Cruel Quarantines of the Houses of the Sick

As I went along Houndsditch one morning, about eight o’clock, there was a great noise.

Continuing The Great London Plague,
our selection from History of the Plague in London by Daniel Defoe. The selection is presented in six easy 5 minute installments. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Previously in The Great London Plague.

Time: 1665
Place: London

These orders of my lord mayor were published, as I have said, toward the end of June. They came into operation from July 1st, and were as follows:

Orders conceived and published by the lord mayor and aldermen of the city of London, concerning the infection of the plague, 1665.

Whereas, in the reign of our late sovereign, King James, of happy memory, an act was made for the charitable relief and ordering of persons infected with the plague; whereby authority was given to justices of the peace, mayors, bailiffs, and other head officers, to appoint within their several limits, examiners, searchers, watchmen, surgeons, and nurse-keepers, and buriers, for the persons and places infected, and to minister unto them oaths for the performance of their offices. And the same statute did also authorize the giving of other directions, as unto them for the present necessity should seem good in their discretions. It is now upon special consideration thought very expedient for preventing and avoiding of infection of sickness (if it shall so please Almighty God) that these officers be appointed, and these orders hereafter duly observed.”

Then follow the orders giving these officers instructions in detail and prescribing the extent and limits of their several duties. Next, “Orders concerning infected houses and persons sick of the plague.” These had reference to the “notice to be given of the sickness,” “sequestration of the sick,” “airing the stuff,” “shutting up of the house,” “burial of the dead,” “forbidding infected stuff to be sold, and of persons leaving infected houses,” “marking of infected houses,” and “regulating hackney coaches that have been used to convey infected persons.”

Lastly there followed “Orders for cleansing and keeping the streets and houses sweet” and “Orders concerning loose persons and idle assemblies” such as “beggars,” “plays,” “feasts,” and “tippling-houses.”

“(Signed) SIR JOHN LAWRENCE, Lord Mayor. SIR GEORGE WATERMAN, SIR CHARLES DOE, Sheriffs.”

I need not say that these orders extended only to such places as were within the lord mayor’s jurisdiction; so it is requisite to observe that the justices of the peace, within those parishes, and those places called the hamlets and out-parts, took the same method: as I remember, the orders for shutting up of houses did not take place so soon on our side, because, as I said before, the plague did not reach the eastern parts of the town, at least not begin to be very violent, till the beginning of August.

Now, indeed, it was coming on amain; for the burials that same week were in the next adjoining parishes thus:

The next week to the 1st of Aug. prodigiously increased, as thus

The shutting up of houses was at first considered a very cruel and unchristian thing, and the poor people so confined made bitter lamentations; complaints were also daily brought to my lord mayor, of houses causelessly–and some maliciously–shut up. I cannot say, but, upon inquiry, many that complained so loudly were found in a condition to be continued; and others again, inspection being made upon the sick person, on his being content to be carried to the pesthouse, were released.

Indeed, many people perished in these miserable confinements, which it is reasonable to believe would not have been distempered if they had had liberty, though the plague was in the house; at which the people were at first very clamorous and uneasy, and several acts of violence were committed on the men who were set to watch the houses so shut up; also several people broke out by force, in many places, as I shall observe by and by; still it was a public good that justified the private mischief; and there was no obtaining the least mitigation by any application to magistrates. This put the people upon all manner of stratagems, in order, if possible, to get out; and it would fill a little volume to set down the arts used by the people of such houses to shut the eyes of the watchmen who were employed, to deceive them, and to escape or break out from them. A few incidents on this head may prove not uninteresting.

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 or to stay long together; 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 had 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 no errands, which was the chief business of the watchman; 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, wrapped only in a green rug, and carried her away.

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