Part 24

Abundance of people came to him accordingly, to whom he made a great many fine speeches, examined them of the state of their health and of the constitution of their bodies, and told them many good things to do which were of no great moment; but the issue and conclusion of all was, that he had a preparation which, if they took such a quantity of every morning, he would pawn his life that they should never have the plague,--no, though they lived in the house with people that were infected. This made the people all resolve to have it; but then the price of that was so much,--I think it was half a crown. "But, sir," says one poor woman, "I am a poor almswoman, and am kept by the parish, and your bills say you give the poor your help for nothing." "Ay, good woman," says the doctor, "so I do, as I published there; I give my advice, but not my physic!" "Alas, sir," says she, "that is a snare laid for the poor then, for you give them your advice for nothing: that is to say, you advise them gratis, to buy your physic for their money; so does every shopkeeper with his wares." Here the woman began to give him ill words, and stood at his door all that day, telling her tale to all the people that came, till the doctor, finding she turned away his customers, was obliged to call her up-stairs again and give her his box of physic for nothing, which perhaps too was good for nothing when she had it.

THE PEOPLE ARE QUARANTINED IN THEIR HOUSES

This shutting up of houses was at first counted a very cruel and unchristian method, and the poor people so confined made bitter lamentations; complaints of the severity of it were also daily brought to my lord mayor, of houses causelessly and some maliciously shut up; I cannot say, but upon inquiry, many that complained so loudly were found in a condition to be continued; and others again, inspection being made upon the sick person and the sickness not appearing infectious, or if uncertain, yet on his being content to be carried to the pest-house, was released.

As I went along Houndsditch one morning about eight o'clock there was a great noise; it is true indeed that there was not much crowd, because the people were not very free to gather together, or to stay together when they were there, nor did I stay long there; but the outcry was loud enough to prompt my curiosity, and I called to one who looked out of a window, and asked what was the matter.

A watchman, it seems, had been employed to keep his post at the door of a house which was infected, or said to be infected, and was shut up; he had been there all night for two nights together, as he told his story, and the day watchman had been there one day, and was now come to relieve him; all this while no noise had been heard in the house, no light had been seen, they called for nothing, sent him on no errands, which used to be the chief business of the watchman, neither had they given him any disturbance, as he said, from Monday afternoon, when he heard a great crying and screaming in the house, which as he supposed was occasioned by some of the family dying just at that time. It seems the night before, the dead-cart, as it was called, had been stopt there, and a servant-maid had been brought down to the door dead, and the buriers or bearers, as they were called, put her into the cart, wrapped only in a green rug, and carried her away.

The watchman had knocked at the door, it seems, when he heard that noise and crying as above, and nobody answered a great while; but at last one looked out and said with an angry quick tone, and yet a kind of crying voice, or a voice of one that was crying, "What d'ye want, that you make such a knocking?" He answered, "I am the watchman; how do you do? What is the matter?" The person answered, "What is that to you? Stop the dead-cart." This, it seems, was about one o'clock; soon after, as the fellow said, he stopped the dead-cart, and then knocked again, but nobody answered; he continued knocking, and the bellman called out several times, "Bring out your dead;" but nobody answered, till the man that drove the cart, being called to other houses, would stay no longer, and drove away.

The watchman knew not what to make of all this, so he let them alone till the morning man, or day watchman, as they called him, came to relieve him. Giving him an account of the particulars, they knocked at the door a great while, but nobody answered, and they observed that the window or casement at which the person looked out who had answered before, continued open, being up two pair of stairs.

Upon this the two men, to satisfy their curiosity, got a long ladder, and one of them went up to the window and looked into the room, where he saw a woman lying dead upon the floor in a dismal manner, having no clothes on her but her shift; but though he called aloud, and putting in his long staff, knocked hard on the floor, yet nobody stirred or answered; neither could he hear any noise in the house.

