HISTORY 135F

Infectious and Epidemic Disease in History

Department of History
University of California, Irvine
 Instructor:    Dr. Barbara J. Becker

Lecture 12.  The Great Plague:  London, 1665.

On the day we discover how to cure the Plague
we shall be acting on equal terms with God.
--William Harvey, 20 May 1647
Samuel Pepys (1633 -1703)
  • father was a tailor
  • became one of the most important men of his day
    • England's first Secretary of the Admiralty
    • Member of Parliament
    • President of the Royal Society (authorized publication of Newton's Principia )
    • trusted confidant of kings Charles II and James II
    • friend to Sir Christopher Wren, Sir Isaac Newton, and John Dryden
23 Feb 1633
 born
1649
 witnessed execution of King Charles I
1650-1653
 attended Magdalene College, Cambridge
1654
 entered public service
1655
 married Elizabeth Marchant de Saint-Michel, age 15, penniless daughter of a French Huguenot refugee
Mar 1658
 was "cut for the stone" (lithotomy, removal of bladder stones)
Sep 1658
 death of Oliver Cromwell
1659
 appointed clerk to George Downing, teller in the Exchequer (salary, £50/yr)
Jan 1660
 began his diary
  • kept between 1660-1669 (stopped due to failing eyesight)
  • written mostly in Thomas Shelton's system of shorthand (tachygraphy); proper names written out in longhand
  • 1,250,000 words in six volumes 
Mar 1660
 took on post of Secretary to his cousin, Admiral Edward Montagu
May 1660
 sailed with fleet that brought back Charles II from exile 
Jun 1660
 appointed Clerk of the Acts to the Navy Board (salary, £350/yr); held post until 1673

given official residence on Seething Lane 
1665-1667
 Second Dutch War


Map of London, ca. 1665

The map above shows the boundaries of:

  • The City (yellow area)
  • The Liberties (orange area)
  • population of The City and Liberties ~ 500,000

the seven principal gates in the City Wall

  • Ludgate
  • Newgate
  • Aldergate
  • Cripplegate
  • Moorgate
  • Bishopsgate
  • Aldgate

locations of several parish churches mentioned in Daniel Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year (orange dots):

  • St. Giles-in-the-Fields (left side of map)
  • St. Bride's (near Ludgate)
  • St. Andrew's, Holborn (above "N" in "Newgate")
  • St. Sepulchre's (outside Newgate)
  • St. James, Clerkenwell (top, center)
  • St. Giles, Cripplegate (outside Cripplegate)
  • St. Botolph's, Aldgate (outside Aldgate)
Bills of Mortality

 
Modern explanations for old disease names
Childbed--death of mother from infection following childbirth; puerperal fever
Chrisomes--death of infants in the first month of life
Consumption--tuberculosis
Dropsie--abnormal swelling of the body, or part of the body due to build up of clear, watery fluid
Flox--hemorrhagic smallpox
Flux--dysentery
Gowt--gout; painful inflammation caused by a build up of uric acid in the tissues
Head-mould-shot--infant whose skull bones are forced to overlap one another in a difficult birth
Imposthume--abscess
Kingsevil--scrofula; tuberculosis of the neck
Livergrown--enlarged liver; possibly rickets
Meagrome--severe headache
Purples--rash due to spontaneous bleeding in to the skin; in newborns, may be due to insufficient vitamin K
Quinsy--accute inflammation of the tonsils
Rising of the lights--illness affecting the lungs ("lights" = lungs)
Spotted fever--meningitis or typhus
Stone--gall-stones
Strangury--painful and difficult urination
Surfeit--vomiting from over eating or gluttony
Teeth--death of a teething infant
Thrush--white spots and ulcers on the tongue and throat caused by a parasitic fungus
Tissick--cough; phtisis; tuberculosis

Bills of Mortality for London (August 15-22, 1665).

______

Areas in and around The City (yellow area) and Liberties (orange area) of London that were hardest hit by the plague are indicated in black (over 3,000 deaths per unit square); dark gray areas -- over 2,000 deaths/unit; gray areas -- over 1,000/unit; speckled areas -- under 500 deaths/unit.  Unshaded areas are pasture, marshes or other uncovered land.
Witnessing the Plague Year:  1665-1666


Deaths as recorded each week in Bills of Mortality during plagues of 1610, 1625, 1637, 1647, and 1665-6.

______

Daniel Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year

Daniel Defoe (1660-1731)
1660
 born Daniel Foe (formally changed his name to "Defoe" in the 1690s)
son of a butcher from Stoke-Newington
1684
 married Mary Tuffley
1702
 wrote a satirical political pamphlet
May 1703
 arrested
1704-1713
 published periodical A Review of the Affairs of France
  and of All Europe, resembled modern newspapers
1716-1721
 edited series of other periodicals
1719
 published Robinson Crusoe
1722
 published Moll Flanders
            Journal of the Plague Year
26 April 1731
 died

______

Map showing principal locations in the greater London area that are mentioned in Journal of the Plague Year

How does H.F.'s journal compare with that of Samuel Pepys?

What is required to make historical fiction truly convincing?

What resources are most useful?

What are the risks and benefits of relying on eyewitness accounts?
 
Go to:
  • Astronomia Magna (1537) by Paracelsus (1493-1541);
  • excerpts from the Diary of Samuel Pepys (1633-1703):
Weekly Readings
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7
8
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10
Lecture Notes
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