; in English law a personal chattel which having occasioned the death of a person was forfeited to the Crown for pious uses.

  Physick Garden: for herbs used in medical prescriptions.

  199 Sir Robert Clayton: a wealthy merchant and Whig politician (1629–1707), he served as alderman, Lord Mayor, and Member of Parliament. He was much attacked by Tory pamphleteers. Defoe attacks him violently in Reformation of Manners (1702), but presents him favourably in Roxana (1724), where he acts as a financial adviser to the heroine. This passage appears to be taken from Ogilby and Morgan’s plan of the city.

  Quakers … burying Ground: in Bunhill Fields.

  Reproach … Physicians: at the first meeting of the Royal Society after the plague, 22 January 1666, Pepys heard Dr Jonathan Goddard defend himself and his fellow physicians who had fled from London: ‘their particular patients were most gone out of towne, and they left at liberty’ (Diary, 22 Jan. 1666). Goddard was Gresham Professor of Physic, an original member of the Royal Society, and inventor of the famous Goddard’s drop. Hodges defended the fleeing physicians on much the same ground: they fled ‘not so much for their
own Preservation, as the Service of those whom they attend’ (Loimologia, 23).

  Act of Indemnity: passed 29 August 1600, it pardoned, with some exceptions, those who had rebelled against the crown to form the Commonwealth.

  penal Laws: the Clarendon Code; see first note to p. 24.

  Death … pale Horse: Revelation 6: 8.

  Headboroughs: officers with the duties of Petty Constables.