Isaac Bickerstaff, Physician and AstrologerSteele, Richard, Sir
General
Isaac Bickerstaff, Physician and Astrologer
Steele, Richard, Sir
English wit and humor; Fictitious characters -- Autobiography
I have already taken great pains to inspire notions of honour and virtue
into the people of this kingdom, and used all gentle methods imaginable,
to bring those who are dead in idleness, folly, and pleasure, into life,
by applying themselves to learning, wisdom, and industry. But, since
fair means are ineffectual, I must proceed to extremities, and shall
give my good friends, the Company of Upholders, full power to bury all
such dead as they meet with, who are within my former descriptions of
deceased persons. In the meantime the following remonstrance of that
corporation I take to be very just.
"WORTHY SIR,
"Upon reading your Tatler of Saturday last, by which we received
the agreeable news of so many deaths, we immediately ordered in a
considerable quantity of blacks, and our servants have wrought night and
day ever since to furnish out the necessaries for these deceased. But so
it is, Sir, that of this vast number of dead bodies that go putrifying
up and down the streets, not one of them has come to us to be buried.
Though we should be loth to be any hindrance to our good friends the
physicians, yet we cannot but take notice what infection Her Majesty's
subjects are liable to from the horrible stench of so many corpses. Sir,
we will not detain you; our case in short is this: Here are we embarked
in this undertaking for the public good. Now, if people should be
suffered to go on unburied at this rate, there is an end of the
usefullest manufactures and handicrafts of the kingdom; for where will
be your sextons, coffin-makers, and plumbers? What will become of your
embalmers, epitaph-mongers, and chief-mourners? We are loth to drive
this matter any farther, though we tremble at the consequences of it;
for if it shall be left to every dead man's discretion not to be buried
till he sees his time, no man can say where that will end; but thus
much we will take upon us to affirm, that such a toleration will be
intolerable.
"What would make us easy in this matter is no more but that your Worship
would be pleased to issue out your orders to ditto Dead to repair
forthwith to our office, in order to their interment, where constant
attendance shall be given to treat with all persons according to their
quality, and the poor to be buried for nothing. And, for the convenience
of such persons as are willing enough to be dead, but that they are
afraid their friends and relations should know it, we have a back door
into Warwick Street, from whence they may be interred with all secrecy
imaginable, and without loss of time or hindrance of business. But in
case of obstinacy, for we would gladly make a thorough riddance, we
desire a farther power from your Worship, to take up such deceased as
shall not have complied with your first orders wherever we meet
them; and if, after that, there shall be complaints of any person so
offending, let them lie at our doors.
"We are your Worship's till death,
"The MASTER and COMPANY of UPHOLDERS.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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