DEFOE'S JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR PT 7

PART 7 In which the narrator looks at the disastrous effect of the plague on business and at how as soon as infection began to slacken people cast off their fear & began to associate again.

Our merchants were at full stop. Their merchandise would not be touched abroad for the bad news was gone over the whole world that London was infected with the plague & it was no purpose to endeavour to make people abroad think it better than it was.

Indeed rumour was infinitely greater & our friends abroad heard there died 20,000 in a week & that dead bodies lay unburied in heaps & they could not believe us when we wrote them there was 500,000 that lived & not above one 10^th of people dead.

Master workmen, clothiers & others, to the uttermost of their stocks & strength, kept on making their goods to keep the poor at work, believing that as soon as the sickness should abate they would have a quick demand, though none but those that were rich could do this.

In September the bill of mortality decreased almost 2,000 & in a few weeks more the decrease went on. The distemper was as catching as ever but my friend Dr Heath told me that he was sure that the violence would assuage in a few days.

This notion ran like lightning through the city & the people gave up all their cautions & care. The physicians opposed this thoughtless humour, advising people to continue reserved terrifying them with the danger of bringing a more fatal relapse to the city.

But the audacious creatures would not be persuaded. They opened shops , went about streets, did business & conversed with anybody. This imprudent rash conduct cost a great many their lives who had previously shut themselves up & been preserved.

In the country the people were so tired with being so long from London that they flocked to town without fear or forecast as if all had been well. The consequence was that the bills increased again, 400 the first week in November, most of them new-comers too.

The people of London thought themselves so plague-free now that they were past all admonitions. They seemed to depend on it that the air was restored like a man that had had the smallpox, not capable of being infected again.

 But God’s mercy was greater than we had reason to expect. As the winter weather came on apace & the air was clear & cold & most of those that fell sick recovered, the health of the city began at last to return.