He came down upon this, and acquainted his fellow, who went up also, and finding it just so, they resolved to acquaint either the lord mayor or some other magistrate of it, but did not offer to go in at the window. The magistrate, it seems, upon the information of the two men ordered the house to be broken open, a constable and other persons being appointed to be present, that nothing might be plundered; and accordingly it was so done, when nobody was found in the house but that young woman, who having been infected and past recovery, the rest had left her to die by herself, and every one gone, having found some way to delude the watchman and to get open the door, or get out at some back door, or over the tops of the houses, so that he knew nothing of it; and as to those cries and shrieks which he heard, it was supposed they were the passionate cries of the family at this bitter parting, which to be sure it was to them all, this being the sister to the mistress of the family. The man of the house, his wife, several children and servants, being all gone and fled; whether sick or sound, that I could never learn, nor indeed did I make much inquiry after it.

MORAL EFFECTS OF THE PLAGUE

Here we may observe, and I hope it will not be amiss to take notice of it, that a near view of death would soon reconcile men of good principles one to another, and that it is chiefly owing to our easy situation in life, and our putting these things far from us, that our breaches are fomented, ill blood continued, prejudices, breach of charity and of Christian union so much kept and so far carried on among us as it is: another plague year would reconcile all these differences; a close conversing with death or with diseases that threaten death would scum off the gall from our tempers, remove the animosities among us, and bring us to see with differing eyes than those which we looked on things before; as the people who had been used to join with the church were reconciled at this time with the admitting the Dissenters, who with an uncommon prejudice had broken off from the communion of the Church of England, were now content to come to their parish churches, and to conform to the worship which they did not approve of before; but as the terror of the infection abated, those things all returned again to their less desirable channel, and to the course they were in before.

I mention this but historically. I have no mind to enter into arguments to move either or both sides to a more charitable compliance one with another; I do not see that it is probable such a discourse would be either suitable or successful; the breaches seem rather to widen, and tend to a widening farther than to closing; and who am I that I should think myself able to influence either one side or the other? But this I may repeat again, that it is evident death will reconcile us all--on the other side the grave we shall be all brethren again; in heaven, whither I hope we may come from all parties and persuasions, we shall find neither prejudice nor scruple; there we shall be of one principle and of one opinion. Why we cannot be content to go hand in hand to the place where we shall join heart and hand, without the least hesitation and with the most complete harmony and affection; I say, why we cannot do so here, I can say nothing to, neither shall I say anything more of it but that it remains to be lamented.

TERRIBLE SCENES IN THE STREETS

This [38,195 deaths in about a month] was a prodigious number of itself; but if I should add the reasons which I have to believe that this account was deficient, and how deficient it was, you would with me make no scruple to believe that there died above 10,000 a week for all those weeks, and a proportion for several weeks both before and after. The confusion among the people, especially within the city, at that time was inexpressible; the terror was so great at last that the courage of the people appointed to carry away the dead began to fail them; nay, several of them died, although they had the distemper before, and were recovered; and some of them dropped down when they had been carrying the bodies even at the pitside, and just ready to throw them in; and this confusion was greater in the city, because they had flattered themselves with hopes of escaping, and thought the bitterness of death was past. One cart, they told us, going up to Shoreditch, was forsaken by the drivers, or being left to one man to drive, he died in the street; and the horses, going on, overthrew the cart and left the bodies, some thrown here, some there, in a dismal manner. Another cart was, it seems, found in the great pit in Finsbury Fields, the driver being dead, or having been gone and abandoned it; and the horses running too near it, the cart fell in and drew the horses in also. It was suggested that the driver was thrown in with it and that the cart fell upon him, by reason his whip was seen to be in the pit among the bodies; but that, I suppose, could not be certain.

In our parish of Aldgate the dead-carts were several times, as I have heard, found standing at the churchyard gate, full of dead bodies; but neither bellman, nor driver, nor any one else with it. Neither in these nor in many other cases did they know what bodies they had in their cart, for sometimes they were let down with ropes out of balconies and out of windows; and sometimes the bearers brought them to the cart, sometimes other people; nor, as the men themselves said, did they trouble themselves to keep any account of the numbers.

