Chapter V: Part 5

I might be more particular as to this part, but it may suffice to
mention in general, all trades being stopped, employment ceased:
the labour, and by that the bread, of the poor were cut off; and
at first indeed the cries of the poor were most lamentable to
hear, though by the distribution of charity their misery that way
was greatly abated. Many indeed fled into the counties, but
thousands of them having stayed in London till nothing but
desperation sent them away, death overtook them on the road, and
they served for no better than the messengers of death; indeed,
others carrying the infection along with them, spread it very
unhappily into the remotest parts of the kingdom.

Many of these were the miserable objects of despair which I have
mentioned before, and were removed by the destruction which
followed. These might be said to perish not by the infection
itself but by the consequence of it; indeed, namely, by hunger
and distress and the want of all things: being without lodging,
without money, without friends, without means to get their bread,
or without anyone to give it them; for many of them were without
what we call legal settlements, and so could not claim of the
parishes, and all the support they had was by application to the
magistrates for relief, which relief was (to give the magistrates
their due) carefully and cheerfully administered as they found it
necessary, and those that stayed behind never felt the want and
distress of that kind which they felt who went away in the manner
above noted.

Let any one who is acquainted with what multitudes of people get
their daily bread in this city by their labour, whether
artificers or mere workmen—I say, let any man consider what must
be the miserable condition of this town if, on a sudden, they
should be all turned out of employment, that labour should cease,
and wages for work be no more.

This was the case with us at that time; and had not the sums of
money contributed in charity by well-disposed people of every
kind, as well abroad as at home, been prodigiously great, it had
not been in the power of the Lord Mayor and sheriffs to have kept
the public peace. Nor were they without apprehensions, as it was,
that desperation should push the people upon tumults, and cause
them to rifle the houses of rich men and plunder the markets of
provisions; in which case the country people, who brought
provisions very freely and boldly to town, would have been
terrified from coming any more, and the town would have sunk
under an unavoidable famine.

But the prudence of my Lord Mayor and the Court of Aldermen
within the city, and of the justices of peace in the out-parts,
was such, and they were supported with money from all parts so
well, that the poor people were kept quiet, and their wants
everywhere relieved, as far as was possible to be done.

Two things besides this contributed to prevent the mob doing any
mischief. One was, that really the rich themselves had not laid
up stores of provisions in their houses as indeed they ought to
have done, and which if they had been wise enough to have done,
and locked themselves entirely up, as some few did, they had
perhaps escaped the disease better. But as it appeared they had
not, so the mob had no notion of finding stores of provisions
there if they had broken in as it is plain they were sometimes
very near doing, and which, if they had, they had finished the
ruin of the whole city, for there were no regular troops to have
withstood them, nor could the trained bands have been brought
together to defend the city, no men being to be found to bear
arms.

But the vigilance of the Lord Mayor and such magistrates as could
be had (for some, even of the aldermen, were dead, and some
absent) prevented this; and they did it by the most kind and
gentle methods they could think of, as particularly by relieving
the most desperate with money, and putting others into business,
and particularly that employment of watching houses that were
infected and shut up. And as the number of these were very great
(for it was said there was at one time ten thousand houses shut
up, and every house had two watchmen to guard it, viz., one by
night and the other by day), this gave opportunity to employ a
very great number of poor men at a time.

The women and servants that were turned off from their places
were likewise employed as nurses to tend the sick in all places,
and this took off a very great number of them.

And, which though a melancholy article in itself, yet was a
deliverance in its kind: namely, the plague, which raged in a
dreadful manner from the middle of August to the middle of
October, carried off in that time thirty or forty thousand of
these very people which, had they been left, would certainly have
been an insufferable burden by their poverty; that is to say, the
whole city could not have supported the expense of them, or have
provided food for them; and they would in time have been even
driven to the necessity of plundering either the city itself or
the country adjacent, to have subsisted themselves, which would
first or last have put the whole nation, as well as the city,
into the utmost terror and confusion.

It was observable, then, that this calamity of the people made
them very humble; for now for about nine weeks together there
died near a thousand a day, one day with another, even by the
account of the weekly bills, which yet, I have reason to be
assured, never gave a full account, by many thousands; the
confusion being such, and the carts working in the dark when they
carried the dead, that in some places no account at all was kept,
but they worked on, the clerks and sextons not attending for
weeks together, and not knowing what number they carried. This
account is verified by the following bills of mortality:—

- Of all of the
- Diseases. Plague
From August 8 to August 15 5319 3880
” ” 15 ” 22 5568 4237
” ” 22 ” 29 7496 6102
” ” 29 to September 5 8252 6988
” September 5 ” 12 7690 6544
” ” 12 ” 19 8297 7165
” ” 19 ” 26 6460 5533
” ” 26 to October 3 5720 4979
” October 3 ” 10 5068 4327
- ——- ——-
- 59,870 49,705

So that the gross of the people were carried off in these two
months; for, as the whole number which was brought in to die of
the plague was but 68,590, here is 50,000 of them, within a
trifle, in two months; I say 50,000, because, as there wants 295
in the number above, so there wants two days of two months in the
account of time.

