A Journal of the Plague Year

By Daniel Defoe

Actually written sixty years after the plague of 1665 swept through London, Defoe brings the city to life in all of its hardship and fear. With a wealth of detail, "A Journal of the Plague Year" seems almost a firsthand account, taking readers through the neighborhoods, houses, and streets that have drastically changed with the rising death toll. The bustle of business and errands gives way to doors marked with the cross to signify a house of death, as well as the dead-carts transporting those struck down to the mass graves as the dead rise in number to nearly 100,000. As the epidemic progresses and the narrator encounters more stories of isolation and horror, Defoe reveals his masterful balance as both a historical and imaginative writer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Digireads.com Publishing
• Release date: Jan 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9781596252684

Daniel Defoe

Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) was an English author, journalist, merchant and secret agent. His career in business was varied, with substantial success countered by enough debt to warrant his arrest. Political pamphleteering also landed Defoe in prison but, in a novelistic turn of events, an Earl helped free him on the condition that he become an intelligence agent. The author wrote widely on many topics, including politics, travel, and proper manners, but his novels, especially Robinson Crusoe, remain his best remembered work.

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A JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR

BY DANIEL DEFOE

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Digireads.com Publishing

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CONTENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

DANIEL DEFOE

Daniel Defoe has the distinction of writing one of the earliest novels in English literature and also of creating one of the most contradictory heroes, Robinson Crusoe. From the beginning of the novel, Crusoe betrays an alarming tendency to vacillate between extremes of religious conviction and godlessness, humanity and callousness, dedicated industry and restlessness. One moment, he is sincerely affected by his father's representations to him to stay home rather than go to sea and the next moment, he is plotting to run away from his family. When he is shipwrecked and scrounging for provisions on the ship, he finds money and at first bemoans its uselessness, saying O drug!..what art thou good for? (Robinson Crusoe) but in the same breath, he decides to take it with him. He accidentally kills a she-goat with a dependent kid and says that his event grieved me heartily (Robinson Crusoe). In the same paragraph, we find that he has killed, eaten and forgotten the kid and is instead congratulating himself on making the meat last so long.

Like his fictional hero, Defoe himself has been accused, in life, of taking the most convenient path as opposed to the morally right one. Being involved in politics, he would pledge his allegiance to whichever party was in power, causing his fellow author, Joseph Addison, to call him a false, shuffling, prevaricating rascal (qtd. in Pancoast). In addition to an ambiguous political stance, however, Defoe's life carried a whiff of disrespectability, because of his various investments which led him into debts amounting to £17,000, which adds up to more than a million in present-day currency. It's impossible to know whether Defoe was merely unfortunate in financial matters or whether he was actually unscrupulous. It is evident that his contemporaries believed the latter for they leveled many charges against him, the truth of which can no longer be discerned. Thomas Keymer refers to these when he writes, Defoe's notoriety as a seditious libeler and literary mercenary was not alleviated by sporadic allegations of other crimes and misdemeanors, from smuggling, fraud and horse-stealing to the cuckoldry of a personal friend (xiii-xiv). We may puzzle over his ethical stance but the one thing that cannot be disputed is that Defoe was a colorful personality.

Defoe was born around the year 1660 (sourcebooks tend to vary the date between 1659 and 1661) in St. Giles, Cripplegate, a neighborhood of London that was destroyed completely in the second World War. His original name was Daniel Foe which he changed to Defoe in his thirties, largely because it sounded more upper crust, although he might have been returning to a version of his family's original name. His father was James Foe, a tallow chandler (a term which might seem baffling to modern readers but essentially refers to a seller of candles, an important office in a time before electric lights) and later, possibly, a butcher. Defoe had an exciting childhood, for he survived the Great Plague of London which hit when he was around five and the Great Fire of London which occurred when he was about six. Later in life, he wrote a book called A Journal of the Plague Year which describes this horrific pestilence in great detail. Although this work has some fictional elements, it is thought to be historically accurate and based on the diaries left behind by Defoe's uncle Henry Foe.

Defoe's parents were Nonconformists or Dissenters, a religious group that had broken away from the Church of England and that opposed state interference in religious matters. As the name suggests, Nonconformists or Dissenters formed a minority; they were barely tolerated and often oppressed. As a result, Defoe's father couldn't send him to Oxford or Cambridge; instead, Defoe was educated at a special academy for Dissenters at Newington Green, run by Charles Morton who later became the first vice-president of Harvard College. Defoe's father wanted him to become a Dissenting minister but Defoe decided that he would prefer to be a tradesman. Over time, he dealt in hosiery, woolen goods and wine in addition to running a brick and tile manufactory and trying to make perfume. He wasn't always successful in his ventures and is often quoted as saying,

No man has tasted differing fortunes more,

And thirteen times I have been rich and poor; (qtd. in Pancoast).

