Defoe, Pepys and the Great Plague of 1665

The arrival of Covid 19 in 2020 was the first serious global pandemic to affect the West in many years so perhaps we had become complacent and regarded serious outbreaks of infectious illness as history. As deaths and illness have risen, and we live with increasingly draconian measures on individual liberty, it is tempting to look back at previous plagues and try to see parallels and learn lessons.

The great plague of 1665 was the last serious outbreak of bubonic plague in England and it was concentrated in London. It was followed in 1666 by the great fire of London. Both of these events marked the end of an era and the start of a period of enormous social change. Also this episode produced a great piece of literature ‘The Journal of the Plague Year’ by Daniel Defoe.

Defoe claimed that his work was a genuine contemporary account, although the book was published in 1722 fifty years after the outbreak.  The title page states that the book consists of: ‘Observations of 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 time in London and never made public before’. Defoe was only five years old in 1665 and had probably been sent to stay with relatives in the country during the outbreak. The narrator HF is thought to have been based on the memories and journals of his uncle Henry Foe, a saddler in Whitechapel. Defoe would have had access to some contemporary accounts and statistics as well. Thomas Vincent, a dissenting minister, who had lost seven family members, referred to ‘God’s Terrible Voice in the City’ and sought help from the bible whilst blaming drunkards and swearers for the divine punishment. Nathaniel Hodges, a physician, published Loimologica in 1672 in Latin. It was translated to English in 1720. He gives clinical descriptions of sufferers and describes the shutting up of houses. He blames the meaner sort of people for listening to astrologers and weakening their condition. Ellen Coates published ‘London’s Dreadful Visitation’ which correlated and tabulated the bills of mortality and burial records in 1665. Although the church of St Stephen’s church Coleman St did not survive the Blitz the parish records did and Defoe would have had access to them. The other great diarist, Pepys, who was a contemporary witness, was not published until 1825. Bubonic Plague had been an intermittent occurrence for 300 years so plague orders and literature from earlier outbreaks were available for Defoe to study.

Bubonic plague was introduced to Europe from Asia in the 14th century finally reaching England in June 1348 and became known as the Black Death. After the Black Death the main plague epidemics occurred in 1563, 1593, 1625 and 1665 with smaller outbreaks in many other years. The clinical syndrome was easily recognised by a high fever and swelling of lymph nodes to form buboes which after two weeks would discolour, suppurate and drain. Some patients developed a septicaemia producing overwhelming organ failure and rapid death. About 5% of patients developed a pneumonic form and this could be spread from human to human by droplet infection.

The pathology of bubonic plague was not finalised until the 20th century. Bubonic plague results from infection with the bacterium Yersinia Pestis. It is not primarily a disease of man but of rodents. In England the rodent affected was the black rat, Rattus rattus; this is primarily a climbing animal which lives in walls and roofs, always in close contact with man. The bacillus is carried from rat to rat by the bite of a rat flea. Like most fleas, the rat flea prefers to feed off one species and will only bite humans if there are not enough rats. This means that human epidemics will always follow rat epidemics, described very well in Camus’s novel ‘The Plague’. Rat fleas were most prevalent during the warm summer months and tended to die off with the onset of cold weather in winter. Most plague epidemics were at their worst during summer and resolved in the cold weather. The plague of 1665 was no exception.

The 1665 outbreak started in the parish of St Giles (near modern day new Oxford St), a notorious suburban slum. Initially the outbreak was nothing exceptional, with 43 deaths in early June, 31 of which were in the parish of St Giles. The outbreak was spreading to St Clement Danes, St Margaret Westminster, St Dunstan in the West, St Andrews Holborn and in May there was 1 death in the City near Cornhill. In June there was a heatwave. On June 17th Pepys notes that the driver of his hackney carriage suddenly became delirious. By the final week of June the death toll had risen to 267 but only 4 cases in the City.  But then the infection spread like wildfire and the wealthy could not get out fast enough. Clergyman abandoned their flocks, doctors their patients and even the lawyers left. The King and the court left in July. London’s government was largely held together by the Duke of Albemarle (formerly General Monck), the Earl of Craven, who kept his house open in Drury Lane to shelter the distressed, and Sir William Lawrence, the Lord Mayor. Though frightened, Pepys also stayed, having dispatched his wife and mother to Woolwich. He also put his affairs in order, wrote his will and found time for extramarital dalliance. At the height of the epidemic in August the death rate had reached 7,000 a week. The official death toll rose to 69,000 and modern historians estimate the true figure to be between 80,000 and 100,000.

