England under Charles II. from the Restoration to the Treaty of Nimeguen, 1660-1678: English History from Contemporary Writers
Taylor, W. F.
1889
Defoe's further account of the Plague.
Journal of the Plague Year, ed. , pp. 62, 63, 73, 146, 148. About June the lord mayor of London and the court of aldermen .... began more particularly to concern themselves for the regulation of the city. | |
The justices of the peace for Middlesex, by direction of the secretary of State, had begun to shut up houses in the parish of St. Giles'-in-the-Fields, St. Martin, St. Clement Danes, &c., and it was with good success, for in several streets where the plague broke out, upon strict guarding the houses that were infected and taking care to bury those that died immediately after they were known to be dead, the plague ceased in those streets. It was also observed | |
64 | that the plague decreased sooner in those parishes than it did in the parishes of Bishopsgate, Shoreditch, Aldgate, Whitechapel, Stepney, and others, the early care taken in that manner being a great means to putting a check to it. . . 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. . . . One of the worst days we had in the whole time, as I thought, was in the beginning of September, when, indeed, good people began to think that God was resolved to make a full end of the people in this miserable city. This was at that time when the plague was fully come into the eastern parishes. The parish of Aldgate, if I may give my opinion, buried above a thousand a week for two weeks, though the bills did not say so many; but it surrounded me at so dismal a rate that there was not a house in twenty uninfected. In the Minories, in Houndsditch, and in those parts of Aldgate parish about Butcher Row and the alleys over against me, I say in those places, death reigned in every corner. Whitechapel parish was in the same condition, and though much less than the parish I lived in, yet buried near six hundred a week by the bills, and in my opinion near twice as many. Whole families, and, indeed, whole streets of families were swept away together; insomuch, that it was frequent for neighbours to call to the bellman to go to such and such |
65 | houses and fetch out the people, for that they were all dead. . . . I suppose the world has heard of the famous Solomon Eagle, an enthusiast; he, though not affected at all but in the head, went about denouncing of judgment upon the city in a frightful manner, sometimes quite naked and with a pan of burning charcoal on his head. |
