Apply to him with suppliant mien,
He bringeth thee before thy Queen.
Benignant Michael, blessed Saint,
Guardian of souls, receive our plaint,
Through the Almighty Maker’s death
Preserve us from the Hell beneath.”
The growing frequency of these terrible visitations of plague in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries shows the insalubrity of the City. That every day quantities of offal were thrown into the river, and that a stream of blood from the shambles rolled daily down open gutters, mattered very little: London was too small as yet, even with a hundred thousand people, to do much harm to her noble river. The swans still delighted to float and swim about London Bridge; salmon came up to be caught in mid-stream; and even the town ditch, which also received a good deal of the refuse, continued to be full of good fish. There were scavengers—not only the rain, the frost, the sun, the wind, and the kites, but men appointed to do for the householder then what they do now: to remove the refuse. These men were appointed for every ward. Their oath, given by Stow, seems from its language to belong to the sixteenth century, but it may be older:
“Ye shal swear that ye shal wel and diligently observe that the Pavements in every ward be wel and rightfully repaired: and not haunted by the Noyance of the Neighbours: and that the ways, Streets, and Lanes be kept clene from Donge and other filth, for the Honesty of the City. And that all the chimnies, Reredoses, and Furnaces be made of stone, for defence of Fire; and if ye know of any such ye shal show it to the Alderman; that he may make due Redress therefor. And this ye shal not leve. So help you God and by this Book.”
It is not what is thrown into a great tidal river from a town that corrupts the town, nor is it what is thrown upon a lay-stall there to lie for a few days until it is taken away; it is what sinks into the earth and slowly spreads around, corrupting all the springs and wells, and causing exhalations in times of heat and moisture. The greatest difficulty of cities has always been the disposal of waste matter, solid and liquid. For nearly two thousand years the lower part of the City, the most densely populated part, was dotted with latrines and cesspools; the whole soil of the City was soaked and permeated and corrupted with the pestiferous stuff; the ground gave off a poisoned breath; when the plague came, this poison encouraged it, helped it along, spread it, and strengthened it. We have had no plague for more than two hundred years. Perhaps the reason has been that the Fire of London in 1666 not only baked and calcined the ground with its heat for many feet deep, burning up the dead bodies which rested three or four feet below the surface, with the coffins, bones, and deadly poisonous soil of the churchyards, but also choking up the City wells—which were never again opened—and burning the whole of the soil, decayed with the impurities of two thousand years.
The fire baked the earth, and cleansed it, and destroyed its exhalations for many feet below the surface; when the folk came back again they found, though they knew it not, the ground cleaner than it had been for two thousand years; as clean as when the solitary elk stood upon the edge of the cliff and looked out upon the broad lagoon of the river at high tide. The people began at once to restore, as much as they could, the old state of things: the cesspools came back and remained for a hundred and fifty years, but not the wells; in the two hundred years that have passed, it has been impossible to restore completely the mischievous conditions due to two thousand years of filth.