The Children's Book of London

by G. E. Mitton

Of all the awful calamities that have befallen London, there is none more awful than the Great Plague, which happened when Charles II., son of King Charles I., was on the throne. He had been restored to his kingdom for less than five years when it happened. Two people died quite suddenly in Westminster, and men looked grave and said it was the plague. But at first they did not think much of it, for the plague had often visited England before. But this time it was to be far, far worse than anything anyone had ever known. It is said that the infection was brought over from the Continent in some bales of goods that merchants were bringing to sell in London, but this was never known for certain. All at once two more people died unaccountably, and then it seemed as if the plague leaped out from every corner, and people began dying all over London. There had been a hard frost, and it was when the frost thawed that the plague seemed to gain fresh strength. Everybody began to ask questions. What were they to do? Couldn't they go away at once? What were others doing to stop the spread of the infection? The awful suddenness of it terrified everyone. Persons who had been talking gaily and feeling quite well complained of feeling a swelling on the throat or a little sickness, and in an hour they were dead. Sometimes it began by a swelling that came under the arm (this was a sure sign), and sometimes by swellings on the neck. As the plague grew worse men dropped down in the streets seized with it, and before their friends could be found they were dead. All sorts of odd things were offered in order to keep away the infection. One, that a great many foolish people believed in, was a dried toad strung on a string round the neck—as if that could have made anyone safe!

Very soon all the rich people left London and fled away into the country, though, of course, the country people did not want them, for fear that they had brought the infection. But there were hundreds and hundreds of people who stayed in London and even tried to carry on their business. At first they struggled bravely and pretended nothing was the matter, but very soon this was impossible.

You could not imagine what London looked like then. No one drove in the streets, no one walked there if he could help it; grass grew up between the cobble-stones, and nearly all the houses had shutters up, showing that their inhabitants had gone away. A nurse would come quickly along holding a little red staff in her hand to show she had been nursing a plague patient, and that other people had better avoid her. Then slowly down the street would come a cart, with a man walking beside the horse, and he would call out: 'Bring out your dead! bring out your dead!' just as if he were shouting to sell coals. And in the cart were the bodies of the people who had died of the plague. It was extraordinary that any man could be found to drive that cart, and he had to have very high wages; and even then he must have been a low sort of man, without any imagination, a man who did not mind much what his work was so long as he had some money to spend in drink. One of these men was sitting on his cart one day when it was noticed that he seemed to be ill, and the next moment he fell off dead, having caught the plague.

When people were dying by hundreds and hundreds there was no time to bury them properly: and yet they had to be buried, or the dead bodies would make it impossible for anyone to live at all. So great pits were dug many yards wide, and into these the bodies of men, women, and children were put in rows and rows, one row on the top of another, and the whole covered in with stuff called quicklime. Whenever anyone began with the plague, it was the duty of the head of the household to see that a red cross was marked on his door as a warning to others to keep away, and it must have been very sad to see these long red crosses on so many doors, with the grass-grown street in front of the houses, and the slow plague-cart going down the street.

Another rule was that if anyone had a case of the plague within his house, he and all his household must be shut up indoors for forty days for fear of carrying the infection; but many people hated this so much that they used to hide the cases of the plague when they happened, and pretend that everyone was alive and well in their houses. When the police-officers found this out they used to visit the houses, and if they found anyone sick in one of them they would carry him or her off to a hospital called a pest-house, where all the sick could be together. If it is true what we read of these houses, it must have been almost worse to go there than to die. The smells and sights were so awful, and the shrieks of the poor wretches who had been seized with the plague were so terrifying, that there was not much chance of anyone who went there recovering.

The people who were forced to stay in London, either because they had no money to go away or nowhere else to go to, used to meet in St. Paul's Cathedral and ask one another the news. This was not the same cathedral that is standing now, but one that was afterwards burnt in the Great Fire. The long aisle was called Paul's walk, and here in better times there were stalls for the sale of ribbons and laces and many other things, and people laughed and talked and strolled up and down, just as if it were a street and not a church at all. Now, in the plague time most of the stalls were shut, and the people no longer came to buy, but to ask in hushed voices how many had died last week, and if there were any sign that this awful disease was going to stop. It is almost impossible to believe, but it is true, that thieves were very busy then. They used actually to go into the houses deserted by their owners, or left because someone had died there of the plague, and steal things, without minding the risk of infection.

The country people soon stopped bringing in fresh milk and vegetables, butter and eggs from the country, because they dared not come into the town; and so it was difficult to get these things at all, and those who were in London were worse off than ever, and in danger of starving.

We can imagine children crying for bread, and their mother going out at last to try to find something for them to eat, and never coming back. Then the eldest boy would begin to be afraid that she had caught the plague and had died in the streets, and he would leave his little sisters and brothers and creep along the streets until he met the awful death-cart; and then he would ask, and perhaps the man would tell him where to go to find out about his mother, and someone might be able to describe a woman who had fallen down in the street seized by the plague, and had at once been carried off and buried. The boy would guess that that must have been his mother; and yet he could never be quite certain, for she had been buried in a plague-pit with dozens of others, and he would never see her. Perhaps he would beg a little oatmeal, and run back hastily to his brothers and sisters, and when he got there find them all frightened and crying, for the eldest girl was very sick. He might turn down her dress, and see on her neck the awful plague-spot, and know that she, too, would die. And very likely by the next day the whole of that family would be dead. Many people must have died of starvation, for all work was stopped, but for the money given by charitable persons. The King himself gave £1,000 a week.