DANIEL DEFOE


None of the great visitations of disease that have afflicted Europe within
historic times has wholly spared England. But from the time of the "Black
Death" (1349) the country experienced no such suffering from any epidemic
as that which fell upon London in 1665. That year the "Great Plague" is
said to have destroyed the lives of nearly one hundred thousand people in
England's capital. The plague had previously cropped up there every few
years, from lack of proper sanitation. At the time of this outbreak the
water-supply of the city was notoriously impure. In 1665 the heat was
uncommonly severe. Pepys said that June 7th of that year was the hottest
day that he had ever known.

The plague of 1665 is said, however, to have been brought in merchandise
directly from Holland, where it had been smouldering for several years.
Its ravages in London have often been described, and Defoe found in the
calamity a subject for a special story on history. Probably he was not more
than six years old when the plague appeared; but he assumes throughout the
pose of a respectable and religious householder of the period. All his own
recollections, all the legends of the time, and the parish records are
grouped in masterly fashion to form a single picture. The account has been
described as a "masterpiece of verisimilitude."

In the first place a blazing star or comet appeared for several months
before the plague, as there did the year after, a little before the great
fire; the old women and the weak-minded portion of the other sex, whom I
could almost call old women too, remarked--especially afterward, though not
till both those judgments were over--that those two comets passed directly