Now when I say that the parish officers did not give in a full
account, or were not to be depended upon for their account, let
any one but consider how men could be exact in such a time of
dreadful distress, and when many of them were taken sick
themselves and perhaps died in the very time when their accounts
were to be given in; I mean the parish clerks, besides inferior
officers; for though these poor men ventured at all hazards, yet
they were far from being exempt from the common calamity,
especially if it be true that the parish of Stepney had, within
the year, 116 sextons, gravediggers, and their assistants; that
is to say, bearers, bellmen, and drivers of carts for carrying
off the dead bodies.

Indeed the work was not of a nature to allow them leisure to take
an exact tale of the dead bodies, which were all huddled together
in the dark into a pit; which pit or trench no man could come
nigh but at the utmost peril. I observed often that in the
parishes of Aldgate and Cripplegate, Whitechappel and Stepney,
there were five, six, seven, and eight hundred in a week in the
bills; whereas if we may believe the opinion of those that lived
in the city all the time as well as I, there died sometimes 2000
a week in those parishes; and I saw it under the hand of one that
made as strict an examination into that part as he could, that
there really died an hundred thousand people of the plague in
that one year whereas in the bills, the articles of the plague,
it was but 68,590.

If I may be allowed to give my opinion, by what I saw with my
eyes and heard from other people that were eye-witnesses, I do
verily believe the same, viz., that there died at least 100,000
of the plague only, besides other distempers and besides those
which died in the fields and highways and secret Places out of
the compass of the communication, as it was called, and who were
not put down in the bills though they really belonged to the body
of the inhabitants. It was known to us all that abundance of poor
despairing creatures who had the distemper upon them, and were
grown stupid or melancholy by their misery, as many were,
wandered away into the fields and Woods, and into secret uncouth
places almost anywhere, to creep into a bush or hedge and die.

The inhabitants of the villages adjacent would, in pity, carry
them food and set it at a distance, that they might fetch it, if
they were able; and sometimes they were not able, and the next
time they went they should find the poor wretches lie dead and
the food untouched. The number of these miserable objects were
many, and I know so many that perished thus, and so exactly
where, that I believe I could go to the very place and dig their
bones up still; for the country people would go and dig a hole at
a distance from them, and then with long poles, and hooks at the
end of them, drag the bodies into these pits, and then throw the
earth in from as far as they could cast it, to cover them, taking
notice how the wind blew, and so coming on that side which the
seamen call to windward, that the scent of the bodies might blow
from them; and thus great numbers went out of the world who were
never known, or any account of them taken, as well within the
bills of mortality as without.

This, indeed, I had in the main only from the relation of others,
for I seldom walked into the fields, except towards Bethnal Green
and Hackney, or as hereafter. But when I did walk, I always saw a
great many poor wanderers at a distance; but I could know little
of their cases, for whether it were in the street or in the
fields, if we had seen anybody coming, it was a general method to
walk away; yet I believe the account is exactly true.

As this puts me upon mentioning my walking the streets and
fields, I cannot omit taking notice what a desolate place the
city was at that time. The great street I lived in (which is
known to be one of the broadest of all the streets of London, I
mean of the suburbs as well as the liberties) all the side where
the butchers lived, especially without the bars, was more like a
green field than a paved street, and the people generally went in
the middle with the horses and carts. It is true that the
farthest end towards Whitechappel Church was not all paved, but
even the part that was paved was full of grass also; but this
need not seem strange, since the great streets within the city,
such as Leadenhall Street, Bishopsgate Street, Cornhill, and even
the Exchange itself, had grass growing in them in several places;
neither cart or coach were seen in the streets from morning to
evening, except some country carts to bring roots and beans, or
peas, hay, and straw, to the market, and those but very few
compared to what was usual. As for coaches, they were scarce used
but to carry sick people to the pest-house, and to other
hospitals, and some few to carry physicians to such places as
they thought fit to venture to visit; for really coaches were
dangerous things, and people did not care to venture into them,
because they did not know who might have been carried in them
last, and sick, infected people were, as I have said, ordinarily
carried in them to the pest-houses, and sometimes people expired
in them as they went along.