THE PLAGUE DUE TO NATURAL CAUSES

I would be far from lessening the awe of the judgments of God, and the reverence to his Providence, which ought always to be on our minds on such occasions as these; doubtless the visitation itself is a stroke from heaven upon a city, or country, or nation where it falls, a messenger of his vengeance, and a loud call to that nation, or country, or city, to humiliation and repentance, according to that of the prophet Jeremiah, xviii. 7, 8: "At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom to pluck up, and pull down, and destroy it; if that nation against whom I have pronounced turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them." Now to prompt due impressions of the awe of God on the minds of men on such occasions, and not to lessen them, it is that I have left those minutes upon record.

I say, therefore, I reflect upon no man for putting the reason of those things upon the immediate hand of God, and the appointment and direction of his Providence; nay, on the contrary there were many wonderful deliverances of persons when infected, which intimate singular and remarkable Providence in the particular instances to which they refer; and I esteem my own deliverance to be one next to miraculous, and do record it with thankfulness.

But when I am speaking of the plague as a distemper arising from natural causes, we must consider it as it was really propagated by natural means; nor is it at all the less a judgment for its being under the conduct of human causes and effects: for as the Divine power has formed the whole scheme of nature, and maintains nature in its course, so the same power thinks fit to let his own actings with men, whether of mercy or judgment, to go on in the ordinary course of natural causes, and he is pleased to act by those natural causes as the ordinary means; excepting and reserving to himself nevertheless a power to act in a supernatural way when he sees occasion. Now it is evident that in the case of an infection there is no apparent extraordinary occasion for supernatural operation, but the ordinary course of things appears sufficiently armed and made capable of all the effects that heaven usually directs by a contagion. Among these causes and effects, this of the secret conveyance of infection, imperceptible and unavoidable, is more than sufficient to execute the fierceness of Divine vengeance, without putting it upon supernaturals and miracles.

This acute penetrating nature of the disease itself was such, and the infection was received so imperceptibly, that the most exact caution could not secure us while in the place; but I must be allowed to believe,--and I have so many examples fresh in my memory to convince me of it that I think none can resist their evidence,--I say, I must be allowed to believe that no one in this whole nation ever received the sickness or infection but who received it in the ordinary way of infection from somebody, or the clothes, or touch, or stench of somebody that was infected before.

SPREAD OF THE PLAGUE THROUGH NECESSITIES OF THE POOR

Before people came to right notions of the infection, and of infecting one another, people were only shy of those that were really sick; a man with a cap upon his head, or with cloths round his neck, which was the case of those that had swellings there,--such was indeed frightful. But when we saw a gentleman dressed, with his band on, and his gloves in his hand, his hat upon his head, and his hair combed, of such we had not the least apprehensions, and people conversed a great while freely, especially with their neighbors and such as they knew. But when the physicians assured us that the danger was as well from the sound,--that is, the seemingly sound,--as the sick, and that those people that thought themselves entirely free were oftentimes the most fatal; and that it came to be generally understood that people were sensible of it, and of the reason of it; then, I say, they began to be jealous of everybody, and a vast number of people locked themselves up so as not to come abroad into any company at all, nor suffer any that had been abroad in promiscuous company to come into their houses or near them; at least not so near them as to be within the reach of their breath or of any smell from them; and when they were obliged to converse at a distance with strangers, they would always have preservatives in their mouths, and about their clothes, to repel and keep off the infection.

It must be acknowledged that when people began to use these cautions, they were less exposed to danger, and the infection did not break into such houses so furiously as it did into others before; and thousands of families were preserved, speaking with due reserve to the direction of divine Providence, by that means.