The Lord Mayor and Aldermen were responsible for the health and well being of their citizens and in times of plague could appoint constables to enforce plague orders. The searchers for the dead were usually old poor women and it is their diagnosis of plague that forms the basis of the bills of mortality. There would have been enormous pressure to avoid a diagnosis of plague and the necessity to quarantine. There are instances of infected servants being dismissed from households, corpses moved to empty houses and bribing of sextons and petty officials. Watchmen were also appointed to ensure that quarantine was not broken. The document listed below is a translation of the plague orders for 1665 held in the national archives. In 2020 we may recognise rules about funerals, public gatherings and alehouses.

Plague Orders for 1665

[Orders 1-5 say that no stranger was allowed to enter a town unless they had a certificate of health. No furniture was to be removed from an infected house. There were to be no public gatherings such as funerals and all houses were to be kept clean.]

6. That Fires in moveable Pans, or otherwise, be made in all necessary publique [public] Meetings in Churches, &c. and convenient Fumes to correct the Air be burnt thereon.

 7. That care be taken that no unwholesome Meats, stinking Fish, Flesh, musty Corn, or any other unwholesome Food be exposed to sale in any Shops or Markets.

 8. That no Swine, Dogs, Cats or tame Pigeons be permitted to pass up and down in Streets, or from house to house, in places Infected.

 9. That the Laws against Inn-Mates be forthwith put in strict execution, and that no more Alehouses be Licensed then are absolutely necessary in each City or place, especially during the continuance of this present Contagion.

 10. That each City and Town forthwith provide some convenient place remote from the same, where a pest-house, huts, or sheds may be erected, to be in readiness in case any Infection should break out; which if it shall happen to do, That able and faithful Searchers and Examiners be forthwith provided and Sworn to Search all suspected bodies, for the usual signs of the plague, viz. Swellings or Risings under the Ears or Arm-pits, or upon the Groynes [groin]; Blains, Carbuncles, or little Spots, either on the Breast or back, commonly called Tokens.

11. That if any House be Infected, the sick person or persons be forthwith removed to the said pest-house, sheds, or huts, for the preservation of the rest of the Family: And that such house (though none be dead therein) be shut up for fourty days, and have a Red Cross, and Lord have mercy upon us, in Capital Letters affixed on the door, and Warders appointed, as well to find them necessaries, as to keep them from conversing with the sound.

12. That at the opening of each Infected house (after the expiration of the said Fourty Days) a White Cross be affixed on the said door, there to remain Twenty days more; during which time, or at least before any stranger be suffered to lodge therein, That the said house be well Fumed, Washed and Whited all over within with Lime; And that no Clothes, or Household stuff be removed out of the said house into any other house, for at least Three months after, unless the persons so Infected have occasion to change their habitation.

13. That none dying of the Plague be buried in Churches, or Church-yards (unless they be large, and then to have a place assigned for that use (where other bodies are not usually buried) Boarded or Paled in Ten foot high) but in some other convenient places, and that a good quantity of unslakt Lime be put into the Graves with such bodies, and that such Graves be not after opened within the space of a year or more, less they infect others.

 14. That in case any City, Burrough, Town or Village be so visited and Infected, that it is not able to maintain its own poor, That then a Rate be forthwith made by the adjoining Justices of the Peace, and confirmed at the very next Quarter Sessions, for that use, upon the neighbouring Parishes, according to the Statute 1 Jacobi [James 1], so that such visited poor may have sufficient Relief; want and nastiness being great occasions of the Infection.