It is true, when the infection came to such a height as I have
now mentioned, there were very few physicians which cared to stir
abroad to sick houses, and very many of the most eminent of the
faculty were dead, as well as the surgeons also; for now it was
indeed a dismal time, and for about a month together, not taking
any notice of the bills of mortality, I believe there did not die
less than 1500 or 1700 a day, one day with another.

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 the Butcher Row and the alleys over against
me. I say, in those places death reigned in every corner.
Whitechappel parish was in the same condition, and though much
less than the parish I lived in, yet buried near 600 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 houses and fetch out the people,
for that they were all dead.

And, indeed, the work of removing the dead bodies by carts was
now grown so very odious and dangerous that it was complained of
that the bearers did not take care to clear such houses where all
the inhabitants were dead, but that sometimes the bodies lay
several days unburied, till the neighbouring families were
offended with the stench, and consequently infected; and this
neglect of the officers was such that the churchwardens and
constables were summoned to look after it, and even the justices
of the Hamlets were obliged to venture their lives among them to
quicken and encourage them, for innumerable of the bearers died
of the distemper, infected by the bodies they were obliged to
come so near. And had it not been that the number of poor people
who wanted employment and wanted bread (as I have said before)
was so great that necessity drove them to undertake anything and
venture anything, they would never have found people to be
employed. And then the bodies of the dead would have lain above
ground, and have perished and rotted in a dreadful manner.

But the magistrates cannot be enough commended in this, that they
kept such good order for the burying of the dead, that as fast as
any of these they employed to carry off and bury the dead fell
sick or died, as was many times the case, they immediately
supplied the places with others, which, by reason of the great
number of poor that was left out of business, as above, was not
hard to do. This occasioned, that notwithstanding the infinite
number of people which died and were sick, almost all together,
yet they were always cleared away and carried off every night, so
that it was never to be said of London that the living were not
able to bury the dead.

As the desolation was greater during those terrible times, so the
amazement of the people increased, and a thousand unaccountable
things they would do in the violence of their fright, as others
did the same in the agonies of their distemper, and this part was
very affecting. Some went roaring and crying and wringing their
hands along the street; some would go praying and lifting up
their hands to heaven, calling upon God for mercy. I cannot say,
indeed, whether this was not in their distraction, but, be it so,
it was still an indication of a more serious mind, when they had
the use of their senses, and was much better, even as it was,
than the frightful yellings and cryings that every day, and
especially in the evenings, were heard in some streets. I suppose
the world has heard of the famous Solomon Eagle, an enthusiast.
He, though not infected at all but in his head, went about
denouncing of judgement upon the city in a frightful manner,
sometimes quite naked, and with a pan of burning charcoal on his
head. What he said, or pretended, indeed I could not learn.

I will not say whether that clergyman was distracted or not, or
whether he did it in pure zeal for the poor people, who went
every evening through the streets of Whitechappel, and, with his
hands lifted up, repeated that part of the Liturgy of the Church
continually, ‘Spare us, good Lord; spare Thy people, whom Thou
has redeemed with Thy most precious blood.’ I say, I cannot speak
positively of these things, because these were only the dismal
objects which represented themselves to me as I looked through my
chamber windows (for I seldom opened the casements), while I
confined myself within doors during that most violent raging of
the pestilence; when, indeed, as I have said, many began to
think, and even to say, that there would none escape; and indeed
I began to think so too, and therefore kept within doors for
about a fortnight and never stirred out. But I could not hold it.
Besides, there were some people who, notwithstanding the danger,
did not omit publicly to attend the worship of God, even in the
most dangerous times; and though it is true that a great many
clergymen did shut up their churches, and fled, as other people
did, for the safety of their lives, yet all did not do so. Some
ventured to officiate and to keep up the assemblies of the people
by constant prayers, and sometimes sermons or brief exhortations
to repentance and reformation, and this as long as any would come
to hear them. And Dissenters did the like also, and even in the
very churches where the parish ministers were either dead or
fled; nor was there any room for making difference at such a time
as this was.

It was indeed a lamentable thing to hear the miserable
lamentations of poor dying creatures calling out for ministers to
comfort them and pray with them, to counsel them and to direct
them, calling out to God for pardon and mercy, and confessing
aloud their past sins. It would make the stoutest heart bleed to
hear how many warnings were then given by dying penitents to
others not to put off and delay their repentance to the day of
distress; that such a time of calamity as this was no time for
repentance, was no time to call upon God. I wish I could repeat
the very sound of those groans and of those exclamations that I
heard from some poor dying creatures when in the height of their
agonies and distress, and that I could make him that reads this
hear, as I imagine I now hear them, for the sound seems still to
ring in my ears.

