Great Plague in London

Observations:

"Business led me out sometimes to the other end of the town, even when the sickness was chiefly there. And as the thing was new to me, as well as to everybody else, it was a most surprising thing to see those streets, which were usually so thronged, now grown desolate, and so few people to be seen in them … Whole rows of houses in some places were shut close up, the inhabitants all fled, and only a watchman or two left."

An industry began to thrive: false prophets, psychics, harbingers of doom and men claiming to see spirits:

"One mischief always introduces another. These terrors and apprehensions of the people led them to a thousand weak, foolish, and wicked things … and this was running about to fortune tellers, cunning men, and astrologers …

"… it was incredible, and scarce to be imagined, how the posts of houses and corners of streets were plastered over with doctors' bills, and papers of ignorant fellows quacking and tampering in physic, and inviting people to come to them for remedies … 

"Infallible preventative pills against the plague"; "Never-failing preservatives against the infection;" … "An Universal remedy for the plague;" "The One True plague water;" "The Royal Antidote against all kinds of infection;" and such a number more that I cannot reckon up..."

It is sufficient from these to apprise any one of the humor of those times, and how a set of thieves and pickpockets not only robbed and cheated the poor people of their money, but poisoned their bodies with odious and fatal preparations; some with mercury, and some with other things as bad …"

The deception continued in the form of selling protection:

"… this was in wearing charms, philters, exorcisms, amulets, and I know not what preparations to fortify the body against the plague, as if the plague was not the hand of God, but a kind of a possession of an evil spirit, and it was to be kept off with crossings, signs of the zodiac, papers tied up with so many knots, and certain words or figures on them, as particularly the word "Abracadabra", formed in a triangle or pyramid …

How the poor people found the insufficiency of those things, and how many of them were afterwards carried away in the dead carts, and thrown into the common graves of every parish with these hellish charms and trumpery hanging about their necks, remains to be spoken of …"

An abundance of the poor died falsely believing they would be taken into the country with their masters. As such, public charity was provided for these people; without it many more would have perished.

"The lord mayor, a very sober and religious gentleman, appointed physicians and surgeons for therelief of the poor, I mean the diseased poor, and in particular ordered the College of Physicians to publish directions for cheap remedies for the poor in all the circumstances of the distemper … it was made public, so that everybody might see it, and copies were given gratis to all that desired it." 

"The government encouraged their devoition, and appointed public prayers, and days of fasting and humiliation, to make public confession of sin, and implore the mercy of God to avert the dreadful judgment which hangs over their heads; and it is not to be expressed with what alacrity the people of all persuasions embraced the occasion, how they flocked to the churches and meetings, and they were all so thronged that there was often no coming near, even to the very doors of the largest churches... Also there were daily prayers appointed morning and evening at several churches …"

As to public engagements:

"All the plays and interludes which … had been set up … were forbid to act; the gaming tables, public dancing rooms, and music houses … were shut up and suppressed; and the jack puddings, merry-andrews, puppet shows, ropedancers, and such like doings … shut their shops, finding indeed no trade, for the minds of the people were agitated with other things …"

Regulation of the city:

Examiners to be appointed to every Parish:

"… in every parish there be one, two, or more persons of good sort and credit … to continue in that office for the space of two months at least: and if any fit person so appointed shall refuse … be committed to prison until they shall conform themselves accordingly."

"That these examiners be sworn … to inquire and learn … what houses in every parish be visited, and what persons be sick, and of what diseases … to command restraint of access until it appear what the disease shall prove; and if they find any person sick of the infection, to give order to the constable that the house be shut up; and, if the constable shall be found remiss and negligent, to give notice thereof …"

Watchmen:

"To every infected house there be appointed two watchmen, - one for every day, and the other for the night; and that these watchmen have special care that no person go in or out of such infected houses … upon pain of severe punishment … to do such further offices as the sick house shall need and require; and if the watchmen be sent upon any business, to lock up the house and take the key with him; and the watchmen by day to attend until ten o'clock at night and the watchmen by night until six in the morning."

Searchers:

"That there be a special care to appoint women searchers in every parish … to make due search and true report … whether the persons whose bodies they are appointed to search do die of the infection, or of what other diseases, as near as they can … 

That no searcher during this time of visitation be permitted to use any public work or employment, or keep a shop or stall, or … any other common employment whatsoever."

Chirurgeons:

"That the said chirurgeons shall visit and search such like persons as shall either send for them, or be named and directed unto them by the examiners of every parish, and inform themselves of the disease of the said parties. 

… and kept only to this disease of the infection, it is ordered that every of the chirurgeons shall have twelvepence a body searched by them, to be paid out of the goods of the party searched, if he be able, or otherwise by the parish."

