JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR PT 5

PART 5

In this extract Defoe's narrator argues against the use of lockdown to prevent the spread of the plague. He notices that as the infection spreads people take less, not more, notice of the Lord Mayor's restrictions. The government of London nevertheless continues to operate.

As examiners we scarce came to any house where the  plague had visibly appeared but that some of them were fled. The magistrates would charge the examiners with being remiss. But many houses were long infected before it was known.

We could not come at the truth but by enquiring at the door, or of the neighbours, & on that we could not depend. Going into every house to search was a part no citizen would undertake, for it would be exposing us to certain infection and death. 

Being a short time an examiner of houses I spoke my opinion among my neighbours that shutting up people in their houses did not answer the end, as I have said, for distempered people still went day by day about the streets

& many that went out had the plague yet thought themselves sound & walked the streets till they fell down dead. The infection in their blood preyed secretly on their vitals till it seized their heart with mortal power & the patient died in a moment as with an apoplexy.

I got myself discharged of the dangerous office as soon as I could get another whom I obtained for a little money. So instead of serving 2 months I was not above 3 weeks in it, a great while too, for the distemper in August raged with great violence at our end of town.

Besides confining whole families, a method to have removed the sound from the sick would have been much more reasonable, leaving with the sick persons but those who request to stay. Those that were well should keep retired 20 or 30 days in demi-quarantine.

However after a while the fury of infection so increased that they shut up no houses at all. The remedies of that kind had been used & found fruitless. People sat still looking at each other and seemed abandoned to despair & think all regulations & methods were in vain.

When I say people abandoned themselves to despair I mean not what men call religious despair but despair of their being able to outlive the plague. This was a time when it was reported that above 3000 people died in one night. Many houses were then left desolate.

This very thing had a strange effect, that people were no more shy of one another, or restrained within doors, but went anywhere & everywhere & began to converse in any company: ‘I do not ask how you are, or say how I am. ’Tis no matter who is sick or who is sound.’

As it brought people into public company so it was surprising how it brought them to crowd into churches. They inquired no more into whom they sat near to or far from, what offensive smells they met with but looking on themselves as so many corpses they had no caution.

The people made no scruple of desiring such Dissenters as had been deprived of their living by the Act of Uniformity to preach in the churches, &  Dissenters who had broken off from the Church of England were now content to conform to the worship which they did not approve of before

Here we may observe, & I hope it will not be amiss, that a near view of death will soon reconcile men to one another, scum off the gall from our tempers & bring us to see with differing eyes than those which we looked on things with before.

But as terror of infection abated those things all returned to their less desirable channel & to the course they were in before. ’Tis evident death will reconcile us all & we shall be brethren again. Why we cannot do so here I can say nothing to but that it remains to be lamented.

I could dwell a great while upon the calamities of this dreadful time & describe the distraction sick people were driven into. But after I have told you, what can be added more? What can be said to give a more perfect idea of a complicated distress?

One thing I cannot omit here viz. that all the astrologers, fortune-tellers, conjurors and dreamers of dreams were gone and vanished. Many went to their long home, not able to foretell their own fate. But none ever appeared again after the calamity was over.

I am now come to the month of September which was the most dreadful, I believe, that ever London saw, the numbers in the weekly mortality bill amounting to almost 40,000 from 22^nd August to 26^th September, a prodigious number of itself.

When the plague first began the Lord Mayor, Sherriffs, Aldermen and Councilmen came to a resolution that they would not quit the city but be at hand for doing the duty  & discharging the trust reposed in them by the citizens to the utmost of their power.

They held councils every day for preserving civil peace using the people with all gentleness & clemency but such as thieves, housebreakers, plunderers of the dead were duly punished. Constables and churchwardens were enjoined to stay upon severe penalties.

Bakers were taken under particular order to see the weekly assize of bread appointed by my Lord Mayor observed & provisions were never wanted in the markets where the country people came so freely & boldly that I reproached myself with being so timorous & cautious.

The streets were kept clear of dead bodies or any such things as were indecent or unpleasant. Where anybody died suddenly in the street these were covered with some blanket or removed to a nearby churchyard until night. All works that carried terror with them…

 …were done in the night. My Lord Mayor had a low gallery built in his hall where he stood a little removed above the crowd when any complaint came to be heard, so that justice was executed without interruption.