Novels, Fiction, Facts, Allegories, History and Covid-19
The first in a series of posts:
A Journal of the Plague Year Daniel Defoe
‘ … it was a most surprising thing to see those streets which were so usually thronged now grown desolate, and so few people to be seen in them, that if I had been a stranger and at loss for my way, I might sometimes have gone the length of a whole street … and seen nobody to direct me except watchmen set at the doors of such houses as were shut up …’
‘… a kind of sadness … and horror sat upon the countenances even of the common people. Death was before their eyes, and everybody began to think of their graves, not of mirth and diversions.’
‘… be marked with a red cross a foot long in the middle of the door, evident to be seen, and with these usual printed words, that is to say, “Lord have mercy upon us,” to be set close over the same cross, there to continue until lawful opening of the same house.’
‘…it is therefore now ordered, that such constables, and others whom this matter may in any way concern, take special case that no wandering beggars be suffered in the streets of this city …’
‘That all plays, bear-baitings, games, singing of ballads, buckler-play, or such like causes of assemblies of people be utterly prohibited …’
‘That disorderly tipplings in taverns, ale-houses, coffee-houses, and cellars be severely looked into, as the common sin of this time and greatest occasion of dispersing the plague. And that no company or person be suffered to remain or come into any taverns ale-house, or coffee-house to drink after nine of the clock in the evening …’
‘And that which was still worse, those that did thus break out spread the infection wider by their wandering about with the distemper upon them …’
‘And here I must observe again, that this necessity of going out of our houses to buy provisions was in a great measure the ruin of the whole city, for the people catched the distemper on these occasions one of another …’
‘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 …’
‘This leads me again to mention when the plague first began … when, as I have said, the better sort of people first took the alarm and began to hurry themselves out of town …’
‘By the well I mean such had received the contagion … in their blood, yet did not show the consequences of it in their countenances: nay, even were not sensible of it themselves, as many were not for several days. These breathed death in every place, and upon everybody who came near them; nay, their very clothes retained the infection, their hands would infect the things they touched …’
‘… a vast number of people locked themselves up, so as not to come abroad in any company at all, nor suffer any that had been abroad in promiscuous company to come into their houses, or near them -at least not so near them as to be within the reach of their breath or any smell from them; and when they were obliged to place preservatives in their mouths and their clothes to repel and keep off the infection.’
‘All kinds of handicrafts in the city, &c, tradesmen and mechanics, were … out of employ; and this occasioned the putting-off and dismissing an innumerable number of journeymen and workmen of all sorts, seeing nothing was done relating to such trades but what might be said to be absolutely necessary.
This caused a multitude of single people in London to be unprovided for, as also families whose living depended upon the labour of the heads of those families; I say, this reduced them to extreme misery; and I must confess it is for the honour of the city of London, and will be for many ages, as long as this is to be spoken of, that they were able to supply with charitable provision the wants of so many thousands of those as afterwards fell sick and were distressed: so that it may be safely averred that nobody perished for want, at least that the magistrates had any notice given them of.’
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