Nurse Keepers:

"If any nurse keeper shall remove herself out of any infected house before twenty-eight days after the decease of any person dying of the infection, the house to which the said nurse keeper doth so remove herself shall be shut up until the said twenty-eight days shall be expired."

Sequestration of the Sick 

"As soon as any man shall be found … to be sick of the plague, he shall the same night be sequestered in the same house; then, though he die not, the house wherein he sickened shall be shut up for a month after the use of the due preservatives taken by the rest."

Airing the Stuff:

"For sequestration of the goods and stuff of the infection … must be well aired with fire, and such perfumes as are requisite, within the infected house, before they be taken again to use."

Shutting up of the House:

"If any person shall visit any man known to be infected of the plague, or entereth willingly into any known infected house, being not allowed, the house wherein he inhabiteth shall be shut up for certain days by the examiner's direction."

"That the burial of the dead … be at most convenient hours, always before sunrising, or after sunsetting … and that no neighbors nor friends be suffered to accompany the corpse to church, or to enter the house visited, upon pain of having his house shut up, or be imprisoned.

… that no corpse dying of the infection shall be buried, or remain in any church, in time of common prayer, sermon or lecture … And that no children be suffered … to come near the corpse, coffin, or grave; and that all graves shall be at least six feet deep."

No Infected Stuff to be uttered:

"That no clothes, stuff, bedding or garments, be suffered to be carried or conveyed out of any infected houses … old apparel to be sold or pawned be utterly prohibited … And if any broker or other person shall buy any bedding, apparel, or other stuff out of any infected house, within two months after the infection hath been there, his house shall be shut up …"

Every Visited House to be marked:

"That every house visited be marked with a red cross of a foot long, in the middle of the door, evident to be seen, and with these usual printed words, that is to say, "Lord have mercy upon us." To be set close over the same cross, there to continue until lawful opening of the same house."

Every Visited House to be watched:

"That the constables see every house shut up, and to be attended by watchmen … The shutting up to be for the space of four weeks after all be whole. 

The precise order be taken that the searchers, chirurgeons, keepers, and buriers, are not to pass the streets without holding a red rod or wand of three foot in length in their hands, open and evident to be seen..."

Inmates:

"That where several inmates are in one and the same house, and any person in that house happens to be infected, no other person or family of such house shall be suffered to remove him or themselves without a certificate from the examiners of the health of that parish..."

Hackney Coaches:

"That care be taken of hackney coachmen, that they may not, as some of them have been observed to do after carrying of intected persons .... be admitted to common use til their coaches be well aired, and have stood unemployed by the space of five or six days after such service."

ORDERS FOR CLEANSING ... 

-The streets to be kept clean

Casualties of the Week

Breakouts 

At times families resorted to breaking out of their shut up homes:

"The magistrate, it seems, ordered the house to be broke open ... 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."

In another case:

"The watchman consented to that, and went and fetched a nurse as he was appointed, and brought her to them the same evening. During this interval, the master of the house took his opportunity to break a large hole through his shop into a bulk or stall ... but the night following, having contrived to send the watchman of another trifling errand ... in that time he conveyed himself and all his family out of the house ... "

The end result being: "those that did thus break out spread the infection farther, by their wandering about with the distemper upon them in their desperate circumstances, than they would otherwise have done ..."

Preparations

"On the other hand ... other houses, where they locked themselves up, and kept hid till the plague was over; and many families, foreseeing the approach of the distemper, laid up stores of provisions sufficient for their whole families, and shut themselves up, and that so entirely, that they were neither seen or heard of till the infection was quite ceased, and then came abroad sound and well."

Pits:

"Into these pits they had put perhaps fifty or sixty bodies each; then they buried all that the cart brought in a week, which, by the middle to the end of August, came to from two hundred to four hundred a week... 

... the pit being finished the 4th of September, I think they began to bury in it the 6th, and by the 20th, which was just two weeks, they had thrown into it eleven hundred and fourteen bodies ..."

Suicide:

"The swellings, which were generally in the neck or groin, when they grew hard, and would not break, grew so painful that it was equal to the most exquisite torture; and some, not able to bear the torment, threw themselves out at windows, or shot themselves, or otherwise made themselves away..."

"It is scarce credible what dreadful cases happened in particular families every day, -people, in the rage of the distemper, or in the torment of their swellings, which was indeed intolerable, running out of their own government, raving and distracted, and oftentimes laying violent hands upon themselves, throwing themselves out at their windows, shooting themselves, etc; mothers murdering their own children in their lunacy; some of mere grief as a passion ... others into melancholy madness."

 Ships:

"I cannot guess at the number of ships, but I think there must have been several hundreds of sail; and I could not but applaud the contrivance, for ten thousand people and more who attended ship affairs were certainly sheltered here from the violence of the contagion, and lived very safe and very easy. 

