DEFOE'S JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR PT 2

#DEFOE'S JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR PART 2

As abridged for Twitter

In these extracts, as the Plague begins to grip more tightly, places of entertainment are closed, there is a large increase in spurious and superstitious cures, & the people of London begin to practice social distancing.

One day I went up Holborn and the street was full of people but they walked in the middle of the great street because, as I supposed, they would not mingle with anybody that came out of houses or meet with smells or scents from houses that might be infected.

The people were more addicted to prophecies, astrological conjurations, dreams & old wives’ tales than ever before or since. Books frighted them terribly such as Poor Robin’s Almanack, and religious books all or most part of which foretold the ruin of the city.

The imagination of the people was turned wayward and possessed. Some endeavours were made to suppress such books as terrified the people, but nothing was done, the Government being unwilling to exasperate the people who were all out of their wits already.

This folly made the town swarm with a wicked generation of pretenders to magic & it became common to have signs set up at doors ‘Here lives a fortune-teller’ with Friar Bacon’s brazen head, the sign of Mother Shipton or of Merlin’s head & the like.

The Government appointed public prayers & days of fasting to implore the mercy of God & it is not to be expressed how the people flocked to the churches & meetings & they were all so thronged that there was often no coming near even to the very largest churches

All plays were forbid to act. The gaming-tables, public dancing-rooms & music-houses which had debauched the manners of the people were shut up & suppressed & the jack-puddings, merry-andrews, puppet-shows, rope-dancers and suchlike shut up their shops

for the minds of the people were agitated & Death was before their eyes & everybody began to think of their graves & not of mirth & diversions. The common people, ignorant & stupid as they were, were now led by their fright to extremes of folly.

They were as mad about running to quacks & mountebanks for medicines and remedies, storing themselves with such multitudes of pills potions & preservatives, that they not only spent their money but poisoned themselves & prepared their bodies for the plague.

It is incredible how the posts of houses & the corners of streets were plastered with papers of doctors & ignorant fellows quacking & tampering in physic & inviting the people to come to them for ‘Infallible preventative pills against the plague’.

These quacking sort of fellows raised great gains out of the miserable people. Their doors were infinitely more thronged than those of Dr Brooks, Dr Upton or any of the most famous men of the time. I was told some got £5 a day by their physic. 

There was another madness beyond all this of the poor and this was in wearing charms, philtres, exorcisms, amulets & I know not what, as if the plague were not the hand of God but a kind of possession of an evil spirit,

& that this was to be kept off with crossings, signs of the zodiac, papers tied up with so many knots and certain words or figures written on them as particularly the word ABRACADABRA formed in triangle or pyramid.

How many of these poor people were afterwards carried away in the dead-carts & thrown into common graves of every parish with these hellish charms and trumpery hanging about their necks remains to be spoken of as we go along.

Many consciences were awakened. People might be heard saying “I have been a thief. I have been an adulterer. I have been a murderer” & none durst stop to make the least inquiry of these matters

 Of crimes long concealed many a robbery, many a murder was then confessed aloud and nobody surviving to record it. Death now began not to hover over men’s heads only, but to look into their chambers and stare in their faces.

Some ministers did visit the sick for a little while but it was not to be done long. The very buriers of the dead who were the hardenedest creatures in town were sometimes so terrified that they durst not go into houses where whole families were swept away.

The magistrates began to take the condition of the people into their serious consideration, having seen the foolish humour of running after quacks & mountebanks, wizards & fortune-tellers even to madness.

The Lord Mayor a very sober & religious gentleman appointed physicians & surgeons for the relief of the diseased poor & ordered the College of Physicians to print directions for cheap remedies & give copies gratis to all.