If I could but tell this part in such moving accents as should
alarm the very soul of the reader, I should rejoice that I
recorded those things, however short and imperfect.

It pleased God that I was still spared, and very hearty and sound
in health, but very impatient of being pent up within doors
without air, as I had been for fourteen days or thereabouts; and
I could not restrain myself, but I would go to carry a letter for
my brother to the post-house. Then it was indeed that I observed
a profound silence in the streets. When I came to the post-house,
as I went to put in my letter I saw a man stand in one corner of
the yard and talking to another at a window, and a third had
opened a door belonging to the office. In the middle of the yard
lay a small leather purse with two keys hanging at it, with money
in it, but nobody would meddle with it. I asked how long it had
lain there; the man at the window said it had lain almost an
hour, but that they had not meddled with it, because they did not
know but the person who dropped it might come back to look for
it. I had no such need of money, nor was the sum so big that I
had any inclination to meddle with it, or to get the money at the
hazard it might be attended with; so I seemed to go away, when
the man who had opened the door said he would take it up, but so
that if the right owner came for it he should be sure to have it.
So he went in and fetched a pail of water and set it down hard by
the purse, then went again and fetch some gunpowder, and cast a
good deal of powder upon the purse, and then made a train from
that which he had thrown loose upon the purse. The train reached
about two yards. After this he goes in a third time and fetches
out a pair of tongs red hot, and which he had prepared, I
suppose, on purpose; and first setting fire to the train of
powder, that singed the purse and also smoked the air
sufficiently. But he was not content with that, but he then takes
up the purse with the tongs, holding it so long till the tongs
burnt through the purse, and then he shook the money out into the
pail of water, so he carried it in. The money, as I remember, was
about thirteen shilling and some smooth groats and brass
farthings.

There might perhaps have been several poor people, as I have
observed above, that would have been hardy enough to have
ventured for the sake of the money; but you may easily see by
what I have observed that the few people who were spared were
very careful of themselves at that time when the distress was so
exceeding great.

Much about the same time I walked out into the fields towards
Bow; for I had a great mind to see how things were managed in the
river and among the ships; and as I had some concern in shipping,
I had a notion that it had been one of the best ways of securing
one’s self from the infection to have retired into a ship; and
musing how to satisfy my curiosity in that point, I turned away
over the fields from Bow to Bromley, and down to Blackwall to the
stairs which are there for landing or taking water.

Here I saw a poor man walking on the bank, or sea-wall, as they
call it, by himself. I walked a while also about, seeing the
houses all shut up. At last I fell into some talk, at a distance,
with this poor man; first I asked him how people did thereabouts.
‘Alas, sir!’ says he, ‘almost desolate; all dead or sick. Here
are very few families in this part, or in that village’ (pointing
at Poplar), ‘where half of them are not dead already, and the
rest sick.’ Then he pointing to one house, ‘There they are all
dead’, said he, ‘and the house stands open; nobody dares go into
it. A poor thief’, says he, ‘ventured in to steal something, but
he paid dear for his theft, for he was carried to the churchyard
too last night.’ Then he pointed to several other houses.
‘There’, says he, ‘they are all dead, the man and his wife, and
five children. There’, says he, ‘they are shut up; you see a
watchman at the door’; and so of other houses. ‘Why,’ says I,
‘what do you here all alone?’ ‘Why,’ says he, ‘I am a poor,
desolate man; it has pleased God I am not yet visited, though my
family is, and one of my children dead.’ ‘How do you mean, then,’
said I, ‘that you are not visited?’ ‘Why,’ says he, ‘that’s my
house’ (pointing to a very little, low-boarded house), ‘and there
my poor wife and two children live,’ said he, ‘if they may be
said to live, for my wife and one of the children are visited,
but I do not come at them.’ And with that word I saw the tears
run very plentifully down his face; and so they did down mine
too, I assure you.

‘But,’ said I, ‘why do you not come at them? How can you abandon
your own flesh and blood?’ ‘Oh, sir,’ says he, ‘the Lord forbid!
I do not abandon them; I work for them as much as I am able; and,
blessed be the Lord, I keep them from want’; and with that I
observed he lifted up his eyes to heaven, with a countenance that
presently told me I had happened on a man that was no hypocrite,
but a serious, religious, good man, and his ejaculation was an
expression of thankfulness that, in such a condition as he was
in, he should be able to say his family did not want. ‘Well,’
says I, ‘honest man, that is a great mercy as things go now with
the poor. But how do you live, then, and how are you kept from
the dreadful calamity that is now upon us all?’ ‘Why, sir,’ says
he, ‘I am a waterman, and there’s my boat,’ says he, ‘and the
boat serves me for a house. I work in it in the day, and I sleep
in it in the night; and what I get I lay down upon that stone,’
says he, showing me a broad stone on the other side of the
street, a good way from his house; ‘and then,’ says he, ‘I
halloo, and call to them till I make them hear; and they come and
fetch it.’