... I observed, also, that, as the violence of the plague had increased, so the ships which had families on board removed and went farther off, till, as I was told, some went quite away to sea, and put into such harbors and safe roads on the north coast as they could best come at."

Pets:

"Wherefore were we ordered to kill all the dogs and cats, but because, as they were domestic animals, and are apt to run from house to house and from street to street, so they are capable of carrying the effluvia or infectious streams of bodies infected, even in their furs and hair? And therefore it was, that, in the beginning of the infection, an order was published by the lord mayor and by the magistrates, according to the advice of the physicians, that all the dogs and cats should be immediately killed; and an officer was appointed for the executions. 

It is incredible, if their account is to be depended upon, what a prodigious number of those creatures were destroyed. I think they talked of forty thousand dogs and five times as many cats; few houses being without a cat, some having several, sometimes five or six in a house. All possible endeavors were used also to destroy the mice and rats, especially the latter, by laying rats-bane and other poisons for them; and a prodigious multitude of them were also destroyed."

Fleeing into the country:

"... and found that there were a great many of the poor disconsolate people... fled into the country every way; and some of them got little sheds and barns and outhouses to live in ...

But others, and that in great numbers, built themselves little huts and retreats in the fields and woods, and lived like hermits in holes and caves, or any place they could find, and where, we may be sure, they suffered great extremities, such that many of them were obliged to come back again, whatever the danger was."

The height of the contagion causes despair:

"As I have mentioned how the people were brought into a condition to despair of life, and abandoned themselves, so this very thing had a strange effect among us for three or four weeks; that is, it made them bold and venturous, They were no more shy of one another, or restrained within doors, but went anywhere and everywhere and began to converse. One would say to another, "I do not ask you how you are, or say how I am. It is certain we shall go: so 'tis no matter who is sick or who is sound." 

Spread of infection:

"Here also, I ought to leave a further remark for the use of posterity, concerning the manner of people's infecting one another ... such as had received the contagion, and had it really upon them and in their blood, yet did not show the consequences of it in their countenances; nay, even were not sensible of it themselves, as many were not for several days. These breathed death in every place, and upon everybody who came near them; nay, their very clothes retained the infection; their hands would infect the things they touched, especially if they were warm and sweaty, and they were generally apt to sweat, too. 

Now it was impossible to know these people, nor did they sometimes, as I have said, know themselves, to be infected."

Reactions:

"And here I must observe also that the plague, as I suppose all distempers do, operated in a different manner on differing constitutions. Some were immediately overwhelmed with it, and it came to violent fevers, vomitings, insufferable headaches, pains in the back, and so up to ravings and ragings with those pains; others with swellings and tumors in the neck or groin, or armpits, which, till they could be broke, put them into insufferable agonies and torment; while others, as I have observed, were silently infected, the fever preying upon their spirits insensibly, and they seeing little of it till they fell into swooning and faintings, and death without pain."

Regarding trading:

"As to foreign trade, there needs little to be said. The trading nations of Europe were all afraid of us. No port of France, or Holland, or Spain, or Italy, would admit our ships, or correspond with us...

Our merchants were accordingly at a full stop. Their ships could go nowhere; that is to say, to no place abroad. Their manufactures and merchandise, that is to say, of our growth, would not be touched abroad...

Two particular trades were carried on by water carriage all the while of the infection, and that with little or no interruption, very much to the advantage and comfort of the poor distressed people of the city; and those were the coasting trade for corn, and the Newcastle trade for coals."

After the plague had generally ceased:

"There was still a question among the learned ... and that was, in what manner to purge the houses and goods where the plague had been, and how to render them habitable again which had been left empty during the time of the plague..."

On dubious advice people aired out their homes, burned brimstone, pitch, gunpowder and used an "abundance of perfumes and preparations". They burned "incense, benjamin, resin, and sulpher" in their rooms, "others caused large fires to be made all day and all night" for several days. 

The worst had passed:

"Wherever they visited, they found their patients better, -either they had sweated kindly, or the tumors were broke, or the carbuncles went down and the inflammations round them changed color, or the fever was gone, or the violent headache assuaged, or some good symptom was in the case, -so that in a few days everybody was recovering. Whole families that were infected and down, that had ministers praying with them, and expected death every hour, were revived and healed, and none died at all out of them. 

Nor was this by any new medicine found out, or new method of cure discovered ...The disease was enervated, and its malignity spent ..."

"I shall conclude the account of this calamitous year, therefore, with a coarse but a sincere stanza of my own, which I placed at the end of my ordinary memorandums the same year they were written:

A dreadful plague in London was,
In the year sixty-five,
Which swept an hundred thousand souls
Away, yet I alive.
H.F"