which passages in a journal of the plague year seem especially vivid to you why
helped the poor fellow down, and he went about his business. bread, butter, cheese, and beer, I took my friend and physicians advice,
where the plague had been, and how to render them habitable again, which
benjamin, rozin, and sulphur in their rooms close shut up, and then let
Westminster; one quarter or part among the inhabitants of the Southwark
the people would think the shutting of their houses no grievance, and be
have most happily led the people to fall upon their knees, make confession
The constables everywhere were upon their guard not so much,
revolutions are calculated, or pretended to be calculated, so that they
Neither did it answer the
of flying from God, and that He could cause His justice to overtake me
have observed before, nothing hindered them but that the plague raged so
destruction that wasteth at noonday. high as that there died 4000 a week; so that in showing my resentment, or
may not have the sun upon our faces and beating on our breasts, which will
But of this I shall speak again presently. condition, too, that when he went he was to lock up the outer door of the
themselves sound. their clothes, and the like. and preparations were prescribed by physicians, some of one kind and some
taint of the disease in their vitals, and after their spirits were so
woman, for medicines and remedies; storing themselves with such multitudes
times thought of at that time, that no fires, or no considerable ones at
was hard when three of those watchmen were publicly whipped through the
But of this I shall speak by itself. I have seen
ferryman was content to bring his boat to a place distant from the usual
And then the bodies of the dead would have lain
that I repented several times that I had ventured to stay in town, and had
beaten back and so terrified that they durst not go into houses where the
from taking cold. there died seventeen the week after, whereof fourteen were of the plague. raised that suggestion, which I hope was not really true in fact. alley called and asked, What is the matter? upon which, from the first
such people had not been confined by the shutting up of houses; and this I
enough to pierce the stoutest heart in the world to hear them. But there was still another madness beyond all this, which may serve to
infection into any other house in the city (except it be to the pest-house
of September, being but five weeks. They began to rise up, a little surprised,
answered, that is, lied, for one another, or got some of the neighbourhood
they had buried five before, that the houses had been infected nine or ten
provision that my servants were obliged to go out of doors to buy every
that ye may have life, and that therefore His Gospel is called the Gospel
Nor do I remember that any one of those
distempers discovered is as follows:. Indeed the work was not of a nature to allow them leisure to take an exact
faces the street or way now called Hand Alley which, though called an
they would have found it impracticable to have gone the other way to
made no use of then; and being willing to assist the three honest men, he
of the truth, two physicians and a surgeon were ordered to go to the house
people, especially the weather being now changed and growing warm, and the
I am now come, as I have said, to the month of September,
discourse of the neighbourhood, the Secretaries of State got knowledge of
from street to street, so they are capable of carrying the effluvia or
But we were not to expect that the
They were, indeed, as if they had had no warning, no
Bring out your dead; but nobody answered, till the man that drove the
him was agreed by all. dog-days, or, as our astrologers pretended to express themselves, the
It was a hot afternoon, but in that shady room I had found a fellow-woman and . fell down in a swoon. for relief of the poorI mean the diseased poor and in particular
be very hard to oblige me to be an instrument in that which was against my
were so enthusiastically bold as to run about the streets with their oral
they would save the mother, whatever became of the child; and many times
his shop into a bulk or stall, where formerly a cobbler had sat, before or
were distinguished by their long hair, and of others the flesh was not
In that very moment when we might very well say, Vain was the help of
was very careful. require), at some one general place accustomed in their respective wards
meaning of it, and whence they had the foreknowledge. fever, spotted-fever, and teeth began to swell; for all that could conceal
seaports; so that, first or last, all the considerable places in England
heard of. thousand people and more who attended ship affairs were certainly
the three poor men who wandered from Wapping, not knowing whither to go or
laundress, or in any other common employment whatsoever. Will she stay here, or will she
shall take notice of in its proper place. very little, low-boarded house), and there my poor wife and two children
keeping so many thousands of families from perishing and starving. . some even before the flesh of them was perished from the bones, and
(1) Provisions were always to be had in full plenty, and the price not
Innumerable dismal stories we heard every day on this very account. whole month of August was expired. Notice & Note Describe images that the narrator repeats again and again in the novel excerpt. calamity, that it was impossible any particular person could come at the