15. That you your selves use your utmost endeavours, not only to see these Directions punctually observed, and be in a readiness to render an Accomt [Account] as often as you shall be required, but that you strictly enjoyn all high Constables, petty Constables, Headburroughs and other Officers, to execute their respective The Duties according to their places; and if any shall fail herein, to use the utmost severity against them according to Law.

What relates to Physitians, Chysurgeons, and such other persons as are necessary for the preservation and help of such who shall be infected, the same is left to your particular care and direction.

Lastly, That you take special care, that not onely [only] the Monethly Fasts, but that the publique prayers on Wednesdays and Fridays also, be strictly and constantly observed according to his Majesties Proclamation; And that such Collections as shall be then made, be strictly applied to the relief and necessities of the poor in Infected places, by which means God may be inclined to remove his severe hand both from amongst you and us.

The rules marked in bold have marked parallels with our lockdown regulations in 2020. Defoe’s book documents the rigid order that emerges in the plague city. Michel Foucault, the philosopher, describes in his book ‘Discipline and Punish (1975)’

‘A whole literature grew up around plague; suspended laws, lifted prohibitions, bodies mingled together without respect. There was also a political dream of the plague which is exactly its reverse: not a collective festival but strict divisions; not laws transgressed, but the penetration of regulation into even the smallest details of everyday life’

The most aggressive measures in 1665 involved the shutting up of houses and quarantining the sick with the healthy for 40 days. Defoe is responsible for some of the most dramatic imagery associated with the plague – of houses sealed for 40 days, marked with a red cross and the words ‘Lord have mercy upon us’ upon the door. Although the regulations of 1665 provided for the closing of houses, enforced by watchmen, there was an alternative. After the plague of 1625 the alternative of the pest house was introduced. These were hastily erected wooden huts and cabins used as isolation units by the sick outside the city limits. Modern Bath St was originally called Pesthouse Row and stood beside the footpath from the City to Islington.

The citizens of 1665 did not wait passively to die but actively sought treatment and protection according to the ideas of the time. Sickness was thought to be caused by bad air and smells. The carrying of pomanders and posies of fresh flowers and herbs was thought to ward off plague. Civic dignitaries and judges still carry posies of flowers on ceremonial occasions in the City of London. Animals were thought to spread plague. In the summer of 1665 Pepys says that 40,000 cats and dogs were slaughtered adding to the decay and smells on the streets and also removing the natural predators of the brown rat.

It was boom time for quack remedies; Pepys describes buying himself a bottle of Plague water. For the occasional sufferer who was attended by a doctor they would have been bled using leeches and buboes lanced and drained. In desperation during the summer, the civic authorities lit bonfires to help dispel the bad air.

The other graphic image from Defoe’s novel is the description of the removal and hasty burial of large numbers of corpses. Funerals were held at night with no more than six mourners following, preceded by the tolling of a bell. The cries of ‘Bring out your dead’ and rapid unceremonious burial in hastily reopened or newly dug plague pits still induces a sense of horror. This may not have been the entire story. Even at the height of the disease, the worst Pepys mentions is that burying by day had become necessary, the night not being long enough for all the funerals. In this he was mainly bothered not by fears for his safety but by the tolling bell that disturbed him at his paperwork! Once and only once did he come across an unburied corpse in the street, and he recorded this as a remarkable incident.

London has developed a rich mythology about the presence of hidden plague pits in popular locations and in particular at sites of popular underground stations. Until Crossrail’s dig in 2015 those Great Plague pits remained elusive. In fact, no archaeological discovery of the 1665 epidemic’s victims had been confirmed in London before. Some 3,500 skeletons were unearthed at the site of the Bedlam cemetery, a 16th and 17th century burial ground now under Liverpool Street. About 42 of the individuals, though, were different from the rest. Rather than having been buried separately, they were in a single mass grave but had been buried in coffins and rows.  They were stacked up to four deep, without any soil between them. In other words, they weren’t grotesquely thrown in … but they were buried in haste and likely on the same day. The skeletons excavated for the Liverpool Street Station ticket hall are the only 1665 plague victims to be confirmed as testing positive for Yersinia Pestis (using DNA samples from teeth). A gravestone of a child, Mary Godfree, who died of plague in September 1665, was also recovered. Burial grounds had to be recorded and space was used in City churchyards such as St Olaves Hart Street until capacity was exceeded.