Despite his failure as a merchant and the heavy debts he incurred, Defoe's economic views have been commented on by many critics including Karl Marx who analyzed Robinson Crusoe in his seminal work Capital. According to Marx, Crusoe's experiences on the deserted island go to show that labor is more important than capital, for Crusoe has only meager supplies to work with and manages to satisfy all this needs by dint of hard work.

After setting himself up in trade, Defoe married Mary Tuffley in 1684; she was the daughter of another Dissenting merchant, with a dowry of £3,700, a sum that might have saved a more prudent man from bankruptcy. Not that much is known about her, except that she and Defoe had eight children of whom six survived. A year after the marriage, Defoe started to get into political hot water, for he joined the Monmouth rebellion, an attempt to overthrow the Catholic king, James II, by the Duke of Monmouth who was a Protestant. Monmouth was defeated and executed but Defoe managed to get a pardon. However, his political ardor was far from quenched and when William of Orange, also a Protestant, came to the throne in 1688, Defoe became an ardent supporter and pamphleteer for the king. There were those who opposed the king on account of his foreign birth in the Netherlands, but Defoe refuted them by writing a poem called The True-Born Englishman which made him very popular. In this poem, he argued that all Englishmen are of mixed ancestry, making hypocrites out of those who opposed William of Orange on the basis of his lineage.

In 1702, however, with the death of William of Orange, Defoe's luck ran out as the throne went to Queen Anne, who favored the Anglican church and detested Catholics as well as Dissenters. The animosity against Dissenters being rekindled, Defoe decided to write one of his most notorious pieces called The Shortest Way with the Dissenters. This was a satirical piece in which he wrote from the point of view of the Churchmen who opposed Dissenters and spelled out, without equivocation, a bigoted and vicious way of dealing with Dissenters. As this piece was published anonymously, it was not immediately perceived that the author was himself a Dissenter and both, High Churchmen and Dissenters, thought that this was a seriously written argument. When it was revealed that the pamphlet was a parody, Churchmen were naturally incensed but Dissenters felt like they had also been deceived and both groups condemned Defoe. He was arrested and sentenced to the pillory (a form of punishment similar to the stocks in which a wooden frame encircles the prisoner's head and hands, holding him still in a bent position such that people could witness his humiliation and throw rotten foodstuffs at him). However, before the sentence could be carried out, Defoe wrote and published his Hymn to the Pillory and it is said that the popularity of this poem caused people to throw flowers at him rather than pelting him with spoiled food. After the pillory, Defoe spent two years in Newgate prison, causing his brick and tile business to go down the drain.

From prison, Defoe appealed to Robert Harley, a politician, to help set him free and agreed to become a pamphleteer and intelligence agent in return. Harley was affiliated with the Tories who remained in power until the death of Queen Anne and were then replaced by the Whigs. Defoe changed his alliances along with whichever party was in power and ended up working for both sides. During this politically tumultuous time, he also started a periodical called the Review which he wrote singlehandedly for a period of nine years. The Review was, at first, a weekly but later became thrice-weekly; it discussed current events in England and Europe but also expatiated upon religion, trade, manners, morals etc.

Thus, after spending most of his life writing mostly non-fiction and some poetry, Defoe decided, at around the age of sixty, to write a novel. It is generally assumed that the character of Robinson Crusoe borrows much from the real-life adventures of one Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish sailor who was stranded on the island of Más a Tierra in the south Pacific after a quarrel with his captain. He stayed there for four years after which he was rescued and brought back to England where the account of his adventures was published. Like Crusoe, Selkirk strove to keep up his spirits in isolation and made the best use of the equipment available to him for survival. When Robinson Crusoe was published, it was an unabashedly commercial undertaking which made no effort to appeal to the elite segments of society. This might be the reason why its reputation did not, at first, survive its author's demise in 1731. However, there was a resurgence of interest in Defoe's works in the second half of the eighteenth century when several critics, including, notably, Sir Walter Scott and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, presented their commentary.