‘Well, friend,’ says I, ‘but how can you get any money as a
waterman? Does any body go by water these times?’ ‘Yes, sir,’
says he, ‘in the way I am employed there does. Do you see there,’
says he, ‘five ships lie at anchor’ (pointing down the river a
good way below the town), ‘and do you see’, says he, ‘eight or
ten ships lie at the chain there, and at anchor yonder?’
(pointing above the town). ‘All those ships have families on
board, of their merchants and owners, and such-like, who have
locked themselves up and live on board, close shut in, for fear
of the infection; and I tend on them to fetch things for them,
carry letters, and do what is absolutely necessary, that they may
not be obliged to come on shore; and every night I fasten my boat
on board one of the ship’s boats, and there I sleep by myself,
and, blessed be God, I am preserved hitherto.’

‘Well,’ said I, ‘friend, but will they let you come on board
after you have been on shore here, when this is such a terrible
place, and so infected as it is?’

‘Why, as to that,’ said he, ‘I very seldom go up the ship-side,
but deliver what I bring to their boat, or lie by the side, and
they hoist it on board. If I did, I think they are in no danger
from me, for I never go into any house on shore, or touch
anybody, no, not of my own family; but I fetch provisions for
them.’

‘Nay,’ says I, ‘but that may be worse, for you must have those
provisions of somebody or other; and since all this part of the
town is so infected, it is dangerous so much as to speak with
anybody, for the village’, said I, ‘is, as it were, the beginning
of London, though it be at some distance from it.’

‘That is true,’ added he; ‘but you do not understand me right; I
do not buy provisions for them here. I row up to Greenwich and
buy fresh meat there, and sometimes I row down the river to
Woolwich and buy there; then I go to single farm-houses on the
Kentish side, where I am known, and buy fowls and eggs and
butter, and bring to the ships, as they direct me, sometimes one,
sometimes the other. I seldom come on shore here, and I came now
only to call on my wife and hear how my family do, and give them
a little money, which I received last night.’

‘Poor man!’ said I; ‘and how much hast thou gotten for them?’

‘I have gotten four shillings,’ said he, ‘which is a great sum,
as things go now with poor men; but they have given me a bag of
bread too, and a salt fish and some flesh; so all helps out.’
‘Well,’ said I, ‘and have you given it them yet?’

‘No,’ said he; ‘but I have called, and my wife has answered that
she cannot come out yet, but in half-an-hour she hopes to come,
and I am waiting for her. Poor woman!’ says he, ‘she is brought
sadly down. She has a swelling, and it is broke, and I hope she
will recover; but I fear the child will die, but it is the Lord—’

Here he stopped, and wept very much.

‘Well, honest friend,’ said I, ‘thou hast a sure Comforter, if
thou hast brought thyself to be resigned to the will of God; He
is dealing with us all in judgement.’

‘Oh, sir!’ says he, ‘it is infinite mercy if any of us are
spared, and who am I to repine!’

‘Sayest thou so?’ said I, ‘and how much less is my faith than
thine?’ And here my heart smote me, suggesting how much better
this poor man’s foundation was on which he stayed in the danger
than mine; that he had nowhere to fly; that he had a family to
bind him to attendance, which I had not; and mine was mere
presumption, his a true dependence and a courage resting on God;
and yet that he used all possible caution for his safety.

I turned a little way from the man while these thoughts engaged
me, for, indeed, I could no more refrain from tears than he.

At length, after some further talk, the poor woman opened the
door and called, ‘Robert, Robert’. He answered, and bid her stay
a few moments and he would come; so he ran down the common stairs
to his boat and fetched up a sack, in which was the provisions he
had brought from the ships; and when he returned he hallooed
again. Then he went to the great stone which he showed me and
emptied the sack, and laid all out, everything by themselves, and
then retired; and his wife came with a little boy to fetch them
away, and called and said such a captain had sent such a thing,
and such a captain such a thing, and at the end adds, ‘God has
sent it all; give thanks to Him.’ When the poor woman had taken
up all, she was so weak she could not carry it at once in, though
the weight was not much neither; so she left the biscuit, which
was in a little bag, and left a little boy to watch it till she
came again.

‘Well, but’, says I to him, ‘did you leave her the four shillings
too, which you said was your week’s pay?’

