country; so that it was next to impossible for a poor woman that could
not pay an immoderate price to get any midwife to come to her – and
if they did, those they could get were generally unskilful and ignorant
creatures; and the consequence of this was that a most unusual and
incredible number of women were reduced to the utmost distress.
Some were delivered and spoiled by the rashness and ignorance of
those who pretended to lay them. Children without number were, I
might say, murdered by the same but a more justifiable ignorance:
pretending they would save the mother, whatever became of the child;
and many times both mother and child were lost in the same manner;
and especially where the mother had the distemper, there nobody
would come near them and both sometimes perished. Sometimes the
mother has died of the plague, and the infant, it may be, half born, or
born but not parted from the mother. Some died in the very pains of
their travail, and not delivered at all; and so many were the cases of
this kind that it is hard to judge of them.
Something of it will appear in the unusual numbers which are put
into the weekly bills (though I am far from allowing them to be able
to give anything of a full account) under the articles of –
Child-bed.
Abortive and Still-born.
Christmas and Infants.
Take the weeks in which the plague was most violent, and compare
them with the weeks before the distemper began, even in the same
year. For example: –
Child-bed. Abortive. Still-born.
From January 3 to January 10 7 1 13
” ” 10 ” 17 8 6 11
” ” 17 ” 24 9 5 15
” ” 24 ” 31 3 2 9
” ” 31 to February 7 3 3 8
” February7 ” 14 6 2 11
” ” 14 ” 21 5 2 13
” ” 21 ” 28 2 2 10
” ” 28 to March 7 5 1 10
— — —-
48 24 100
From August 1 to August 8 25 5 11
” ” 8 ” 15 23 6 8
” ” 15 ” 22 28 4 4
” ” 22 ” 29 40 6 10
” ” 29 to September 5 38 2 11
September 5 ” 12 39 23 …
” ” 12 ” 19 42 5 17
” ” 19 ” 26 42 6 10
” ” 26 to October 3 14 4 9
— — —
291 61 80
To the disparity of these numbers it is to be considered and allowed
for, that according to our usual opinion who were then upon the spot,
there were not one-third of the people in the town during the months
of August and September as were in the months of January and
February. In a word, the usual number that used to die of these three
articles, and, as I hear, did die of them the year before, was thus: –
1664. 1665.
Child-bed 189 Child-bed 625
Abortive and still-born 458 Abortive and still-born 617
—- —-
647 1242
This inequality, I say, is exceedingly augmented when the numbers
of people are considered. I pretend not to make any exact calculation
of the numbers of people which were at this time in the city, but I
shall make a probable conjecture at that part by-and-by. What I have
said now is to explain the misery of those poor creatures above; so
that it might well be said, as in the Scripture, Woe be to those who are
with child, and to those which give suck in that day. For, indeed, it
was a woe to them in particular.
I was not conversant in many particular families where these things
happened, but the outcries of the miserable were heard afar off. As to
those who were with child, we have seen some calculation made; 291
women dead in child-bed in nine weeks, out of one-third part of the
number of whom there usually died in that time but eighty-four of the
same disaster. Let the reader calculate the proportion.
There is no room to doubt but the misery of those that gave suck