A Journal of the Plague Year quotes

others said it was brought from Candia; others from Cyprus.

It mattered not from whence it came; but all agreed it was come into Holland again.

We had no such thing as printed newspapers in those days to spread rumours and reports of things, and to improve them by the invention of men, as I have lived to see practised since.

others said it was brought from Candia; others from Cyprus. It mattered not from whence it came; but all agreed it was come into Holland again.

We had no such thing as printed newspapers in those days to spread rumours and reports of things, and to improve them by the invention of men, as I have lived to see practised since.

But such things as these were gathered from the letters of merchants and others who corresponded abroad, and from them was handed about by word of mouth only; so that things did not spread instantly over the whole nation, as they do now.

Were it possible to represent those times exactly to those that did not see them, and give the reader due ideas of the horror that everywhere presented itself, it must make just impressions upon their minds and fill them with surprise.

London might well be said to be all in tears; the mourners did not go about the streets indeed, for nobody put on black or made a formal dress of mourning for their nearest friends; but the voice of mourners was truly heard in the streets.

The shrieks of women and children at the windows and doors of their houses, where their dearest relations were perhaps dying, or just dead, were so frequent to be heard as we passed the streets, that it was enough to pierce the stoutest heart in …

The Inns of Court were all shut up; nor were very many of the lawyers in the Temple, or Lincoln’s Inn, or Gray’s Inn, to be seen there.

Everybody was at peace; there was no occasion for lawyers; besides, it being in the time of the vacation too, they were generally gone into the country.

Whole rows of houses in some places were shut close up, the inhabitants all fled, and only a watchman or two left.

But after the sickness was over, that spirit of charity abated; and every church being again supplied with their own ministers, or others presented where the minister was dead, things returned to their old channel again.

One mischief always introduces another.

These terrors and apprehensions of the people led them into a thousand weak, foolish, and wicked things, which they wanted not a sort of people really wicked to encourage them to:

for the minds of the people were agitated with other things, and a kind of sadness and horror at these things sat upon the countenances even of the common people.

Death was before their eyes, and everybody began to think of their graves, not of mirth and diversions.

But even those wholesome reflections—which, rightly managed, would have most happily led the people to fall upon their knees, make confession of their sins, and look up to their merciful Saviour for pardon, imploring His compassion on them in such a time of their distress, …

I shall not be supposed to lessen the authority or capacity of the physicians when I say that the violence of the distemper, when it came to its extremity, was like the fire the next year.

The fire, which consumed what the plague could not touch, defied all the application of remedies; the fire-engines were broken, the buckets thrown away, and the power of man was baffled and brought to an end.

So the plague defied all medicines; the very physicians were seized with it, with their preservatives in their mouths;

… less than eighteen or twenty of them killed, or so wounded as to be taken up for dead, which was supposed to be done by the people in the infected houses which were shut up, and where they attempted to come out and were opposed.

Nor, indeed, could less be expected, for here were so many prisons in the town as there were houses shut up; and as the people shut up or imprisoned so were guilty of no crime, only shut up because miserable, it was really the more intolerable to them.

It had also this difference, that every prison, as we may call it, had but one jailer, and as he had the whole house to guard, and that many houses were so situated as that they had several ways out, some more, some less, and …

… store of bread, butter, cheese, and beer, I took my friend and physician’s advice, and locked myself up, and my family, and resolved to suffer the hardship of living a few months without flesh-meat, rather than to purchase it at the hazard of our lives.

But though I confined my family, I could not prevail upon my unsatisfied curiosity to stay within entirely myself; and though I generally came frighted and terrified home, yet I could not restrain; only that indeed I did not do it so frequently as at first.

I had some little obligations, indeed, upon me to go to my brother’s house, which was in Coleman Street parish and which he had left to my care, and I went at first every day, but afterwards only once or twice a week.

That there were a great many robberies and wicked practices committed even in this dreadful time I do not deny.

The power of avarice was so strong in some that they would run any hazard to steal and to plunder; and particularly in houses where all the families or inhabitants have been dead and carried out, they would break in at all hazards, and without regard to the danger of infection, take even the clothes off the dead bodies and the bedclothes from others where they lay dead.

This, I suppose, must be the case of a family in Houndsditch, where a man and his daughter, the rest of the family being, as I suppose, carried away before by the dead-cart, were found stark naked, one in one chamber and one in another, …

… 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 anyone 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;

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 everyone’s private safety lay so near them that they had no room to pity the distresses of others; for everyone 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.

