it was our united opinion that a method to have removed the sound
from the sick, in case of a particular house being visited, would have
been much more reasonable on many accounts, leaving nobody with
the sick persons but such as should on such occasion request to stay
and declare themselves content to be shut up with them
Our scheme for removing those that were sound from those that
were sick was only in such houses as were infected, and confining the
sick was no confinement; those that could not stir would not complain
while they were in their senses and while they had the power of
judging. Indeed, when they came to be delirious and light-headed,
then they would cry out of the cruelty of being confined; but for the
removal of those that were well, we thought it highly reasonable and
just, for their own sakes, they should be removed from the sick, and
that for other people’s safety they should keep retired for a while, to
see that they were sound, and might not infect others; and we thought
twenty or thirty days enough for this.
Now, certainly, if houses had been provided on purpose for those
that were sound to perform this demi-quarantine in, they would have
much less reason to think themselves injured in such a restraint than
in being confined with infected people in the houses where they lived.
It is here, however, to be observed that after the funerals became so
many that people could not toll the bell, mourn or weep, or wear black
for one another, as they did before; no, nor so much as make coffins
for those that died; so after a while the fury of the infection appeared
to be so increased that, in short, they shut up no houses at all. It
seemed enough that all the remedies of that kind had been used till
they were found fruitless, and that the plague spread itself with an
irresistible fury; so that as the fire the succeeding year spread itself,
and burned with such violence that the citizens, in despair, gave over
their endeavours to extinguish it, so in the plague it came at last to
such violence that the people sat still looking at one another, and
seemed quite abandoned to despair; whole streets seemed to be
desolated, and not to be shut up only, but to be emptied of their
inhabitants; doors were left open, windows stood shattering with the
wind in empty houses for want of people to shut them. In a word,
people began to give up themselves to their fears and to think that all
regulations and methods were in vain, and that there was nothing to be
hoped for but an universal desolation; and it was even in the height of
this general despair that it Pleased God to stay His hand, and to
slacken the fury of the contagion in such a manner as was even
surprising, like its beginning, and demonstrated it to be His own
particular hand, and that above, if not without the agency of means, as
I shall take notice of in its proper place.
But I must still speak of the plague as in its height, raging even to
desolation, and the people under the most dreadful consternation,
even, as I have said, to despair. It is hardly credible to what excess
the passions of men carried them in this extremity of the distemper,
and this part, I think, was as moving as the rest. What could affect a
man in his full power of reflection, and what could make deeper
impressions on the soul, than to see a man almost naked, and got out
of his house, or perhaps out of his bed, into the street, come out of
Harrow Alley, a populous conjunction or collection of alleys, courts,
and passages in the Butcher Row in Whitechappel, – I say, what could
be more affecting than to see this poor man come out into the open
street, run dancing and singing and making a thousand antic gestures,
with five or six women and children running after him, crying and
calling upon him for the Lord’s sake to come back, and entreating the