Defoe’s essay gives a moral perspective and his retrospective view is in great contrast to Pepys contemporaneous diary entries. Pepys is often as interested in making notes about his extramarital liaisons, his periwigs and his nocturnal “pissing” as he is about the ongoing calamity. Even when the plague is at its height, Pepys gives over more space to notes about where he has dined, the money he has invested in Tangier and all the rest of his day-to-day life. Like us, Pepys had to find a way to live with so much death around him – and to escape it. His account becomes remarkable for how little he mentions the plague.

The plague petered out over the winter months and people began to trickle back to London. An estimated twenty percent of the population of London had died. The king returned to London in February 1666.

In 2020 as we learn to cope with another pandemic can we learn any lessons from 1665? We need to remember the basic lessons of quarantine and cleanliness, to be wary of those who offer miracle cures or who deny the existence of Covid 19. We hope that time and science will rescue us but mostly no pandemic lasts forever and the plagues of the past were often followed by great social change for the better.

Bibliography

Dilys Cowan
6 October 2020

Why don’t you try our walk with Daniel Defoe and Pepys during the Plague year of 1665

1     The walk starts at Barbican Station.  Climb the stairs to the Barbican highwalks, turn R when leaving the bridge and turn R, in front of Lauderdale Tower follow the curving highwalk, turn R onto Seddon Highwalk then L  to follow the Thomas More Highwalk, then SA to Wallside to have a fine view of St Giles Cripplegate Church. Defoe was born in Fore Street in the parish of St Giles Cripplegate into a dissenting family. Defoe was only 5 years old when the plague was ravishing London and was probably sent to stay with relatives in the country. The narrator HF may have been based on his uncle, Henry Foe, who was a saddler in Whitechapel. There is a bust of Defoe in the church.

2     Follow the new high walk with good views of St Alphage Chapel, London Wall and the Salter’s Garden. Turn L and join Willoughby highwalk with the new Moorgate Crossrail station under construction on your R. Walk SA then descend at the end of the Highwalk by lift or stairs at Moor Lane. Cross over the pedestrian crossing turn L go SA then R into Ropemaker Street. Defoe spent most of his life in Stoke Newington but by 1728 Defoe’s friends had tired of subsidising his writing and sued him over an unpaid debt. He lost the case, abandoned his house and family and went into hiding in a house on this street. He died in April 1731, aged 69, probably from a stroke.

3     Cross over Moorgate and proceed SA to South Place which then merges into Eldon Street, follow the road as it bends to the R and stop opposite the new Elizabeth Line Liverpool St Underground Station.  A new churchyard was established here in1569 as an extension to the Bethlehem Hospital. It was one of the most used burial sites in the City with up to 5,000 bodies interred there. Defoe also says that his narrator HF, having died several years after 1665, was buried here beside his sister. During the Crossrail excavations in 2016 a gravestone was discovered belonging to a child, Mary Godfree, who died in September 1665 at the height of the plague. Decent burials were still taking place. Other hastily constructed unconsecrated plague pits were constructed nearby. One lies under Finsbury Square and another in Houndsditch, both of these sites would have been just outside the City limits in 1665.

Turn L into the newly constructed plaza with Liverpool St Elizabeth Line Station on the L and then R into Old Broad St. Turn L into Bishopsgate Churchyard passing St Botolph Bishopsgate. Turn R in Bishopsgate go SA crossing London Wall. Turn L in Great St Helens go to R of St Helen’s Bishopsgate. Continue SA and head for the Gherkin. Keep the Gherkin on your L and go SA to Bury St. Turn R at Cunard Place, into Leadenhall St A short detour to Aldgate High St leads to St Botolph Aldgate. According to HF he saw 5,000 buried in pits around this parish but for Defoe the church had happier connotations. It was here he married Mary Tuffley in 1684 and acquired her dowry of £3,700. They were married for 47 years, had 8 children, of whom six survived to adulthood. Return to Leadenhall Street and turn into Fenchurch Buildings (almost opposite Cunard Place) cross Fenchurch St to the East India Arms pub then L into St Katherine’s Row, go SA into French Ordinary Court, turn R in Crutched Friars and then L in Seething Lane to St Olave, Hart St.