‘Yes, yes,’ says he; ‘you shall hear her own it.’ So he calls
again, ‘Rachel, Rachel,’ which it seems was her name, ‘did you
take up the money?’ ‘Yes,’ said she. ‘How much was it?’ said he.
‘Four shillings and a groat,’ said she. ‘Well, well,’ says he,
‘the Lord keep you all’; and so he turned to go away.

As I could not refrain contributing tears to this man’s story, so
neither could I refrain my charity for his assistance. So I
called him, ‘Hark thee, friend,’ said I, ‘come hither, for I
believe thou art in health, that I may venture thee’; so I pulled
out my hand, which was in my pocket before, ‘Here,’ says I, ‘go
and call thy Rachel once more, and give her a little more comfort
from me. God will never forsake a family that trust in Him as
thou dost.’ So I gave him four other shillings, and bid him go
lay them on the stone and call his wife.

I have not words to express the poor man’s thankfulness, neither
could he express it himself but by tears running down his face.
He called his wife, and told her God had moved the heart of a
stranger, upon hearing their condition, to give them all that
money, and a great deal more such as that he said to her. The
woman, too, made signs of the like thankfulness, as well to
Heaven as to me, and joyfully picked it up; and I parted with no
money all that year that I thought better bestowed.

I then asked the poor man if the distemper had not reached to
Greenwich. He said it had not till about a fortnight before; but
that then he feared it had, but that it was only at that end of
the town which lay south towards Deptford Bridge; that he went
only to a butcher’s shop and a grocer’s, where he generally
bought such things as they sent him for, but was very careful.

I asked him then how it came to pass that those people who had so
shut themselves up in the ships had not laid in sufficient stores
of all things necessary. He said some of them had—but, on the
other hand, some did not come on board till they were frighted
into it and till it was too dangerous for them to go to the
proper people to lay in quantities of things, and that he waited
on two ships, which he showed me, that had laid in little or
nothing but biscuit bread and ship beer, and that he had bought
everything else almost for them. I asked him if there was any
more ships that had separated themselves as those had done. He
told me yes, all the way up from the point, right against
Greenwich, to within the shore of Limehouse and Redriff, all the
ships that could have room rid two and two in the middle of the
stream, and that some of them had several families on board. I
asked him if the distemper had not reached them. He said he
believed it had not, except two or three ships whose people had
not been so watchful to keep the seamen from going on shore as
others had been, and he said it was a very fine sight to see how
the ships lay up the Pool.

When he said he was going over to Greenwich as soon as the tide
began to come in, I asked if he would let me go with him and
bring me back, for that I had a great mind to see how the ships
were ranged, as he had told me. He told me, if I would assure him
on the word of a Christian and of an honest man that I had not
the distemper, he would. I assured him that I had not; that it
had pleased God to preserve me; that I lived in Whitechappel, but
was too impatient of being so long within doors, and that I had
ventured out so far for the refreshment of a little air, but that
none in my house had so much as been touched with it.

‘Well, sir,’ says he, ‘as your charity has been moved to pity me
and my poor family, sure you cannot have so little pity left as
to put yourself into my boat if you were not sound in health
which would be nothing less than killing me and ruining my whole
family.’ The poor man troubled me so much when he spoke of his
family with such a sensible concern and in such an affectionate
manner, that I could not satisfy myself at first to go at all. I
told him I would lay aside my curiosity rather than make him
uneasy, though I was sure, and very thankful for it, that I had
no more distemper upon me than the freshest man in the world.
Well, he would not have me put it off neither, but to let me see
how confident he was that I was just to him, now importuned me to
go; so when the tide came up to his boat I went in, and he
carried me to Greenwich. While he bought the things which he had
in his charge to buy, I walked up to the top of the hill under
which the town stands, and on the east side of the town, to get a
prospect of the river. But it was a surprising sight to see the
number of ships which lay in rows, two and two, and some places
two or three such lines in the breadth of the river, and this not
only up quite to the town, between the houses which we call
Ratcliff and Redriff, which they name the Pool, but even down the
whole river as far as the head of Long Reach, which is as far as
the hills give us leave to see it.

I cannot guess at the number of ships, but I think there must be
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 returned to my own dwelling very well satisfied with my day’s
journey, and particularly with the poor man; also I rejoiced to
see that such little sanctuaries were provided for so many
families in a time of such desolation. 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 harbours and
safe roads on the north coast as they could best come at.

But it was also true that all the people who thus left the land
and lived on board the ships were not entirely safe from the
infection, for many died and were thrown overboard into the
river, some in coffins, and some, as I heard, without coffins,
whose bodies were seen sometimes to drive up and down with the
tide in the river.

