JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR PT 4

PART 4

In these extracts life in London becomes increasingly alien. Many behave without care for others, or with a peculiar madness born from desperation. Our narrator is unwillingly appointed an inspector of the lockdown.

What a desolate place the city was at that time! The great street I lived in was more like a green field than a paved street. Leadenhall St, Bishopsgate, Cornhill & even the Exchange itself had grass growing in them.

Neither cart or coach were seen from morning to evening except some country carts to bring roots & beans or peas, hay, straw to the market & those very few.  Coaches were scarce used but to carry sick people to the pest houses & other hospitals.

Coaches were dangerous things & people didn’t care to venture into them not knowing who might have been carried in them last. There were very few physicians that cared to stir abroad & many of the most eminent were dead.

I suppose the world has heard of the famous Solomon Eagle, an enthusiast & preacher who though not infected but in the head went about denouncing the city in a frightful manner sometimes quite naked & with a pan of burning charcoal on his head.

I will not say whether that clergyman was distracted or not. These things were only the dismal objects which represented themselves as I looked out through my windows (for I seldom opened the casements) while I confined myself within doors.

There were many instances of pity and duty but in general the danger of immediate death to ourselves took away all bowels of love, all concern for one another. One of the most deplorable cases was that of women with child when their pains came upon them.

Such women were reduced to utmost distress. Most midwives were dead or fled so it was next to impossible for a poor woman to get any to come to her & many were spoiled by the rashness and ignorance of those who would lay them. Some died in the very pains of their travail & the infant half born.

I had about this time a little hardship put upon me, being appointed by the aldermen an examiner of the houses in the precinct. I endeavoured with all my might & used many arguments with the alderman’s deputy to be excused this 2 months appointment.

I alleged that I was against shutting up houses at all & it would be hard to be an instrument in what was against my judgement. But all the abatement I could get was to be appointed but 3 weeks on condition I could get some other to serve the rest of the time for me.

Several physicians told My Lord Mayor that it was impossible to go about & inquire who was sick & who well or shut them up with exactness the infection having ravaged & taken its leave of so many houses before it was known they were touched.

Shutting up of houses was therefore perfectly insufficient to prevent the spreading of the infection & as far as I was employed in directing that severity I frequently saw that it was incapable of answering that end.

It is true that shutting up houses had one effect, namely, it confined people who would otherwise have been very troublesome in running about the streets with the distemper on them, as they began to do at first till they were thus restrained.

A substantial citizen’s wife was murdered by one of these creatures in Aldersgate St. He was going along raving mad & singing & meeting this gentlewoman he would kiss her. She ran from him but there was nobody near to help her.

When she saw he would overtake her she turned & thrust him down backward. But very unhappily he caught hold of her & pulled her down also, mastered her and kissed her. And when all was done he told her he had the plague & why should she not have it as well?

I believe it is not known to this day how many people in their deliriums drowned themselves in the Thames & in the river that runs from the marshes by Hackney for many of the bodies were never found who yet were known to be lost.

The city being to suffer severely the next year by fire it was merciful of Providence that no considerable fires or calamity of that kind happened in the city during this plague year. People in their madness did many other desperate things, so this was very strange.

One infected creature in the agony of his swellings got his shoes on ran downstairs into the street his nurse running after, calling the Watch to stop him. He ran down to the Stillyard stairs threw away his shirt & plunged into the Thames.

He swam quite over the river & the tide coming in he reached the land not till Falcon Stairs where he ran about the streets naked until it being high tide he takes the river again & swam back to the Stillyard, ran up the streets & into his bed again.

This terrible experience cured him of the Plague, that is to say that the violent motion of his arms & legs stretched the parts where the swellings were under his arms and groin & caused them to break & the cold water of the river abated his fever.