I’ve been dipping into A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe having for years thought it was a sort of memoir only to discover it is fiction. I'm ridiculously proud of my Plague, Pestilence & Poisons shelf but I rarely go there or I might have known this.
This plague thing all started because I have been listening to Backlisted Pod whilst working away in the greenhouse growing for the garden (my give-it-a-go dahlia seeds morphed into about 150 plants which then became a bit of a crisis). I’m sure I'm very late to the party on all this and you all discovered Backlisted ninety episodes ago, but if not you might like to seek it out. John Mitchison (of Unbound) and Andy Miller (author of My Year of Reading Dangerously) and a guest or two, share their thoughts and breath new life into an old, perhaps forgotten book and author and the result is a very entertaining hour of bookish chat. The rapport is splendid, the results both humorous and entertaining as well as informative. I’m there in the greenhouse scrawling down titles on old seed packets and getting all sorts of reading ideas, while Bookhound thinks I’ve got a gaggle of people in there having a great time. In fact it’s just me and my little Bluetooth speaker and 150 dahlias.
I’d listened to the Penelope Fitzgerald Human Voices episode, and the J.L.Carr Month in the Country episode, before moving on to A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe. I had started reading the book in readiness (which I find adds to the enjoyment) and of course means I can chip in as the discussion proceeds. My own observation about Daniel Defoe was a complete surprise to me, because having avoided 18th century literature and the pestilence shelf like...well, like the plague, I was actually really enjoying this book and beyond impressed at the details.
Despite the fact they didn’t really know what they were dealing with, or the disease’s true source or means of spread, Daniel Defoe has some forthright and sensible ideas about infection control in the eighteenth century. We tend to think of them as clueless when in fact far from it.
Isolation and confinement were key factors in his process. Now admittedly barricading people in their houses and then posting a guard outside was a bit barbaric but the principle was there. Keep infected people away from others and each house of infection would be
’marked with a red Cross of a foot long in the middle of the Door, evident to be seen, and with these usual printed Words...’Lord have Mercy upon us’ to be set close over the same Cross.’
There had to be notification at the first sign ‘either of Botch or Purple, or swelling...’ within two hours to the Examiner of Health.
There was also an extended period of no access to ‘infected’ houses for a month and contents had to be aired with the aid of ‘Fire and Perfumes’. No clothing or bedding could be sold or passed on for at least two months.
Anyone who had knowingly been in contact with infected people or homes also had to be isolated.
No infected person could be removed from an infected house unless it was to another house he owned and in which case the transfer must be done at night.
Likewise burial must be between sunset and sunrise and no neighbours or friends could attend and no children could come near. Graves had to be six feet deep.
And so it went on and it was all a complete revelation.
I learnt all I know about infection control the hard way. As a student nurse, had I had the slightest penchant for cutting corners it would have been well and truly knocked out of me by a twelve week stint on Cohen ward, infectious diseases, at Gt. Ormond Street. Fortunately Sister Beech had already performed that painful task in my previous twelve weeks with her. Catching me idly diluting the Milton bottle sterilising tanks on the babies’ lockers one day (instead of carefully measuring each one) she made me go around with her and taste them all. I didn't die exactly but I didn't have a very good day, and it all stood me in good stead for Cohen where my life probably did depend on doing things properly.
We tend to think we invented all this but writing in 1722, about the plague of 1665, it’s clear Daniel Defoe knew plenty.
Public gatherings were also seriously curtailed
‘That all Plays, Bear-Baitings, Games, singing of Ballads, Bucklerplay, or such like Causes of Assemblies of People be utterly prohibited..’
Likewise ‘publick Feasting’ and ‘disorderly Tipling in Taverns’ ...
’be severely looked unto as the Common Sin of this Time and greatest occasion of dispersing the Plague.’
I plodded on hither and yon through the carnage until my plague interest had been sated, before reaching the fascinating medical note at the back of my OUP edition.
It would be 1894 before the transmission of plague via rats and fleas would be identified. Yersinia pestis lives in the digestive tract of the fleas who live off the black rat Rattus rattus and happily bite humans. The bacillus can survive in ‘excrement, old nests or even textile bales for up to a year in warm and humid conditions.’
By way of a local diversion I’m on the trail of the origins of a nearby church and its designation as a Plague Church. The story goes either that the children were shut in there to protect them whilst everyone else died and they were discovered in there alive by some monks...or were the adults shut in there to die to protect everyone else. The story has many versions and I’m no nearer discovering whether it is myth or fact, or a story invented for the Sunday School children.
Anyway, this has all been a fascinating excursion that is leading me (eventually) towards The Ashes of London, the first in Andrew Taylor’s series of books about the Great Fire in 1666. Apparently the theory that this somehow caused the plague to abate holds no substance according to my OUP medical notes; the fire caused little damage in the places were the plague had wreaked the greatest havoc, public and private hygiene improves little, and rebuilding with brick and tiles rather than thatch and timber had little impact either. The simplest explanation may be herd immunity where the strongest have survived and the weakest have died, coupled with a milder mutation of the disease. In any case, and thankfully, it all but disappeared from the British Isles.
Anyone else suffer from an overwhelming interest in plague and pestilence, or is it just me...
Any good reading recommends...
And what about eighteenth century literature.. have I been wise to avoid it or am I missing a trick...
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