As to that, we might make shift, I have a little, though not much;
alderman of the ward, and the house of the receiver of such visited person
Then the physicians began to consider, for
weekly bills (though I am far from allowing them to be able to give
great towns in England had the distemper among them, more or less, and
and apparel and hangings of chambers must be well aired with fire and such
It was with no little difficulty
Let the reader calculate the proportion. But the night following, having contrived to send
left the bodies, some thrown out here, some there, in a dismal manner. were given to the country of the resolution of the people of London to
This was a
that which was still worse, by the time that the houses were known to be
and scarce to be imagined, how the posts of houses and corners of streets
here my heart smote me, suggesting how much better this poor mans
A watchman was set by the constable at the door of this house, and
Baron Joseph X. Pontalba, "The ladies, on one side, found pleasure in knotting my bed sheets together, in throwing water letter to his wife, October 15, 1796, at me while I, on the other, smudged their bed clothes with lamp-black, so that they became WPA trans., typescript, Louisiana . more serious part of the inhabitants behaved after another manner. half the Exchange, the Session House, the Compter, the prisons of Ludgate,
What they did as to the regulation of the inhabitants and
shut up with the sick person, would inevitably have perished. particulars. fall immediately two thousand in a week, when there was such a prodigious
running too near it, the cart fell in and drew the horses in also. He also came very often
dependents. as the relation goes, was giving the child suck at her breast, and to all
provided food for them; and they would in time have been even driven to
Into
as it was thought necessary, nothing was spared. It was said such abandoned effects came to the king, as the universal
giving their blessing to the poor in substantial relief to them, as well
not mingle with anybody that came out of houses, or meet with smells and
stop upon the river, made to raise the water for the barges which go up
who attended infected people, using them barbarously, starving them,
provisions from the town, by threatening them with living upon them at
of the plague in that parish, but had been set down of the spotted-fever
say, by hearsay; for I shall not take upon me to vouch the truth of the
magistrates for relief, which relief was (to give the magistrates their
Church, and bid them ring the bell; and with these words shut the door
often has been, and I could give many particular cases where it has been
parts where they resided, over and above the private charity distributed
distributing weekly great sums of money for relief of the poor, a
one of them speaking to another that was behind him, Alas! for the decrease went on, and another week in October it decreased 1843,
that had the distemper upon them, and were not recovered. them an account how things really were, and how there was not above
to resist the contagion; and I, says he, think as both these think,
almswoman and am kept by the parish, and your bills say you give the poor
They will not be put off with words. in the middle of the stream, and that some of them had several families on
the garret, and that they could spare that bed for one night, some drovers
But besides those who were so frighted as to
They resolved to load themselves with as little baggage as possible
suggested about its being an intimation from Heaven, and told me several
crime as some have since been pleased to say, nor did it seem to be so
He made,
still the story may have its uses so many ways as that it will, I hope,
The tone was set when an escalation of an oil market turf war between Saudi Arabia and Russia sent oil prices crashing more than 5% on Jan 8. hay or grassby which means bread was cheap, by reason of the plenty
of their own judgement, or by the best observation which they could make
person in that house happens to be infected, no other person or family of
places infected shall come to the said meeting while their coming may be
families and servants in an unusual manner; and this was more particularly
limits examiners, searchers, watchmen, keepers, and buriers for the
streets, and making everything as eligible as possible to all sorts of
are, or shall be, appointed for the several parishes under their
Alley, is nothing; for it is most certain they were buried as soon as they
of the family, being then left at liberty, would certainly spread it among
to them; and that even when it appeared violent, yet seeing it did not
In this narrow passage stands a man looking through between the palisadoes
whence tis supposed they were rolled off by thieves, stolen and carried
Abundance of perfumes
began; for though I have lived to see a further increase, and mighty
it was known to spread and increase in hot weather and abate in cold; and
From hence they passed along and took in other dead bodies, till, as
The latter end of July it decreased in those parishes; and
Some fancied they were all swept away in the infection to a man, and
Theres somebody in the cart not quite
John. The manner of its coming first to London proves this also, viz., by goods
there was but twenty-eight in the whole city, within the walls, and but