But I believe I may venture to say that in those ships which were
thus infected it either happened where the people had recourse to
them too late, and did not fly to the ship till they had stayed
too long on shore and had the distemper upon them (though perhaps
they might not perceive it) and so the distemper did not come to
them on board the ships, but they really carried it with them; or
it was in these ships where the poor waterman said they had not
had time to furnish themselves with provisions, but were obliged
to send often on shore to buy what they had occasion for, or
suffered boats to come to them from the shore. And so the
distemper was brought insensibly among them.

And here I cannot but take notice that the strange temper of the
people of London at that time contributed extremely to their own
destruction. The plague began, as I have observed, at the other
end of the town, namely, in Long Acre, Drury Lane, &c., and came
on towards the city very gradually and slowly. It was felt at
first in December, then again in February, then again in April,
and always but a very little at a time; then it stopped till May,
and even the last week in May there was but seventeen, and all at
that end of the town; and all this while, even so long as till
there died above 3000 a week, yet had the people in Redriff, and
in Wapping and Ratcliff, on both sides of the river, and almost
all Southwark side, a mighty fancy that they should not be
visited, or at least that it would not be so violent among them.
Some people fancied the smell of the pitch and tar, and such
other things as oil and rosin and brimstone, which is so much
used by all trades relating to shipping, would preserve them.
Others argued it, because it was in its extreamest violence in
Westminster and the parish of St Giles and St Andrew, &c., and
began to abate again before it came among them—which was true
indeed, in part. For example—

From the 8th to the 15th August—
- St Giles-in-the-Fields 242
- Cripplegate 886
- Stepney 197
- St Margaret, Bermondsey 24
- Rotherhithe 3
- Total this week 4030

From the 15th to the 22nd August—
- St Giles-in-the-Fields 175
- Cripplegate 847
- Stepney 273
- St Margaret, Bermondsey 36
- Rotherhithe 2
- Total this week 5319

N.B.—That it was observed the numbers mentioned in Stepney parish
at that time were generally all on that side where Stepney parish
joined to Shoreditch, which we now call Spittlefields, where the
parish of Stepney comes up to the very wall of Shoreditch
Churchyard, and the plague at this time was abated at St
Giles-in-the-Fields, and raged most violently in Cripplegate,
Bishopsgate, and Shoreditch parishes; but there was not ten
people a week that died of it in all that part of Stepney parish
which takes in Limehouse, Ratcliff Highway, and which are now the
parishes of Shadwell and Wapping, even to St Katherine’s by the
Tower, till after the whole month of August was expired. But they
paid for it afterwards, as I shall observe by-and-by.

This, I say, made the people of Redriff and Wapping, Ratcliff and
Limehouse, so secure, and flatter themselves so much with the
plague’s going off without reaching them, that they took no care
either to fly into the country or shut themselves up. Nay, so far
were they from stirring that they rather received their friends
and relations from the city into their houses, and several from
other places really took sanctuary in that part of the town as a
place of safety, and as a place which they thought God would pass
over, and not visit as the rest was visited.

And this was the reason that when it came upon them they were
more surprised, more unprovided, and more at a loss what to do
than they were in other places; for when it came among them
really and with violence, as it did indeed in September and
October, there was then no stirring out into the country, nobody
would suffer a stranger to come near them, no, nor near the towns
where they dwelt; and, as I have been told, several that wandered
into the country on Surrey side were found starved to death in
the woods and commons, that country being more open and more
woody than any other part so near London, especially about
Norwood and the parishes of Camberwell, Dullege, and Lusum,
where, it seems, nobody durst relieve the poor distressed people
for fear of the infection.

This notion having, as I said, prevailed with the people in that
part of the town, was in part the occasion, as I said before,
that they had recourse to ships for their retreat; and where they
did this early and with prudence, furnishing themselves so with
provisions that they had no need to go on shore for supplies or
suffer boats to come on board to bring them,—I say, where they
did so they had certainly the safest retreat of any people
whatsoever; but the distress was such that people ran on board,
in their fright, without bread to eat, and some into ships that
had no men on board to remove them farther off, or to take the
boat and go down the river to buy provisions where it might be
done safely, and these often suffered and were infected on board
as much as on shore.

As the richer sort got into ships, so the lower rank got into
hoys, smacks, lighters, and fishing-boats; and many, especially
watermen, lay in their boats; but those made sad work of it,
especially the latter, for, going about for provision, and
perhaps to get their subsistence, the infection got in among them
and made a fearful havoc; many of the watermen died alone in
their wherries as they rid at their roads, as well as above
bridge as below, and were not found sometimes till they were not
in condition for anybody to touch or come near them.