4     St Olave. Mary Ramsey, buried somewhere here in the vaults, was wrongly assumed to have brought the plague to London in a bale of infected cloth. In fact the plague started in the slums of St Giles in the fields in the early months of 1665. The churchyard is raised above the entrance door partly as a result of extra burials during 1665. The gateway is covered with carved skulls and memento mori; this is Dickens’s church ‘St Ghastly Grim’. More importantly the church has a strong connection to Samuel Pepys who did actually live through the plague. There are several floor tiles in the garden in Seething Lane commemorating Pepys and the Great Plague.

Continue down Seething Lane to Byward St then continue down Great Tower St then East Cheap. Cross over the junction by London Bridge and then walk down King William St to the triangle in front of the Royal Exchange.

5     The Cornhill Hill Pillory.   Defoe was sentenced to 3 days here in 1703. Defoe’s unorthodox religious views and his support for protestant Whigs often got him into trouble. Defoe had written ‘The Shortest way with Dissenters’, a satire on high court spite. Defoe had been found guilty of seditious libel but he had gained the sympathies of the crowd by writing a ‘Hymn to the Pillory’ so he was pelted with flowers instead of rotting vegetables and worse.

Cross over the junction to Cheapside and look for the blue plaque to the Great Conduit on the L side by Tesco Express the Greene Dragon Tavern was near here.

6     Greene Dragon Tavern. Quack remedies proliferated during the plague. The tavern sold for 12p/oz an ‘excellent electuary and drink for prevention and cure of the plague as approved by the Royal College of Physicians.’

Continue down Cheapside; walk through St Paul’s churchyard and Paternoster Square. Leave the square passing the Large Angel Wings by Thomas Hetherwick and emerge opposite Amen Corner.

7     Amen Corner. In 1665 this was the site of the dissecting room of the Royal College of Physicians. By the summer, the death toll was rising sharply, leading to many physicians, lawyers and clergy to flee London, many seeking shelter in Oxford.

HF notes: – ‘Great was the reproach thrown on those physicians who left their patients during the sickness, and now they were called to town again, nobody cared to employ them; they were called deserters, and frequently bills were set upon their doors, and written ‘Here is a doctor to be let!’

Turn R and continue along Warwick Lane; turn L along Newgate St then R down Giltspur St.

8     Barts Hospital Like most London hospitals Barts refused to admit plague victims.

Walk up Long Lane and turn L in front of the new Farringdon Crossrail station then turn R into Charterhouse Square,

9     Charterhouse Square this was the site of a large plague pit during the Black Death and it was reopened to accommodate extra burials in 1665

Walk up Carthusian St and turn R to return to Barbican tube station.

For those with extra stamina or who want a longer walk other sites associated with Defoe are:-

  • Bunhill Fields. In the decades after the Great Plague Bunhill Fields became the main cemetery for London’s religious nonconformists. Defoe was buried here on 26th April 1731. It was not unknown for creditors to exhume the body of a debtor and hold it hostage until their debts had been paid, so his family took the precaution of burying him under a tombstone marked Mr Dubow. Defoe’s present monument is a recent addition funded by an international group of admirers.
  • Site of Former Royal Mint (Royal Mint St).  In 1692, Defoe’s first business, a hosiery warehouse, went bankrupt and he was forced to hide from his creditors. After initially hiding in ‘Alsatia’, a lawless district between Temple and Blackfriars, Defoe concealed himself in the Mint for a month before departing hastily to Bristol.

Dilys Cowan
6 October 2020