DANIEL DEFOE
A JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR
DANIEL DEFOE
A JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR
being observations or memorials
of the most remarkable occurrences,
as well public as private, which happened in
London during the last great visitation in 1665.
Written by a Citizen who continued
all the while in London.
Never made public before
It was about the beginning of September, 1664, that I, among the rest
of my neighbours, heard in ordinary discourse that the plague was
returned again in Holland; for it had been very violent there, and
particularly at Amsterdam and Rotterdam, in the year 1663, whither,
they say, it was brought, some said from Italy, others from the Levant,
among some goods which were brought home by their Turkey fleet;
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. But it seems that the Government had a true
account of it, and several councils were held about ways to prevent its
coming over; but all was kept very private. Hence it was that this
rumour died off again, and people began to forget it as a thing we
were very little concerned in, and that we hoped was not true; till the
latter end of November or the beginning of December 1664 when two
men, said to be Frenchmen, died of the plague in Long Acre, or rather
at the upper end of Drury Lane. The family they were in endeavoured
to conceal it as much as possible, but as it had gotten some vent in the
discourse of the neighbourhood, the Secretaries of State got
knowledge of it; and concerning themselves to inquire about it, in
order to be certain of the truth, two physicians and a surgeon were
ordered to go to the house and make inspection. This they did; and
finding evident tokens of the sickness upon both the bodies that were
dead, they gave their opinions publicly that they died of the plague.
Whereupon it was given in to the parish clerk, and he also returned
them to the Hall; and it was printed in the weekly bill of mortality in
the usual manner, thus –
Plague, 2. Parishes infected, 1.
The people showed a great concern at this, and began to be alarmed
all over the town, and the more, because in the last week in December
1664 another man died in the same house, and of the same distemper.
And then we were easy again for about six weeks, when none having
died with any marks of infection, it was said the distemper was gone;
but after that, I think it was about the 12th of February, another died in
another house, but in the same parish and in the same manner.
This turned the people’s eyes pretty much towards that end of the
town, and the weekly bills showing an increase of burials in St Giles’s
parish more than usual, it began to be suspected that the plague was
among the people at that end of the town, and that many had died of it,
though they had taken care to keep it as much from the knowledge of the
public as possible. This possessed the heads of the people very much,
and few cared to go through Drury Lane, or the other streets suspected,
unless they had extraordinary business that obliged them to it
This increase of the bills stood thus: the usual number of burials in a
week, in the parishes of St Giles-in-the-Fields and St Andrew’s,
Holborn, were from twelve to seventeen or nineteen each, few more
or less; but from the time that the plague first began in St Giles’s