Indeed, the distress of the people at this seafaring end of the
town was very deplorable, and deserved the greatest
commiseration. But, alas! this was a time when every one’s
private safety lay so near them that they had no room to pity the
distresses of others; for every one had death, as it were, at his
door, and many even in their families, and knew not what to do or
whither to fly.

This, I say, took away all compassion; self-preservation, indeed,
appeared here to be the first law. For the children ran away from
their parents as they languished in the utmost distress. And in
some places, though not so frequent as the other, parents did the
like to their children; nay, some dreadful examples there were,
and particularly two in one week, of distressed mothers, raving
and distracted, killing their own children; one whereof was not
far off from where I dwelt, the poor lunatic creature not living
herself long enough to be sensible of the sin of what she had
done, much less to be punished for it.

It is not, indeed, to be wondered at: for the danger of immediate
death to ourselves took away all bowels of love, all concern for
one another. I speak in general, for there were many instances of
immovable affection, pity, and duty in many, and some that came
to my knowledge, that is to say, by hearsay; for I shall not take
upon me to vouch the truth of the particulars.

To introduce one, let me first mention that one of the most
deplorable cases in all the present calamity was that of women
with child, who, when they came to the hour of their sorrows, and
their pains come upon them, could neither have help of one kind
or another; neither midwife or neighbouring women to come near
them. Most of the midwives were dead, especially of such as
served the poor; and many, if not all the midwives of note, were
fled into the country; so that it was next to impossible for a
poor woman that could not pay an immoderate price to get any
midwife to come to her—and if they did, those they could get were
generally unskilful and ignorant creatures; and the consequence
of this was that a most unusual and incredible number of women
were reduced to the utmost distress. Some were delivered and
spoiled by the rashness and ignorance of those who pretended to
lay them. Children without number were, I might say, murdered by
the same but a more justifiable ignorance: pretending they would
save the mother, whatever became of the child; and many times
both mother and child were lost in the same manner; and
especially where the mother had the distemper, there nobody would
come near them and both sometimes perished. Sometimes the mother
has died of the plague, and the infant, it may be, half born, or
born but not parted from the mother. Some died in the very pains
of their travail, and not delivered at all; and so many were the
cases of this kind that it is hard to judge of them.

Something of it will appear in the unusual numbers which are put
into the weekly bills (though I am far from allowing them to be
able to give anything of a full account) under the articles of—

Child-bed. Abortive and Still-born. Chrisoms and Infants.

Take the weeks in which the plague was most violent, and compare
them with the weeks before the distemper began, even in the same
year. For example:—

Child-bed. Abortive. Still-born.
From January 3 to January 10 7 1 13
” ” 10 ” 17 8 6 11
” ” 17 ” 24 9 5 15
” ” 24 ” 31 3 2 9
” ” 31 to February 7 3 3 8
” February 7 ” 14 6 2 11
” ” 14 ” 21 5 2 13
” ” 21 ” 28 2 2 10
” ” 28 to March 7 5 1 10
- —- —- ——
- 48 24 100

From August 1 to August 8 25 5 11
” ” 8 ” 15 23 6 8
” ” 15 ” 22 28 4 4
” ” 22 ” 29 40 6 10
” ” 29 to September 5 38 2 11
September 5 ” 12 39 23 ...
” ” 12 ” 19 42 5 17
” ” 19 ” 26 42 6 10
” ” 26 to October 3 14 4 9
- —- — —-
- 291 61 80

To the disparity of these numbers it is to be considered and
allowed for, that according to our usual opinion who were then
upon the spot, there were not one-third of the people in the town
during the months of August and September as were in the months
of January and February. In a word, the usual number that used to
die of these three articles, and, as I hear, did die of them the
year before, was thus:—

1664. 1665.
Child-bed 189 Child-bed 625
Abortive and still-born 458 Abortive and still-born 617
- —— ——
- 647 1242

This inequality, I say, is exceedingly augmented when the numbers
of people are considered. I pretend not to make any exact
calculation of the numbers of people which were at this time in
the city, but I shall make a probable conjecture at that part
by-and-by. What I have said now is to explain the misery of those
poor creatures above; so that it might well be said, as in the
Scripture, Woe be to those who are with child, and to those which
give suck in that day. For, indeed, it was a woe to them in
particular.

I was not conversant in many particular families where these
things happened, but the outcries of the miserable were heard
afar off. As to those who were with child, we have seen some
calculation made; 291 women dead in child-bed in nine weeks, out
of one-third part of the number of whom there usually died in
that time but eighty-four of the same disaster. Let the reader
calculate the proportion.