Since then, Robinson Crusoe has been interpreted in many ways. First and foremost, it is an adventure story in which a man marooned on an island must battle nature to continue to live. However, it also has economic implications because when resources are scarce, one must use them sparingly as well as cunningly. Politically as well, we see the development of a small society centered around Crusoe on the island, of which he designates himself the king. The development of social relations in human history is alluded to in the master/servant bond that springs up between Crusoe and Friday. In one of his moments of moral obtuseness, Crusoe teaches Friday the word master even before teaching him the words yes and no. Given Crusoe's mastery over the island and some of its inhabitants, a colonial reading seems particularly apt and is echoed in the words of James Joyce who said, The whole Anglo-Saxon spirit is in Crusoe: the manly independence, the unconscious cruelty, the persistence, the slow yet efficient intelligence, the sexual apathy, the calculating taciturnity (24-25).

The next few years were very productive ones for Defoe; he wrote Captain Singleton and Memoirs of a Cavalier in 1720, Moll Flanders in 1722 and Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress in 1724. Captain Singleton, like Robinson Crusoe, is an adventure story in which the protagonist journeys through Africa and becomes a pirate in the Indian Ocean. Despite the exciting premise, this novel doesn't lend itself to the same variety of interpretations as its predecessor, although Defoe's economic views are apparent in both. Colonel Jack is the story of the ups and downs of an orphan who wants to be a gentleman; as such, it presages works like Dickens' Oliver Twist and Great Expectations. The story of Moll Flanders can be summed up in its full title: The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders, etc. Who was Born in Newgate, and during a Life of continu'd Variety for Threescore Years, besides her Childhood, was Twelve Year a Whore, five times a Wife (whereof once to her own Brother), Twelve Year a Thief, Eight Year a Transported Felon in Virginia, at last grew Rich, liv'd Honest, and died a Penitent. Written from her own Memorandums. Both, Moll Flanders and Roxana are considered, to some extent, feminist narratives, for these women tend to use the men they sleep with for their own purposes and the natural bias of their characters is towards freedom.

Being one of the first novelists, Defoe's influence on posterity has been immense. Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, published seven years after Robinson Crusoe was a re-writing of this story from Swift's satirical point of view; whereas Crusoe tries to establish his dominion wherever he goes, Gulliver frequently finds himself helpless to effect any change. Rousseau's Émile turns to Crusoe for a self-sufficient role model and Wilkie Collins' character Gabriel Betteredge, from The Moonstone, takes Robinson Crusoe as his bible. In 1957, Michel Tournier wrote his version of the adventure story, entitled Vendredi ou les Limbes du Pacifique in which Robinson chooses to remain on the island even when he's given the chance to escape. Most notably, J. M. Coetzee wrote Foe in 1986 and was later awarded the Nobel Prize. In Foe, the situation is recast from the point of view of Susan Barton, a castaway who lands on the same island as Crusoe and Friday and later brings the story to Defoe's attention but is frustrated by Defoe's handling of the material. All in all, Defoe's masterpiece has excited both admiration and rebuttals over the years, making him a great deal more than the fellow who was pilloried, I have forgot his name (qtd. in Pancoast) as Jonathan Swift so disingenuously called him.

Ruhi Jiwani, 2011

SOURCES

Defoe, Daniel. The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. Illus. H. M. Brock. Project Gutenberg. 6 April 2010. Seeley, Service & Co., 1919. Web. 24 August 2011.

Joyce, James. Daniel Defoe. Buffalo Studies. Trans. & Ed. Joseph Prescott. Buffalo: State U of New York P, 1964. Print.

Keymer, Thomas. Introduction. Robinson Crusoe. By Daniel Defoe. New York: Oxford U P, 2007. vii-xxxix. Print.

Pancoast, Henry S. Daniel Defoe. An Introduction to English Literature. 3rd ed. Luminarium: Anthology of English Literature. 6 May 2007. Henry Holt & Co., 1907. Web. 24 August 2011.

A JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR

By Daniel Defoe

being observations or 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 while in London.

Never made public before

It was about the beginning of September, 1664, that I, among the rest of my neighbours, heard in ordinary discourse that the plague was returned again in Holland; for it had been very violent there, and particularly at Amsterdam and Rotterdam, in the year 1663, whither, they say, it was brought, some said from Italy, others from the Levant, among some goods which were brought home by their Turkey fleet; others said it was brought from Candia; others from Cyprus. It mattered not from whence it came; but all agreed it was come into Holland again.