Look you, Tom, the whole kingdom is my native country as well as this town.

You may as well say I must not go out of my house if it is on fire as that I must not go out of the town I was born in when it is infected with the plague. I was born in England, and have a right to live in it if I can.

But you know every vagrant person may by the laws of England be taken up, and passed back to their last legal settlement.

What lawful occasions can we pretend to travel, or rather wander upon? They will not be put off with words.

Is not flying to save our lives a lawful occasion?

And do they not all know that the fact is true? We cannot be said to dissemble.

Why, you would not have us starve, would you?

If you stop us here, you must keep us.

You will be ill kept at our maintenance.

You will be ill kept at our maintenance.

If you stint us, we shall make ourselves the better allowance.

Why, you will not pretend to quarter upon us by force, will you?

… chiefly owing to our easy situation in life and our putting these things far from us that our breaches are fomented, ill blood continued, prejudices, breach of charity and of Christian union, so much kept and so far carried on among us as it is.

Another plague year would reconcile all these differences; a close conversing with death, or with diseases that threaten death, would scum off the gall from our tempers, remove the animosities among us, and bring us to see with differing eyes than those which we looked on things with before.

As the people who had been used to join with the Church were reconciled at this time with the admitting the Dissenters to preach to them, so the Dissenters, who with an uncommon prejudice had broken off from the communion of the Church of England, …

the breaches seem rather to widen, and tend to a widening further, than to closing, and who am I that I should think myself able to influence either one side or other?

But this I may repeat again, that ’tis evident death will reconcile us all; on the other side the grave we shall be all brethren again.

In heaven, whither I hope we may come from all parties and persuasions, we shall find neither prejudice or scruple; there we shall be of one principle and of one opinion.

“I am sure I am struck from Heaven,” says another, and he falls to the serious part. Again, the first goes on exclaiming, “I have come near no infection or any infected person; I am sure it is the air.

We draw in death when we breathe, and therefore ’tis the hand of God; there is no withstanding it.

” And this at last made many people, being hardened to the danger, grow less concerned at it; and less cautious towards the latter end of the time, and when it was come to its height, than they were at first.

… to go into a church when it was anything full of people, there would be such a mixture of smells at the entrance that it was much more strong, though perhaps not so wholesome, than if you were going into an apothecary’s or druggist’s shop.

In a word, the whole church was like a smelling-bottle; in one corner it was all perfumes; in another, aromatics, balsamics, and variety of drugs and herbs; in another, salts and spirits, as everyone was furnished for their own preservation.

Yet I observed that after people were possessed, as I have said, with the belief, or rather assurance, of the infection being thus carried on by persons apparently in health, the churches and meetinghouses were much thinner of people than at other times before that …

if I am taken, then I am provided for, and there is an end of me,” and the like. Or thus, “Why, what must I do? I can’t starve.

I had as good have the plague as perish for want.

I have no work; what could I do? I must do this or beg.” Suppose it was burying the dead, or attending the sick, or watching infected houses, which were all terrible hazards; but their tale was generally the same.

and the following time, being so dreadful also in the very city itself, put the whole world, I say, upon their guard against it.

You may be sure, also, that the report of these things lost nothing in the carriage.

The plague was itself very terrible, and the distress of the people very great, as you may observe of what I have said.

this we could by no means approve, for all men have not the same faith and the same courage, and the Scripture commands us to judge the most favourably and according to charity.

A plague is a formidable enemy, and is armed with terrors that every man is not sufficiently fortified to resist or prepared to stand the shock against.

It is very certain that a great many of the clergy who were in circumstances to do it withdrew and fled for the safety of their lives;

I recommend it to the charity of all good people to look back and reflect duly upon the terrors of the time, and whoever does so will see that it is not an ordinary strength that could support it.

It was not like appearing in the head of an army or charging a body of horse in the field, but it was charging Death itself on his pale horse; to stay was indeed to die, and it could be esteemed nothing less

, especially as things appeared at the latter end of August and the beginning of September, and as there was reason to expect them at that time;

but I could not carry my list on, for when the violent rage of the distemper in September came upon us, it drove us out of all measures.

Men did then no more die by tale and by number.

They might put out a weekly bill, and call them seven or eight thousand, or what they pleased; ’tis certain they died by heaps, and were buried by heaps, that is to say, without account.