Daniel
Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year
was written in the course of a plague as it engulfed Europe in 1721. It brought
back memories of the Great Plague of 1665 in his youth (at age 5), which he
undertook to recreate imaginatively, using a number of documented sources that
were still available during his time of writing. There remains a possibility, according to
J.H. Plumb, that he did so while in the pay of the government of the day.[1]
As I went along Houndsditch one morning about eight o’clock
there was a great noise. It is true, indeed, there was not much crowd, because
people were not very free to gather together, or to stay long together when
they were there; nor did I stay long there. But the outcry was loud enough to
prompt my curiosity, and I called to one that looked out of a window, and asked
what was the matter.
A watchman, it seems, had been employed to keep his post at
the door of a house which was infected, or said to be infected, and was shut
up. He had been there all night for two nights together, as he told his story,
and the day-watchman had been there one day, and was now come to relieve him.
All this while no noise had been heard in the house, no light had been seen;
they called for nothing, sent him of no errands, which used to be the chief
business of the watchmen; neither had they given him any disturbance, as he
said, from the Monday afternoon, when he heard great crying and screaming in
the house, which, as he supposed, was occasioned by some of the family dying
just at that time. It seems, the night before, the dead-cart, as it was called,
had been stopped there, and a servant-maid had been brought down to the door
dead, and the buriers or bearers, as they were called, put her into the cart,
wrapt only in a green rug, and carried her away.
The watchman had knocked at the door, it seems, when he
heard that noise and crying, as above, and nobody answered a great while; but
at last one looked out and said with an angry, quick tone, and yet a kind of
crying voice, or a voice of one that was crying, ‘What d’ye want, that ye make
such a knocking?’ He answered, ‘I am the watchman! How do you do? What is the
matter?’ The person answered, ‘What is that to you? Stop the dead-cart.’ This,
it seems, was about one o’clock. Soon after, as the fellow said, he stopped the
dead-cart, and then knocked again, but nobody answered. He continued knocking,
and the bellman called out several times, ‘Bring out your dead’; but nobody
answered, till the man that drove the cart, being called to other houses, would
stay no longer, and drove away.
The watchman knew not what to make of all this, so he let
them alone till the morning-man or day-watchman, as they called him, came to
relieve him. Giving him an account of the particulars, they knocked at the door
a great while, but nobody answered; and they observed that the window or
casement at which the person had looked out who had answered before continued
open, being up two pair of stairs.
Upon this the two men, to satisfy their curiosity, got a
long ladder, and one of them went up to the window and looked into the room,
where he saw a woman lying dead upon the floor in a dismal manner, having no
clothes on her but her shift. But though he called aloud, and putting in his
long staff, knocked hard on the floor, yet nobody stirred or answered; neither
could he hear any noise in the house.
He came down again upon this, and acquainted his fellow,
who went up also; and finding it just so, they resolved to acquaint either the
Lord Mayor or some other magistrate of it, but did not offer to go in at the
window. The magistrate, it seems, upon the information of the two men, ordered
the house to be broke open, a constable and other persons being appointed to be
present, that nothing might be plundered; and accordingly it was so done, when
nobody was found in the house but that young woman, who having been infected
and past recovery, the rest had left her to die by herself, and were every one
gone, having found some way to delude the watchman, and to get open the door,
or get out at some back-door, or over the tops of the houses, so that he knew
nothing of it; and as to those cries and shrieks which he heard, it was
supposed they were the passionate cries of the family at the bitter parting,
which, to be sure, it was to them all, this being the sister to the mistress of
the family. The man of the house, his wife, several children, and servants,
being all gone and fled, whether sick or sound, that I could never learn; nor,
indeed, did I make much inquiry after it.
Many such escapes were made out of infected houses, as
particularly when the watchman was sent of some errand; for it was his business
to go of any errand that the family sent him of; that is to say, for
necessaries, such as food and physic; to fetch physicians, if they would come,
or surgeons, or nurses, or to order the dead-cart, and the like; but with this
condition, too, that when he went he was to lock up the outer door of the house
and take the key away with him, To evade this, and cheat the watchmen, people
got two or three keys made to their locks, or they found ways to unscrew the
locks such as were screwed on, and so take off the lock, being in the inside of
the house, and while they sent away the watchman to the market, to the
bakehouse, or for one trifle or another, open the door and go out as often as
they pleased. But this being found out, the officers afterwards had orders to
padlock up the doors on the outside, and place bolts on them as they thought
fit.
Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year (1722)[2]
[1] See: Foreward by J.H. Plumb in Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year (New York:
The New American Library/ Signet Classic, 1960), pp. v-x.
[2] Source: the above
excerpt is from The Project Gutenberg E-book of A Journal of the Plague Year.
For comparable page references see Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the
Plague Year (New York: The New American Library/ Signet Classic, 1960), pp.
55-57.
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