We had no such thing as printed newspapers in those days to spread rumours and reports of things, and to improve them by the invention of men, as I have lived to see practised since. But such things as these were gathered from the letters of merchants and others who corresponded abroad, and from them was handed about by word of mouth only; so that things did not spread instantly over the whole nation, as they do now. But it seems that the Government had a true account of it, and several councils were held about ways to prevent its coming over; but all was kept very private. Hence it was that this rumour died off again, and people began to forget it as a thing we were very little concerned in, and that we hoped was not true; till the latter end of November or the beginning of December 1664 when two men, said to be Frenchmen, died of the plague in Long Acre, or rather at the upper end of Drury Lane. The family they were in endeavoured to conceal it as much as possible, but as it had gotten some vent in the discourse of the neighbourhood, the Secretaries of State got knowledge of it; and concerning themselves to inquire about it, in order to be certain of the truth, two physicians and a surgeon were ordered to go to the house and make inspection. This they did; and finding evident tokens of the sickness upon both the bodies that were dead, they gave their opinions publicly that they died of the plague. Whereupon it was given in to the parish clerk, and he also returned them to the Hall; and it was printed in the weekly bill of mortality in the usual manner, thus—

Plague, 2. Parishes infected, 1.

The people showed a great concern at this, and began to be alarmed all over the town, and the more, because in the last week in December 1664 another man died in the same house, and of the same distemper. And then we were easy again for about six weeks, when none having died with any marks of infection, it was said the distemper was gone; but after that, I think it was about the 12th of February, another died in another house, but in the same parish and in the same manner.

This turned the people's eyes pretty much towards that end of the town, and the weekly bills showing an increase of burials in St Giles's parish more than usual, it began to be suspected that the plague was among the people at that end of the town, and that many had died of it, though they had taken care to keep it as much from the knowledge of the public as possible. This possessed the heads of the people very much, and few cared to go through Drury Lane, or the other streets suspected, unless they had extraordinary business that obliged them to it

This increase of the bills stood thus: the usual number of burials in a week, in the parishes of St Giles-in-the-Fields and St Andrew's, Holborn, were from twelve to seventeen or nineteen each, few more or less; but from the time that the plague first began in St Giles's parish, it was observed that the ordinary burials increased in number considerably. For example:—

img1.png

The like increase of the bills was observed in the parishes of St Bride's, adjoining on one side of Holborn parish, and in the parish of St James, Clerkenwell, adjoining on the other side of Holborn; in both which parishes the usual numbers that died weekly were from four to six or eight, whereas at that time they were increased as follows:—

img2.png

Besides this, it was observed with great uneasiness by the people that the weekly bills in general increased very much during these weeks, although it was at a time of the year when usually the bills are very moderate.

The usual number of burials within the bills of mortality for a week was from about 240 or thereabouts to 300. The last was esteemed a pretty high bill; but after this we found the bills successively increasing as follows:—

img3.png

This last bill was really frightful, being a higher number than had been known to have been buried in one week since the preceding visitation of 1656.

However, all this went off again, and the weather proving cold, and the frost, which began in December, still continuing very severe even till near the end of February, attended with sharp though moderate winds, the bills decreased again, and the city grew healthy, and everybody began to look upon the danger as good as over; only that still the burials in St Giles's continued high. From the beginning of April especially they stood at twenty-five each week, till the week from the 18th to the 25th, when there was buried in St Giles's parish thirty, whereof two of the plague and eight of the spotted-fever, which was looked upon as the same thing; likewise the number that died of the spotted-fever in the whole increased, being eight the week before, and twelve the week above-named.

This alarmed us all again, and terrible apprehensions were among the people, especially the weather being now changed and growing warm, and the summer being at hand. However, the next week there seemed to be some hopes again; the bills were low, the number of the dead in all was but 388, there was none of the plague, and but four of the spotted-fever.

But the following week it returned again, and the distemper was spread into two or three other parishes, viz., St Andrew's, Holborn; St Clement Danes; and, to the great affliction of the city, one died within the walls, in the parish of St. Mary Wool Church, that is to say, in Bearbinder Lane, near Stocks Market; in all there were nine of the plague and six of the spotted-fever. It was, however, upon inquiry found that this Frenchman who died in Bearbinder Lane was one who, having lived in Long Acre, near the infected houses, had removed for fear of the distemper, not knowing that he was already infected.

