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 LondonDefoe, Daniel
History
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
Defoe, Daniel
Great Fire, London, England, 1666 -- Fiction; Historical fiction; London (England) -- History -- 17th century -- Fiction; Plague -- Fiction
It was a very ill time to be sick in, for if any one complained,
it was immediately said he had the plague; and though I had
indeed no symptom of that distemper, yet being very ill, both in
my head and in my stomach, I was not without apprehension that I
really was infected; but in about three days I grew better; the
third night I rested well, sweated a little, and was much
refreshed. The apprehensions of its being the infection went also
quite away with my illness, and I went about my business as
usual.
These things, however, put off all my thoughts of going into the
country; and my brother also being gone, I had no more debate
either with him or with myself on that subject.
It was now mid-July, and the plague, which had chiefly raged at
the other end of the town, and, as I said before, in the parishes
of St Giles, St Andrew’s, Holborn, and towards Westminster, began
to now come eastward towards the part where I lived. It was to be
observed, indeed, that it did not come straight on towards us;
for the city, that is to say, within the walls, was indifferently
healthy still; nor was it got then very much over the water into
Southwark; for though there died that week 1268 of all
distempers, whereof it might be supposed above 600 died of the
plague, yet there was but twenty-eight in the whole city, within
the walls, and but nineteen in Southwark, Lambeth parish
included; whereas in the parishes of St Giles and St
Martin-in-the-Fields alone there died 421.
But we perceived the infection kept chiefly in the out-parishes,
which being very populous, and fuller also of poor, the distemper
found more to prey upon than in the city, as I shall observe
afterwards. We perceived, I say, the distemper to draw our way,
viz., by the parishes of Clarkenwell, Cripplegate, Shoreditch,
and Bishopsgate; which last two parishes joining to Aldgate,
Whitechappel, and Stepney, the infection came at length to spread
its utmost rage and violence in those parts, even when it abated
at the western parishes where it began.
It was very strange to observe that in this particular week, from
the 4th to the 11th of July, when, as I have observed, there died
near 400 of the plague in the two parishes of St Martin and St
Giles-in-the-Fields only, there died in the parish of Aldgate but
four, in the parish of Whitechappel three, in the parish of
Stepney but one.
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