But it was impossible to beat anything into the heads of the poor; they went on with the usual impetuosity of their tempers, full of outcries and lamentations when taken, but madly careless of themselves, foolhardy and obstinate, while they were well. Where they could get employment, they pushed into any kind of business, the most dangerous and the most liable to infection; and if they were spoken to, their answer would be:--"I must trust in God for that; if I am taken, then I am provided for, and there is an end of me;" and the like. Or thus:--"Why, what must I do? I cannot starve; I had as good have the plague as perish for want; I have no work, what could I do? I must do this or beg." Suppose it was burying the dead, or attending the sick, or watching infected houses, which were all terrible hazards; but their tale was generally the same. It is true, necessity was a justifiable, warrantable plea, and nothing could be better; but their way of talk was much the same where the necessities were not the same. This adventurous conduct of the poor was that which brought the plague among them in a most furious manner; and this, joined to the distress of their circumstances when taken, was the reason why they died so by heaps; for I cannot say I could observe one jot of better husbandry among them,--I mean the laboring poor,--while they were all well and getting money, than there was before, but as lavish, as extravagant, and as thoughtless for to-morrow as ever; so that when they came to be taken sick, they were immediately in the utmost distress, as well for want as for sickness, as well for lack of food as lack of health.

FROM 'COLONEL JACK'

COLONEL JACK AND CAPTAIN JACK ESCAPE ARREST

We had not parleyed thus long, but though in the dead of the night, came a man to the other inn door--for as I said above, there are two inns at that place--and called for a pot of beer; but the people were all in bed, and would not rise; he asked them if they had seen two fellows come that way upon one horse. The man said he had; that they went by in the afternoon, and asked the way to Cambridge, but did not stop only to drink one mug. "Oh!" says he, "are they gone to Cambridge? Then I'll be with them quickly." I was awake in a little garret of the next inn, where we lodged; and hearing the fellow call at the door, got up and went to the window, having some uneasiness at every noise I heard; and by that means heard the whole story. Now the case is plain, our hour was not come; our fate had determined other things for us, and we were to be reserved for it. The matter was thus:--When we first came to Bournbridge we called at the first house and asked the way to Cambridge, drank a mug of beer, and went on, and they might see us turn off to go the way they directed; but night coming on, and we being very weary, we thought we should not find the way; and we came back in the dusk of the evening and went into the other house, being the first as we came back, as that where we called before was the first as we went forward.

You may be sure I was alarmed now, as indeed I had reason to be. The Captain was in bed and fast asleep, but I wakened him, and roused him with a noise that frighted him enough. "Rise, Jack," said I, "we are both ruined; they are come after us hither." Indeed, I was wrong to terrify him at that rate; for he started and jumped out of bed and ran directly to the window, not knowing where he was, and not quite awake, was just going to jump out of the window, but I laid hold of him. "What are you going to do?" says I. "I won't be taken," says he; "let me alone; where are they?"

This was all confusion; and he was so out of himself with the fright, and being overcome with sleep, that I had much to do to prevent his jumping out of the window. However, I held him fast and thoroughly wakened him, and then all was well again and he was presently composed.

Then I told him the story, and we sat together upon the bedside, considering what we should do; upon the whole, as the fellow that called was apparently gone to Cambridge, we had nothing to fear, but to be quiet till daybreak, and then to mount and be gone.

Accordingly, as soon as day peeped we were up; and having happily informed ourselves of the road at the other house, and being told that the road to Cambridge turned off on the left hand, and that the road to Newmarket lay straight forward: I say, having learnt this, the Captain told me he would walk away on foot towards Newmarket, and so when I came to go out I should appear as a single traveler; and accordingly he went out immediately, and away he walked, and he traveled so hard that when I came to follow I thought once that he had dropped me, for though I rode hard, I got no sight of him for an hour. At length, having passed the great bank called the Devil's Ditch, I found him and took him up behind me, and we rode double till we came almost to the end of Newmarket town. Just at the hither house in the town stood a horse at a door, just as it was at Puckeridge. "Now," says Jack, "if the horse was at the other end of the town I would have him, as sure as we had the other at Puckeridge;" but it would not do; so he got down, and walked through the town on the right-hand side of the way.

He had not got half through the town, but the horse, having somehow or other got loose, came trotting gently on by himself, and nobody following him. The Captain, an old soldier at such work, as soon as the horse was got a pretty way before him, and that he saw nobody followed, sets up a run after the horse, and the horse, hearing him follow, ran the faster; then the Captain calls out, "Stop the horse!" and by this time the horse was got almost to the farther end of the town; the people of the house where he stood not missing him all the while.