There was no trade or craft of any kind carried on; shops, warehouses, offices, quays were closed or deserted; ships that arrived laden remained unnoticed in the Pool; the craftsmen and the common people had no work and drew no wages; servants and apprentices were thrust into the street; except for food there was nothing bought or sold; the quays, the port, the streets were silent; there was no grumbling of the broad wheels of waggons; there were no street cries; there were no bells; there were no children shouting and running about the streets. The churches, deserted by their incumbents, were taken over by Nonconformist ministers. It was contrary to law, but at such a time who cared for law? These preachers, braver than their persecutors, exhorted fearlessly crowded congregations, catching at every word of consolation or hope; quacks of the basest kind issued their advertisements, professing to cure the Plague. All kinds of ridiculous remedies were tried; plague water, amulets, hot spices, cupping glasses, besides old mediæval nostrums, all these were advocated and proved futile. The parishes which suffered most were St. Giles in the Fields; St. Andrew’s, Holborn; St. Clement Danes; St. Martin’s in the Fields, and Westminster. When the disease abated in those parts it broke out with equal force in Cripplegate, St. Sepulchre’s; St. James’s, Clerkenwell; St. Bride’s, and St. Botolph’s, Aldersgate. The City was divided into districts, each with surgeons, nurses, watchers, and grave-diggers; infected houses were closed; their doors were marked with a red cross a foot long; the grave-diggers removed the bodies of those who died in the streets; in the night the cart went round to collect the dead; the bodies were thrown into fosses communes, or common graves, either in the parish churchyard or some place set apart outside the town. There were hospitals erected called Pest Houses, one in Tothill Fields and one in Old Street; but those were only for people who could afford to pay. In a tract entitled “God’s terrible voice to the City,” by the Rev. Thomas Vincent, there is a picture, not overdrawn, of the City in August when the Plague was at its worst:—
“In August how dreadful is the increase! Now the cloud is very black, and the storm comes down upon us very sharp. Now death rides triumphantly on his pale horse through our streets, and breaks into every house where any inhabitants are to be found. Now people fall as thick as the leaves in autumn when they are shaken by a mighty wind. Now there is a dismal solitude in London streets: every day looks with the face of a Sabbath day, observed with a greater solemnity than it used to be in the City. Now shops are shut, people rare and very few that walk about, insomuch that the grass begins to spring up in some places; there is a deep silence in every street, especially within the walls. No prancing horses, no rattling coaches, no calling on customers nor offering wares, no London cries sounding in the ears. If any voice be heard it is the groans of dying persons breathing forth their last, and the funeral knells of them that are ready to be carried to their graves. Now shutting up of visited houses (there being so many) is at an end, and most of the well are mingled amongst the sick, which otherwise would have got no help. Now, in some places, where the people did generally stay, not one house in a hundred but what is affected: and in many houses half the family is swept away: in some, from the eldest to the youngest: few escape but with the death of one or two. Never did so many husbands and wives die together: never did so many parents carry their children with them to the grave, and go together into the same house under earth who had lived together in the same house upon it. Now the nights are too short to bury the dead: the whole day, though at so great a length, is hardly sufficient to light the dead that fall thereon into their graves.”
During this terrible time, when all work was suspended, the people were only kept from starving by munificent gifts. The King gave £1000 a week; the City £600 a week; the Archbishop of Canterbury many hundreds every week; there was the whole industrial population of the City to be provided for. Some got employment from the Corporation as watchmen, grave-diggers, searchers, and the like; most had no work and no wages; their insufficient nourishment no doubt assisted the disease, which raged with the greatest force among the poorer sort. Bartholomew Fair was forbidden. In September Pepys writes, “To Lambeth: but Lord! what a sad time it is, to see no boats upon the river, and grass grows all up and down Whitehall Court, and nobody but wretches in the street.” The people began to get back and to go about their usual business in December; the Court returned in February, and it was soon observed that the streets were as full of people as ever. Yet nearly 70,000 had fallen, or perhaps one in three. If with the present population of 5,000,000 one in three were to die of Plague there would be a loss of 1,700,000. It seems as if about a third part of the population of London were cut off by this scourge. Happily it was the last of the great plagues. The history of London is no longer interrupted by the death of one-third of its people.
RESCUED FROM THE PLAGUE
From the painting by F. W. W. Topham, R.I., by permission of the Artist.
SAMUEL PEPYS (1633–1703)
From the painting by John Hayles in the National Portrait Gallery, London. This picture is referred to in Pepys’ Diary.
The following notes are a brief diary of the Plague as it was observed by Pepys—