This was the beginning of May, yet the weather was temperate, variable, and cool enough, and people had still some hopes. That which encouraged them was that the city was healthy: the whole ninety-seven parishes buried but fifty-four, and we began to hope that, as it was chiefly among the people at that end of the town, it might go no farther; and the rather, because the next week, which was from the 9th of May to the 16th, there died but three, of which not one within the whole city or liberties; and St Andrew's buried but fifteen, which was very low. 'Tis true St Giles's buried two-and-thirty, but still, as there was but one of the plague, people began to be easy. The whole bill also was very low, for the week before the bill was but 347, and the week above mentioned but 343. We continued in these hopes for a few days, but it was but for a few, for the people were no more to be deceived thus; they searched the houses and found that the plague was really spread every way, and that many died of it every day. So that now all our extenuations abated, and it was no more to be concealed; nay, it quickly appeared that the infection had spread itself beyond all hopes of abatement. That in the parish of St Giles it was gotten into several streets, and several families lay all sick together; and, accordingly, in the weekly bill for the next week the thing began to show itself. There was indeed but fourteen set down of the plague, but this was all knavery and collusion, for in St Giles's parish they buried forty in all, whereof it was certain most of them died of the plague, though they were set down of other distempers; and though the number of all the burials were not increased above thirty-two, and the whole bill being but 385, yet there was fourteen of the spotted-fever, as well as fourteen of the plague; and we took it for granted upon the whole that there were fifty died that week of the plague.

The next bill was from the 23rd of May to the 30th, when the number of the plague was seventeen. But the burials in St Giles's were fifty-three—a frightful number!—of whom they set down but nine of the plague; but on an examination more strictly by the justices of peace, and at the Lord Mayor's request, it was found there were twenty more who were really dead of the plague in that parish, but had been set down of the spotted-fever or other distempers, besides others concealed.

But those were trifling things to what followed immediately after; for now the weather set in hot, and from the first week in June the infection spread in a dreadful manner, and the bills rose high; the articles of the fever, spotted-fever, and teeth began to swell; for all that could conceal their distempers did it, to prevent their neighbours shunning and refusing to converse with them, and also to prevent authority shutting up their houses; which, though it was not yet practised, yet was threatened, and people were extremely terrified at the thoughts of it.

The second week in June, the parish of St Giles, where still the weight of the infection lay, buried 120, whereof though the bills said but sixty-eight of the plague, everybody said there had been 100 at least, calculating it from the usual number of funerals in that parish, as above.

Till this week the city continued free, there having never any died, except that one Frenchman whom I mentioned before, within the whole ninety-seven parishes. Now there died four within the city, one in Wood Street, one in Fenchurch Street, and two in Crooked Lane. Southwark was entirely free, having not one yet died on that side of the water.

I lived without Aldgate, about midway between Aldgate Church and Whitechappel Bars, on the left hand or north side of the street; and as the distemper had not reached to that side of the city, our neighbourhood continued very easy. But at the other end of the town their consternation was very great: and the richer sort of people, especially the nobility and gentry from the west part of the city, thronged out of town with their families and servants in an unusual manner; and this was more particularly seen in Whitechappel; that is to say, the Broad Street where I lived; indeed, nothing was to be seen but waggons and carts, with goods, women, servants, children, &c.; coaches filled with people of the better sort and horsemen attending them, and all hurrying away; then empty waggons and carts appeared, and spare horses with servants, who, it was apparent, were returning or sent from the countries to fetch more people; besides innumerable numbers of men on horseback, some alone, others with servants, and, generally speaking, all loaded with baggage and fitted out for travelling, as anyone might perceive by their appearance.

This was a very terrible and melancholy thing to see, and as it was a sight which I could not but look on from morning to night (for indeed there was nothing else of moment to be seen), it filled me with very serious thoughts of the misery that was coming upon the city, and the unhappy condition of those that would be left in it.

This hurry of the people was such for some weeks that there was no getting at the Lord Mayor's door without exceeding difficulty; there were such pressing and crowding there to get passes and certificates of health for such as travelled abroad, for without these there was no being admitted to pass through the towns upon the road, or to lodge in any inn. Now, as there had none died in the city for all this time, my Lord Mayor gave certificates of health without any difficulty to all those who lived in the ninety-seven parishes, and to those within the liberties too for a while.

This hurry, I say, continued some weeks, that is to say, all the month of May and June, and the more because it was rumoured that an order of the Government was to be issued out to place turnpikes and barriers on the road to prevent people travelling, and that the towns on the road would not suffer people from London to pass for fear of bringing the infection along with them, though neither of these rumours had any foundation but in the imagination, especially at-first.

I now began to consider seriously with myself concerning my own case, and how I should dispose of myself; that is to say, whether I should resolve to stay in London or shut up my house and flee, as many of my neighbours did. I have set this particular down so fully, because I know not but it may be of moment to those who come after me, if they come to be brought to the same distress, and to the same manner of making their choice; and therefore I desire this account may pass with them rather for a direction to themselves to act by than a history of my actings, seeing it may not he of one farthing value to them to note what became of me.

I had two important things before me: the one was the carrying on my business and shop, which was considerable, and in which was embarked all my effects in the world; and the other was the preservation of my life in so dismal